Spoiler alert: This article contains major spoilers for “Under Salt Marsh,” which had its season finale on Friday.
“Under Salt Marsh” is one of Sky Atlantic’s biggest non-HBO drama releases in recent years. The original six-part series (Sky has not yet revealed where in the US it will land) will star Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly as Jackie. Jackie, a detective turned teacher in charge of an unfinished case, accidentally discovers the lifeless body of one of her students in a ditch late one night after a secret tryst. It was soon confirmed that he had been murdered, making him the second child to die in the small Welsh community of Morfa Heylen in three years. When a storm threatens to destroy not only the coastal village itself but also important evidence, Jackie teams up with her former police partner Detective Eric Bull (Rafe Spall) to find the culprit.
Ahead of the series’ finale on February 27, Clare Oakley, who created, co-wrote and co-directed the series, spoke with Variety about the inspiration for Under Salt Marsh, whether Mac will always be the killer, and whether viewers will see Jackie and Bull team up again in Season 2.
Where did the idea for this show come from?
I really wanted to set something up[in North Wales]as I had fallen in love with the area, especially the salt marshes. It’s a very rare and unique environment.
So I had this idea that if we had a detective series, we could go deep into the details of these swamps, and all these little things, like the ecosystem and the salinity in the water, would suddenly become very important.
This is a bit conceptual, but salt marshes protect us. They protect us from rising sea levels caused by storms. Our island is getting smaller, so they are very important if we want to continue living here. So this idea of protection and this idea of, “What happens if we don’t protect what we need?” was born. I started thinking about the plot: What would happen if we didn’t protect future generations from potential horrors? How would this detective novel, this murder mystery, reflect that idea?
Claire Oakley and Kelly Reilly on the set of ‘Under Salt Marsh’ (Courtesy of Sky Atlantic)
One of the early scenes that many viewers discussed was in episode 1 when Jackie insists that they tell Cefin’s parents about his death rather than leaving it to the police. Why did you make that choice?
I liked the idea that Jackie often acts on instinct, which is probably what causes her to ultimately quit the police force and perhaps not be the best type to join it. In a way, she’s a very good detective. In another sense (…) she can’t cope when things get personal. And I wanted to put her in a position early on where she felt it was right, as a human being, to have to tell her parents as soon as possible. The parents are the first people she goes to and she doesn’t plan on waiting for the police because in this particular community it may take quite a while for them to arrive. But as that’s happening, (she) starts to realize, “Oh, (…) this is very irresponsible.” I was interested in these moments where she wasn’t responsible, but emotionally, on a human level, she was responsible.
I also really liked the idea of her being covered in mud in that scene, shocked and pale and clearly in pain. And their reaction to her is like, maybe that’s not unusual (for Jackie). It’s like, “Jackie, I thought you were fine. Please sit down and I’ll call your dad.” It was a way to understand that she had a complicated past.
Viewers also noted the large age difference between Dylan and Jackie, played by Harry Lorty. Was that written into the script or was it a result of casting Rorty?
For Jackie, the idea of a younger boyfriend who might not demand of her everything that someone her age might demand felt (worked well). For example, are you planning to live together? What happens? Is this a real relationship?
She can get love and passion and sex from this person and at the same time not have to give so much of herself or take on such responsibilities.
Was there some special plan behind getting Jackie pregnant?
I liked this idea of her being stuck in the past. She can’t move on until she knows what happened to Nessa. A little bit like the whole community, they’ve already been eroded by this horrible thing that’s happened, but she especially can’t do it. On the surface, she’s got a new job, a new career, and she’s doing it. However, thanks to pregnancy, we were able to hint that all is not well. If you’re happy and feel secure about your future, there’s no reason not to tell your boyfriend or anyone else that you’re pregnant.
As I was writing this article, I was actually pregnant as well. So it almost certainly provided some insight.
In episode 6, when a storm hits the village and Jackie chases Dylan, a large wave hits his car. How did you create that scene?
