Looking Good Dead: Volume 2 (Roy Grace)

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Luke has been working as an actor from a young age, starting on The Secret of Eel Island aged 10 and going on to play Evan in the first four series of ITV’s Wild at Heart and the lead Simon Doonan on BBC’s Beautiful People playing Olivia Colman’s son.

Gemma is an actress, writer and voice over artist from Edinburgh. She trained at Arts Educational Schools after studying English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Rise up all you missing theatre goers , be brave, get out there, live life and fill those empty seats this week , as this excellent crafted drama executed by all this creative cast deserve your full theatre support Film includes Daniel in Limit of the Land, Danny in Love Does Grow on Trees, Robert in Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. Grace is a British television crime drama series, based in the English city of Brighton & Hove, that stars John Simm in the title role of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a dogged detective who, haunted by the disappearance of his wife some years previously, solves a variety of cases. [1]All I can say is that this production was absolutely brilliant! The best play I've seen in ages .... all of the actors were fantastic ... a great story, great twist and just fab!!!

Looking Good Dead is the fifth of Shaun’s stage adaptations of a Peter James novel, following The House on Cold Hill, The Perfect Murder, Dead Simple and Not Dead Enough. A sixth is in development. Whilst still working in the film industry Peter began writing novels, the first of which, Dead Letter Drop, was published in the UK in 1981. he made history when his 11th book, Host, was released on two floppy disks, making it the world’s first electronic novel. There is a copy in the British Science Museum.

A chilling event at the Royal Edward Hotel on the night of ACC Vosper's leaving party forces Grace into a difficult position. The journey of popular contemporary fictional detective flitting from book to TV screen to stage can be a complicated case to follow. Some do it with skill, flair and aplomb ( Inspector Montalbano; Grantchester; Vera; et al), others take the ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ route (the 2016 film version of British writer Paula Hawkins’ edgy 2015 psychological thriller The Girl on the Train was pretty much universally panned, but the 2018 stage adaptation was a theatre-world hit) and several deserved to die a horrible, lonely death (Dan Brown’s 2003 epic mystery thriller The Da Vinci Code, for example, was a huge, highly acclaimed lit-hit, but the 2006 film version tops multiple ‘worst book-to-film adaptation’ charts; watch this space for a forensic examination of the stage version, coming to Theatre Royal Bath early next year). And my point, your honour, is….? Looking Good Dead follows his other "dead" novel adaptations - Dead Simple, Not Dead Enough plus The Perfect Murder and The House on Cold Hill. This time, the stars come from the main three soaps - Adam Woodyatt (38 years in EastEnders) and Gaynor Faye (Emmerdale and Coronation Street). Mylo recently graduated from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He is thrilled to be making his professional stage debut in Looking Good Dead. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace (played this time by Harry Long) features in another enjoyable romp through the darker side of policing, keeping the audience guessing with its plot twists until the very end in a production which certainly doesn't disappoint.

Even with the domestic drama prioritised, the compromises imposed by the theatre format allows issues such as the morality of concealing information from the police for fear of reprisals to be raised but not really explored. As a result, the stage version of Looking Good Dead does not completely satisfy as a family drama or as a thriller. To an extent, the play is hamstrung by expectations—fans of the original novel will expect to see detective Roy Grace on stage even though he is reduced to a rather colourless character. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace has to solve a disturbing murder whilst protecting an innocent eye witness, in this TV tie-in edition of Looking Good Dead, by award winning crime author Peter James.A third series was subsequently commissioned in May 2022, adapted from the novels Dead Like You, Dead Man's Grip and Not Dead Yet. For this series, Russell Lewis stepped down as showrunner and principal writer, with former Whitechapel writers Ben Court & Caroline Ip penning two episodes, and prolific screenwriter Ed Whitmore penning the other. The series also features Sam Hoare as a new ACC, following the departure of Rakie Ayola at the end of series two. [14] John Simm to star in adaptation of Peter James' Grace for ITV, 19 December 2021". Radio Times . Retrieved 6 March 2021. TV and film include The Crooked Man, Like Father Like Son, Great West End Theatres, three series of Heartbeat, Doctors and in development, Agent 160 and Oscar’s Boys.

Peter James happens to be my second favourite author, after the queen that is Val McDermid of course. So I was ecstatic to learn his second novel in the Roy Grace series has been adapted into a stage play.

Liam is a Deaf and disabled freelance journalist, campaigner, theatre critic and public speaker. View all posts by Liam O’Dell Designer Michael Holt’s ingenious set is highly adaptive. A feature wall in a posh ultra-modern residence turns within seconds into a grisly pornographic film set. I enjoyed the first in Peter James’s series starring troubled Brighton cop Roy Grace, and LOOKING GOOD DEAD is a sharp and punchy sequel. I don’t care for woo-woo in crime novels, but James just about gets away with the angle. There’s an intriguing throwaway comment about how police elsewhere will call in a medium more than you’d think, along with a character I hope James will revisit — a cop-turned-medium who seems to know a bit too much about what’s going on in Grace’s life.