As Adultery continues tonight on ITV, read Dominic Cooper’s interview about the hit drama

Episode 4 of Adultery is on ITV1 and ITVX tonight at 9pm. The unmissable drama has had millions hooked.

What happens in tonight’s episode of Adultery?

Tom has a dramatic reminder of what he risks to lose when he gets a front row seat to the exposure of his own brother’s affair scandal. But conscious that Neil’s trial is today and the outcome will have huge ramifications for Beth and her family, Tom messages to let her know that he’s thinking of her. Beth supports Neil during the trial and after a glowing character report from Amy – Beth’s sister and Neil’s boss – Neil receives a suspended sentence. Feeling like he’s been given a second chance at life, Neil promises Beth that he’s going to be a better husband.

The Brookes family celebrate at Amy’s anniversary party, but Beth drunkenly phones Hannah and invites the Kirkmans. Tom is furious with Beth for being so indiscreet and tells her that he wishes they never met. Heartbroken Beth doesn’t like the person she’s become and admits to Neil that she’s unhappy. Beth deletes the messaging app that she’s been using to speak to Tom and decides to make good on his wishes and have no contact.

What is Adultery about?

Dominic Cooper and Olivier Award-winning actress Romola Garai are set to star in Adultery, a new six-part romantic drama for ITV and STV that promises passion, secrets and scandal.

Created and written by BAFTA-winning screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst, best known for Fool Me Once and Brassic, the provocative new series has begun filming in and around Manchester.

Produced by Poison Pen Studios, part of ITV Studios, Adultery explores what happens when two ordinary families become caught up in an extraordinary love affair, with potentially devastating consequences.

Who stars in Adultery?

Dominic Cooper (Preacher, The Devil’s Double) and Romola Garai (One Life, Vigil) will play the central characters, Tom Kirkman and Beth Brookes.

Their characters experience an immediate and powerful attraction, but acting on their feelings proves far more complicated than either could have imagined. As their relationship develops, both must confront their guilt, family responsibilities and the possibility of losing everything they have built.

The supporting cast includes Shelley Conn (Gen V, Bridgerton) as Tom’s wife, Hannah, while Matthew McNulty (Domina, Deadwater Fell) plays Beth’s husband, Neil.

Rising stars Johnny Sanpher and Leila Khan, known for Heartstopper and Crookhaven, will portray the teenage couple at the heart of another love story, Jess Kirkman and Ollie Brookes.

Andrew Knott (Gavin & Stacey, Protection) also joins the cast as Dave, the former husband of Beth’s recently deceased best friend.

James Murray (The Crown, Masters of the Air) and Charley Webb (The Long Shadow, Better) complete the announced line-up as Paul and Leah Kirkman, Tom’s brother and sister-in-law.

What is ITV drama Adultery about?

At the centre of Adultery is a passionate relationship that threatens to change the lives of two families forever.

Tom Kirkman is a father to 15-year-old Jess, who has fallen head over heels for her schoolmate Ollie Brookes. Their teenage romance is intense and all-consuming, with the young couple seemingly unable to keep their hands off each other.

But when Tom encounters Ollie’s mother, Beth, in unexpected circumstances, an entirely different kind of attraction develops.

The connection between the two adults is immediate, intense and difficult to ignore. However, both have established family lives and plenty to lose if they give in to their feelings.

As Tom and Beth struggle to control their desires, they face an uncomfortable question: can they show more restraint than their lovestruck teenage children?

Their decisions threaten to unravel the lives of everyone around them, bringing secrets, guilt and difficult choices into two previously ordinary households.

What can viewers expect from Adultery?

Described as a scandalous and provocative love story, Adultery will explore themes including class, grief, parenthood and the influence of social media.

The six-part drama promises an emotionally charged story of passion and peril, examining how seemingly ordinary people navigate complicated relationships and the consequences of their actions.

Alongside its central affair, the series will look at the differences between teenage and adult relationships, asking whether experience and responsibility are enough to prevent people from making life-changing mistakes.

With Danny Brocklehurst behind the story and Dominic Cooper and Romola Garai leading an impressive ensemble cast, Adultery is shaping up to be an intriguing addition to ITV’s drama line-up.

Filming is now underway in and around Manchester. The six-part series will air on ITV and STV, with further broadcast details expected to be announced.

Watch all of episode one, here…

Dominic Cooper Adultery Interview

Where is Tom in his life when we first meet him and his family?
Everything in Tom’s life seems, on paper, to be very good. He has this gorgeous family.
He’s got a decent job as a GP that he enjoys. He’s a success. Yes, there have been some
problems like the ones that most people face in life, but they are not extreme. But all that
doesn’t mean anything. Nothing changes our emotional state more than temptation. I
loved that in this story even with all those good things, you can still smash it to pieces. I
wanted to explore that even though it made me feel wretched.

What do you enjoy about Danny’s writing?
Danny’s writing is brilliant because it feels so unbelievably natural and real. I love the
simplicity of it. The absolute desperate pain of all of us that we don’t really dare think
about it every day because if we did, we would go, ‘Oh my god, is my whole life a lie.
What’s real? What’s temptation? What’s life about? Who is this person I’m with?’ What’s
the Talking Heads song? Once in a Lifetime, ‘How did I get here?’ It’s all madness, isn’t it.