We built the entire village center. The chip shop, the butcher shop and the whole T-junction where that wave happens are all sets at Dragon Studios in Cardiff. Since it was all built outdoors in the studio’s backyard, a special concrete pad had to be created that had to take the weight of the entire set and water.
There was water on the first level. With Jackie and Dylan, it’s about knee height. Cars can still drive through there. That was the first water level and we were working in that water. It was in January. There were about 1,000 conversations about “What do you do when the water freezes?”
However, the water could not be heated as steam would start to form. And then we kept talking about, “How long could someone on the cast or crew stand in this almost freezing water at once? Could they film a six-page dialogue scene?”
And that wave. There was a huge kind of slide, basically a giant bucket of water on top of a crane, and when you tipped it, the slide would pop out to the side. The car was equipped with a winch. When the water came we rolled the car back up. Because in reality the water wasn’t powerful enough to move the car.
A lot of what you see is done in camera, but the VFX makes it a little bigger to make it believable that the water is pushing the car.
Rafe Spall as Detective Eric Bull in Under Salt Marsh (Courtesy of Sky Atlantic)
And what about the scene where Mac locks Bull in a flooded room and then James (Ossian Emlyn) accidentally finds him and lets him out?
It was actually two different sets. When the chamber was filled with water, there was a hydraulic set, a three-sided chamber on a hydraulic platform that rose and fell inside a large pool-like tank. So, once it fills with water, slowly lower the set into the water, just like a bull would do a take.
That set had no doors. So the door openings were on the outside of the room, in a bit like a hallway and in another set of places we made like a staircase. And when[James]opened the door, there was actually a stuntman.
Was Mac always meant to be a murderer?
Not really, no. I was asked by Little Door to write the pilot, but that was before they brought it to Sky.
I didn’t have a whole series planned. I think I got the brief overview (…) And I thought these were things I wanted to explore about the murderer and it needed to be connected to the environmental reasons why he or she did it. However, no one could be identified. Then Sky came on board and wanted me to write a second episode before deciding whether to give it the go-ahead or not.
We created a little writers room. It was myself and Jonathan Harbottle who came on board to write episodes three and five at that point. We only sketched the first half, drew the next two episodes, and then drew episodes 2 and 3 together. And I went away and wrote episode two, and I still didn’t know who the culprit was. I haven’t mentioned the second half of the series yet. So I wrote episode two, the baby was born, we got the green light, and John wrote episode three. Then I realized I had to think about the second half of the series. So we created a separate writers’ room. So Nikita Lalwani, who wrote episode 4, came on board. We did it at my sister’s house. She lives one street away from me. So every 3 hours I was able to take my baby to feed while we worked on the room. I think we spent eight days planning the second half of the series.
In some ways, it wasn’t ideal. I mean, in a way, it happened very organically, the story. In other ways, it made things difficult because we had already written three episodes without really knowing the ending.
Then you have to go back to the beginning and start things over and feed things. In Mac’s case, we knew that once we settled on him, we would protect your exposure from then on, but when he was finally exposed, we didn’t want people to be like, “What the hell?” I want people to say, “Of course, oh my gosh, it’s him. How can you not know that?” So it has to add up without getting too outlandish.
If you hear about two children being murdered, there’s a good chance it was sexually motivated. However, both Nessa and Cefin were killed directly or indirectly due to toxic waste. Have you ever thought about giving your Mac some extra motivation?
No, I didn’t want to explore sexually motivated crimes, or even crimes of passion, psychopaths, or anything like that. I was interested in exploring the idea that someone is “normal” and that if any of us were in that particular situation, we might have done the same thing. He was simply a person who was under a lot of pressure and his outlook on life was distorted because of it. It was also a bit of self-defense. He ultimately kills those children to protect his reputation and standing within the community and what he feels is doing good. He’s building this seawall and protecting this community, but at what cost? ‘But at what cost are we doing these things?’ That was an idea I was trying to explore. So I wanted crime and murderers to express those themes from the beginning.
Is it possible that Jackie and Bull will reunite in season 2?
We’re still trying to figure out what the second season will be like. We are considering various options for how it could proceed if it were to be commissioned.
This interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity.
