by Richard Barber

A much-anticipated crime drama set in a Kent seaside town is set to hit the small screen today.

Here's everything you need to know about Whitstable Pearl, the six-part series based on author Julie Wassmer's popular murder mystery novels...

Let actor and star of the show, Kerry Godliman set the scene.

"In essence," she says, "Whitstable Pearl is about a woman – Pearl Nolan, that’s me – who’s long dreamed of being a private detective. She was in the police force when she was younger but had to leave when she got pregnant.

"Since then, she’s gone on to become quite a successful restaurateur in Whitstable but she hasn’t lost that desire to undertake a bit of detective work. She’s very close to her mum, Dolly, but each is harbouring a secret that only emerges slowly as the series unfolds.

"Pearl’s other key relationship is with Mike McGuire, a police officer drafted in from the Met and, although they seem very different from one another, there’s clearly a connection between them more or less straightaway. She’s the yin to his yang."

The six-part series, which begins on streaming channel Acorn TV today (Monday), is based on the much-loved books by Whitstable author Julie Wassmer. May 24

The Whitstable Pearl trailer

The first episode follows the plot of Julie’s debut whodunit, The Whitstable Pearl Mystery, as does the fourth, Disappearance At Oare, the fifth book in the oeuvre. But the other four episodes are original scripts with Julie acting as executive producer and consultant.

Polishing up Pearl

Julie first discovered Whitstable with her husband, Kas, when they took a wrong turning on their way to Broadstairs. It was love at first sight and they’ve lived there now for 21 years. "Yes, we’re DFLs – that’s what the locals call those of us Down From London – but, perhaps because of that, I’ve never taken for granted how special Whitstable is."

Julie didn’t take up writing professionally until her early 40s after working, among many jobs, at the BBC and on commercials, including casting.

Only after getting a short film made for Channel 4 did she eventually become part of the EastEnders script-writing team where she remained for almost two decades ("I loved it because I was born in east London in Bow") while also contributing to London’s Burning and Family Affairs. The legacy of all of that is that she sure knows how to create a cliffhanger.

"I’d wanted to write a crime novel for years," she says. "I began by trying to create a male private eye but I somehow never felt I got to know him very well.

"In 2012, though, him became her and Pearl was born. Then I surrounded her with things I love – good food, Whitstable, crime mysteries – and so she became a seaside restaurateur with a one-woman detective agency on the side."

Oystein Karlsen, Whitstable Pearl’s series creator and chief scriptwriter, was partly responsible for the Scandi-noir feel, aided and abetted by the fact the pandemic had pushed filming into the more forbidding winter months in Whitstable while keeping him stranded in his native Norway.

Pandemic filming in Whitstable

David Caffrey (Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders) was drafted in as director and the pandemic, he says, had a practical benefit on the production. "With the tide out and with the sun setting lower in the evenings, the natural winter landscape certainly played into my hands.

"What’s more, if we’d filmed when we’d planned in the summer, we’d have had a real problem with the crowds.

"As it turned out, Whitstable Pearl has all the fun content of Midsomer Murders and Doc Martin but overlaid with darker elements. All we had to watch out for were members of the public wandering by wearing face masks."

For all that, though, says David, the ultimate success of the piece very much rests with Kerry Godliman’s portrayal of Pearl and her relationship with Howard Charles’s Mike McGuire.

"Kerry was genius casting: she’s got a really strong warmth to her with an underlying toughness. And she and the London copper who comes into her life genuinely sparked off one another."

David was familiar with Kerry as a comedian and had seen her in Ricky Gervais’s TV series, Derek. "I subsequently watched her in his other series, After Life, and she managed to bring the empathy from that experience to Whitstable Pearl. A really classy actor."

"I had no relationship with Whitstable itself because I’d never been there; in fact, I had to Google it so see where it was."

Kerry is still amazed, apparently, by the reaction to After Life. "My kids showed me people on Gogglebox watching the show, crying and in pieces. It’s a real gift of a part. People always ask what’s going to happen to her in the next series and I say 'Well, she’s still dead'."

