ITV Series Identity

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Homepage ► Identity

Identity, was a six part ITV drama series starring Aidan Gillen and Keeley Hawes, following an elite police unit formed to combat the explosion of identity-related crime.

Identity tackled the darker side of reinvention: murderers who literally take other people’s lives, criminals who create new personas to escape evil pasts, impostors who look, talk and sound just like us but would kill you in a heartbeat.

The unit, lead by DSI Martha Lawson, (Keeley Hawes - Ashes to Ashes, Mutual Friends), works any case where making an identification is a significant part of solving the crime by outsmarting, hunting down and unmasking the modern day Jekyll and Hydes.

DSI Lawson is also the founder of the unit - which she fought long and hard for - and its perilous fate is a constant source of anxiety to her. She knows she took a gamble in hiring DI John Bloom, played by Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Queer as Folk) - the secret weapon of the Identity Unit. Crucially, Bloom is an ex-undercover cop so he knows first hand what it’s like to pretend to be someone you are not. He’s also only too aware of how easy it is to lose your own identity when you’re living a lie…

Cast

Holly Aird (Torn, Waking the Dead) is Tessa Stein, IT expert in everything from trawling databases to cracking security codes. Completing the team are DS Anthony Wareing (Shaun Parkes - Moses Jones, Harley Street), who has his eye on promotion and a stance on cases that can err on the self-righteous, and DC José Rodriguez (Elyes Gabel – Waterloo Road, Deadset) cocky, self-assured yet with a seriousness and sensitivity that gives him insight into cases. As the series unfolds, DS Wareing becomes more and more concerned about Bloom’s methods and frustrated by what he sees as Martha’s blind and foolish indulgence of him.

Production

Kate Bartlett, Controller of Drama at ITV Studios, said: “This is a unique crime series, with an exciting cast, that explores the theme of identity. The psychology behind the issue of identity opens up a whole world of stories. We take for granted that people are who they say they are and a person’s ID is sacred. However, when that trust is violated it can provoke a special kind of fear, one that cuts to the heart of our sense of self and the world around us.”

Writer and creator Ed Whitmore said: “Somehow the whole proposition of identity has never felt more fluid, fragile and perilous and obviously that’s reflected in the burgeoning identity fraud crime stats. But it also poses deeper questions such as what does our identity really mean to us? Superficially we define it by our names, fingerprints, DNA etc and yet it clearly means so much more to us than that. The whole theme of identity just seemed to organically throw up so many compelling and dramatic questions.

“I’ve done a ton of research; in fact everyone involved in the development of the show has become an identity crime obsessive, because once you start reading the real life cases you just can’t stop. Probably the first story to really catch my attention was Elaine “The Chameleon” Parent who employed numerology parlour tricks to obtain strangers’ birth certificate and passport numbers. Eventually she killed a Florida bank clerk and flew to the UK under her name but by utilizing a dozen plus identities she managed to evade capture for another 12 years when she shot herself. Another truly astonishing case was John List who murdered his mother, wife and three children then disappeared for nearly 18 years. So out of all that came the idea of an elite Identity Unit who tackle the dark side of reinvention.”

Talking of the translation of his characters onto the small screen Ed continues: “There’s a real conundrum in creating cop characters. You want them to be good at their job so we can savour their investigative ingenuity yet you don’t want them to be blandly heroic – in essence you want that investigative ingenuity to COST them something. The paradox of a man who’s more comfortable in anyone’s skin but his own is really compelling and moving and Aidan Gillen said that’s what fundamentally grabbed him about the character of John Bloom. The conceit of Bloom’s perilous double life gave us an underlying tension that perfectly amplified the excitement of the stories of the week and located the theme of identity right at the heart of our story.

“In Keeley Hawes we were blessed to have an actress who could perfectly encapsulate the character of Martha Lawson’s mixture of single mindedness and vulnerability, professional dynamism and private weariness.”

Identity

An elite police unit investigates identity-related crime

Starring Aidan Gillen, Keeley Hawes, Holly Aird, Shaun Parkes & Elyes Gabel

Photograph shows the cast of Identity - Shaun Parkes, Holly Aird, Aidan Gillen, Keeley Hawes & Elyes Gabel