“I love creating something exciting and surprising with lots of twists”

Next month, viewers will be able to watch Lisa go back to her roots with a new drama she has written with her husband Tobias Beer.

The Deceived, which will air on Channel 5 in August, is a four part psychological thriller filmed in Northern Ireland and Cambridge.

The central character is English student Ophelia (played by Emily Reid), who falls in love with her married lecturer (Emmet J.Scanlan), seeing in him all the answers to her needs.

When their affair is interrupted by a shocking and tragic death, Ophelia finds herself trapped in a world where she can no longer trust her own mind.

Lisa said that this is the first project she has written with her actor husband Tobias Beer.

“We talked about working on something together for a long time, but it took a while to find the right project.”
Tobias reveals they have other projects planned for the future and gave an insight into how they worked as writing partners.

“Our system with this and other stuff we have for the future tends to be that we will talk very loosely about an idea early on, often over drinks so it doesn’t feel like work. Then we will do a plan for the structure and plot very rough scenes, after which we’ll carve them up and write separately. Then we come together and swap around, noting each other’s and editing.

“The main thing is, because we spend our lives together, to stave off a divorce we don’t tend to work together, so we never really do stuff at the same time apart from at the earliest and latest stages. Lisa is so experienced that she is brilliant on structure and will often step away for a while then come back and give thoughts on it, which gives us a sort of extra stage of script editing for free.”

“I’m obsessed with story. It’s why I write,” said Lisa. “I love creating something exciting and surprising with lots of twists and turns. I really enjoy the challenge of structure, the way you tell a story is as important as the story itself. Toby comes from an acting background. He’s very strong on character and dialogue.

“I think we don’t let each other away with anything, I’m always pushing for more story and Toby won’t allow characters to feel untruthful in order to achieve that – which can lead to some arguments but ultimately it’s all good for the show.”

The couple share a love of old Hitchcock films, and other classic thrillers, and admit that Rebecca has a huge influence on the show.

“We were interested in seeing whether we could write something that was modern in its setting but which might have a period feel to it – to see whether the form would hold within the fast-paced and sophisticated world of contemporary television.”

Tobias said that one of the main difficulties with the process was trying to create something in the tone of these classic thrillers ‘without it feeling too dated or unrealistic’.

Lisa gave birth to their second son just as filming began, so Tobias was away quite a lot. “We did our best to explain to him after he was born, but he was strangely unsympathetic to the demands of making television drama,” he jokes.

Lisa said that although The Deceived is poles apart from Derry Girls there are some similarities for her as a writer.

“I was a playwright then started writing television drama and sort of side stepped into comedy which is now what I’m most known for.

“For me it’s just about absolutely loving the project, writing something you’d like to watch. You never know if it’s going to be successful. You just pray some people watch it and enjoy it.

“And I discovered writing The Deceived that there were similarities with Derry Girls, the challenge of creating an authentic world, constructing a scare isn’t a million miles away from constructing a joke – both require the viewer to have a physical reaction.

“I’ve always enjoyed working in different genres,” Lisa added. “You learn a lot from it.”