People also want to know what it’s like working with Ricky. "He’s really easy-going. But then what you see is Ricky. There isn’t another persona he’s hiding. And I think the fact that he’s authentic is part of his success."

David Caffrey also only has good things to say about Howard Charles, familiar to TV audiences via Liar, in which Ioan Gruffudd played a rapist surgeon, and as Porthos in the BBC mini-series, The Musketeers.

"McGuire has this tough guy exterior but, when it’s called for, he can convey real vulnerability. Howard took the character to certain places I hadn’t predicted and it enriched the show."

Says Howard: "As soon as I read the first episode, I fell in love with the character of McGuire.

"And I was particularly attracted to the potential relationship between him and Pearl. But, at that point, I had no relationship with Whitstable itself because I’d never been there; in fact, I had to Google it so see where it was."

So did he fall in love with the slightly bohemian seaside town on the north coast of Kent when he eventually went there? "That’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it? The funny thing is that Mike is a city boy who sees his posting there as a penance.

"But, as a city boy myself, I had to work really hard on screen to make it look as though I wished I wasn’t there. The reality, of course, was that I fell hook, line and sinker for the place more or less from my first visit. And I’m still in love with it."

Sounds like he’s pretty struck on Kerry, too. Crucial to the success of the storytelling is the spark between their two characters – and he felt a connection from the off in real life. "In fact, the first time we met was at one of those auditions called a chemistry test.

"Shortly afterwards, I asked Kerry if she’d like to go for a walk in Dulwich Park and it was wonderful. I could tell straightaway we were going to have a really enjoyable three months shooting the series. She brought serious weight to her role: she’s playful, she’s open, she makes you forget the crew surrounding you as you shoot a scene. It was like being in a sandbox as a child all over again."

A mother with secrets

The third crucial piece of the Whitstable Pearl jigsaw falls to Frances Barber who plays Pearl’s mother Dolly, "a rebel with many causes", according to writer Julie.

Do I have Frances’s permission to say that’s also true of her? A throaty chuckle. "Yes, you are allowed to say that about me. Like many friends of my age, we wanted peace. We went on CND marches.

"That’s how my interest in politics started out – and it’s never really left me."

It’s why she has such fellow feeling for Dolly. "Julie has come up with such an interesting creation which she’s passed in to my hands to do with as I see fit. She’s somewhat shrouded in mystery. For instance, we don’t yet know what happened to Dolly’s late husband, Pearl’s father.

"But there are reasons why Dolly has kept secrets from Pearl all these years. All begins to become clear by the end of the first series and, without giving anything away, there’s quite a sting in the tail. But it’s also very moving."

Frances was aware of Kerry but the two had never worked together. "She turned out to be my kind of girl. She’s fun and funny and smart and sassy, all the types of characteristic I respond to.

"We certainly made each other laugh. One of the reasons I so hope we get a second series is precisely because it would mean working with her again."

Raised in Greenford, west London, Kerry now lives in south London with her actor husband Ben Abell – they married in 2008 – and their two children, Elsie, 14, and 11-year-old Frank.

"Recently, roles have got better for women," she says. "As a comedian, there were very few female comics who were household names when I started out.

"But programmes like Killing Eve and Fleabag were game-changers.

"There was a time when you’d pitch an idea and they’d say: 'Oh well, we’ve got Miranda now. We don’t need any more funny women.'"

Her postponed one-woman stand-up tour – it’s called Bosh – will kick off in Reading, pandemic allowing, on September 3 and continue, on and off, until March 26 in Launceston.

"It’s just me talking about the last couple of years, observations I’ve made, experiences I’ve had. Essentially, it’s about being in your mid-40s, being a parent and trying to be a good human being."

She loves the professional mix of comedy and acting. "None of it is arduous or a pain but the work/life balance is always something I have to keep an eye on. I’m getting better at turning down jobs."

She’s a homebody now, she says. "When I was younger I went travelling – to India, for example – and did a lot of partying but now I want to be at home as much as I can and try not to be away for more than a couple of nights at a time."