What sort of reaction are you expecting from viewers to Adultery?
I’m terrified for couples to watch this because it raises all these questions: Should we be together? How long are people meant to be together? We’ve created this concept of monogamy. What is beautiful about that and what upset me most is I don’t have my own family yet. At my age, you start losing parents and friends and you start to realise what more is there? What’s more important than that? I have these conversations on a regular basis.

Do you think Tom had contemplated straying before?
I thought he absolutely hadn’t. I know couples like this. They have glitches. They are some of my favourite couples. Some have been together since they were 16, some since uni. Tom and Hannah have been together since uni. What I found so poignant about this story is you don’t know what your life is going to be like until it’s gone. Suddenly you are no longer at home with your three kids, putting them to bed. You’re not seeing those smiles; you’re not hearing those giggles. Surely the loss of that exceeds the temptation of a quick roll around. That’s my opinion. The roll around is exciting but does that outweigh it? Maybe it does for some people.

What clicks with Tom when he first meets Beth?
It is just so different: the person and the life. Beth sees him, he thinks – and he sees her. Beth’s own marriage to Neil is open to different opinions. They’ve had some lovely moments as a couple, but I think that it is very exposing that, at the beginning, Neil doesn’t quite see the poignancy of the death of Ally, Beth’s best friend. Neil doesn’t really see Beth. He’s quite self-involved. He’s going through something of his own with the court case. He’s drinking a lot. I love Neil as a character; Matthew plays him beautifully. When we had a scene together where Tom and Neil were just talking, I said to Matthew, ‘Do you know what? Shall we just get rid of the girls and go off together?’ But I think Beth feels there is more clarity with this different path, And for Tom, has he really questioned who he is? What do I really want? What he finds in Beth is probably the thing that, deep down, really wanted.

Intimacy coordinators have changed the process dramatically in a wonderful way. Not because it was anyone’s fault but because it was always a situation where everyone felt very nervous about. Working with an intimacy coordinator you are making very clear distinctions in what you are doing and what artistically will work. It’s like anything that is directed, and it is brilliant. You go, ‘My god, what we used to do was just ridiculous.’ Now also, being older, and not so keen on getting my wobbly bits out you know you have
protection and someone looking after you. On Adultery it was dealt with very well by Haley Muraleedharan who was present a lot. I was given time, and it was understood what I was feeling. You can’t do a show called Adultery and not have intimate scenes. Those scenes are very important and because of the introduction of intimacy coordinators such scenes are now, in my opinion, so much classier and more enjoyable to watch. And sexy, for want of a better word.

I was often saying to Shelley what an idiot Tom is. There is a point in this series where he comes so close to telling Hannah and if he did tell her could it have been fixed? If your relationship is strong enough – and it should be after having three children – you should be able to say, ‘This is what has happened, and I need your help. I’m tempted and I need help. We will work our way through it.’ But very few people do that because they fear the outcome. So, often it becomes about lies and you deceive the one person who loves you more than anything in the world.

Leila Khan says she loved playing the scenes with you and Shelley Conn in which you
improvised quite a bit. Is that fun for you?
Yeah, it’s a delicate balance. Sometimes improv can just become a bunch of actors talking over each other and shouting. Those kids, all of them, are so good. With every new generation I think, ‘Come on, Dom, raise your game.’ They are incredible in this. Jess and Tom’s relationship is great, and then it blows up. Leila was wonderful to work with. She is so brilliant, honest and heartbreaking as Jess. There is so much going on behind the eyes. She is confronted with this impossible nightmare scenario of having information that will
possibly blow up her existence and everyone else’s. What a brilliant bit of writing by Danny. You fall in love with this family. And I love Johnny, who plays Ollie in Beth’s family. He’s Tom’s son in a way because he hasn’t got a son.

Does Jess and Ollie’s teenage romance make what Tom and Beth are doing feel even worse?
It’s terrible that Tom is potentially smashing that relationship up between his daughter and Ollie. I found that out of order because I had a relationship at that age which was very important. For a long time. It is your everything. It’s scary and it’s new and it feels like it is for life at that age. And if something happens within it and you need your mother or your father or both to support you whenever it breaks up you don’t need your father to have behaved like Tom does.

How did you get on with having to jump into the lake in the Lake District?
We were originally going to be doing kayaking but that got replaced with jumping into a freezing cold lake. I suffered hypothermia in the last film I did having been thrown into the Irish Sea at five degrees. But my complaining for this was completely obliterated Romola just jumping into the lake in a bikini. She does cold-water swimming. My complaints became weaker as she stood there rolling her eyes in her swimming cossie. I thought, ‘If there is a pap in the bushes, I am not getting this pasty gut out.’ But then I had to. Romola does very good eye roll.

Is there anyone else you would like to give a shout out for this job?
Being with a crew in the North of England was heaven. I was so happy having spent most of the last 10 years in America, Canada, or Europe, all of which I love, but it was heartwarming being with a bunch of Mancunians. They were the best crew I’ve ever worked with. And falling in love with our producer Sarah Lewis who I adored. She is so brilliant at her job. And working with ITV. And working with Danny, saying words that felt completely natural, not having to speak jargon or incomprehensible exposition. Just a
drama about real people talking about stuff that we all must deal with. It made me enjoy acting again.

Watch Adultery tonight at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

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