Gardening has come to her later in life. Both her parents were keen but the younger Kerry couldn’t see the point. Now, she has an allotment with her friend Claire – "although, I have to be honest, she does most of the heavy lifting". She finds it therapeutic and, during lockdown, she says, she’s enjoyed "shouting at slugs".

Although each character is described in some detail in her books, Julie Wassmer never imagined the chosen actors would correspond to her original vision. "That said, the spirit of each character had to be there for the chemistry between them to work.

"The interesting thing about Kerry is that she’s pulled off perfectly the sense of Pearl being somebody with wit allied to a strong sense of justice and perseverance. She simply refuses to give up on a case. She manages to be funny and warm and cool all at the same time."

For Julie, Frances Barber "totally inhabits the role of Dolly, embracing a few of the characteristics I created. Dolly’s a dyed-in-the-wool campaigner but she’s also as scatty as Pearl is dogged and pragmatic."

Shades, then, of Edina and Saffy from AbFab? "Precisely."

Strictly Murder, Book 8 in Julie’s ongoing Whitstable Pearl series, and set – you guessed it – in the world of ballroom dancing, is due out next month. She’s currently working on the follow-up, Murder At Mount Ephraim.

But, given her small-screen writing experience, why didn’t she want to have a hand in the scripts for the TV series? "Two good reasons. I was busy writing the next book but also I was confident that the wealth of writing talent would take what works in the books and move it on to a new level."

The three-month shooting schedule on Whitstable Pearl now complete, Frances has been involved in filming a ghost story co- starring Rory Kinnear and written by Mark Gatiss which the BBC will broadcast at Christmas. Next comes The Chelsea Detective alongside Adrian Scarborough.

In what is a challenging time for many actors, the work seems to be thick on the ground. "It’s quite bizarre," she says. "I was staying with Derek Jacobi at his house in France in the summer and he was meant to come back to the UK to make a film. But he said he wouldn’t because he was worried about Covid.

"So they decided to shoot the film in France. When they found out I was there, I was invited to be in it, too. I’m not great at being out of work so I counted myself very lucky. A Bird Flew In comprises seven interlinked stories of a film crew whose production is shut down because of the pandemic and the effect it has on cast and crew."

Howard is also moving seamlessly from one project to the next. He’s in the new young adult fantasy TV series, Shadow and Bone, and he’s just been filming the fourth series of the gangland TV drama, Top Boy, with Ashley Walters. "I play a bad boy which is always good fun."

"We have to get a second season. There’s unfinished business. And maybe next time, we won’t be filming in a lockdown so we can enjoy Whitstable itself."

He’s written his first feature film, Stray Dogs, about a soldier serving in Afghanistan who returns to the UK where his brother has been murdered. He sets about trying to find out who did it.

Howard counts himself very fortunate. Shortly after filming wrapped on Musketeers in 2015, he was involved in a motorbike accident so serious that he was in rehab for 10 months.

"My life changed as a result on many different levels. I lost a leading role in an Amazon series – I can’t reveal which – and yet, I can honestly say I wouldn’t change what happened to me.

"Up until that point, I’d barely had time to take a breath, to see things as they really were. The aftermath of the accident gave me an appreciation of what I had and it inevitably made me re-order my priorities. There’s something about confronting your own mortality that sharpens your senses."

Whatever happens with other projects, Howard needs no prompting to say he’d make three months available in his diary if Whitstable Pearl were to return. "We have to get a second season. There’s unfinished business. And maybe next time, we won’t be filming in a lockdown so we can enjoy Whitstable itself."

How can I watch it?

The drama is being shown exclusively on Acorn TV.

According to the website, the streaming service offers "thrlling new mysterys, addictive dramas, and warm-hearted comedies from Britain and beyond."

You can subscribe to a 30 day free trial and it's then £4.99 a month or £49.99 for an annual subscription.

Acorn TV is available on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV as well as your usual devices.

Other shows on the platform include Foyle's War, Agatha Christie and the first four seasons of Line of Duty.

Read more: All the latest news from Whitstable