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Top 10 On-Set Strops And Meltdowns

2011-10-07T13:59:08Z

We’re more accustomed to hearing about Jennifer Aniston’s romantic tiffs and failed relationships than her on-set attacks on directors.

However, the Horrible Bosses star has proved she’s not afraid to have a diva moment when the occasion demands.

Speaking to Elle magazine, Aniston revealed: "I threw a chair at a director. It wasn't my proudest moment. He was treating a script supervisor horribly.

"When the director walked in, I threw a chair at him. I missed, of course. I was like, 'You can't speak to people like that.' I can't tolerate it."

Of course the former Friends star isn’t the only thespian to flip out during filming. Here, we give you the top 10 on-strop sets and meltdowns…

10. Samuel Preston

Ordinary Boys frontman Samuel Preston walked out of a recording of BBC Two pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks, after host Simon Amstell read extracts from an autobiography written by his wife, Big Brother winner Chantelle Houghton.

Speaking to BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat after the incident in 2007, Preston said: "If that was in any other situation, I would have hit him."

He added: "I just had to remove myself from the situation, so I just got up and left."

Team captain Bill Bailey picked a member of the audience to take Preston's place for the remainder of the recording.

9. Tyra Banks

Tyra Banks lost her cool with a contestant on America’s Next Top Model, changing from slightly annoyed mentor to a full on screaming monster. It’s a battle of the sob stories…

8. Marlon Brando

Over the years Marlon Brando developed a reputation for being difficult on set. He famously snapped upon leaving a studio in 1973, when he broke paparazzo Ron Galella’s jaw. Galella had followed Brando, who was accompanied by talk show host Dick Cavett, after a taping of The Dick Cavett Show in New York City. He reportedly paid a $40,000 out-of-court settlement and suffered an infected hand as a result. Galella wore a football helmet the next time he photographed Brando.

7. Martin Sheen

Like father, like son. Martin Sheen had a drunken meltdown while starring in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now in 1979 as Captain Willard.

During the unscripted scene, Sheen told the shooting crew to just let the cameras roll as he punched a mirror, sobbed and tried to attack Coppola. The crew were so disturbed by his actions that they wanted to stop shooting, but Sheen wanted to keep the cameras going. Watch the disturbing sequence below...

6. Alexander Lebedev

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, owner of The Independent and the Evening Standard newspapers, sensationally punched ex-property developer baron Sergei Polonsky in the face on a TV show recently, after a debate on Russia and the global financial crisis became heated.

5. Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin stormed off Channel 4's After Dark programme in 1997 while discussing the Turner Prize. She eloquently explained, as much as a drunken woman can: “There's no way I want this f***ing mic on me now. I want to f***ing pull it off, I want to be f***ing free, don't you understand? Bye everyone. I've had a really good night out. “

4. Nicolas Cage

In 2010 Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage was filmed in an angry rant outside a nightclub in Romania, after making his new film, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance.

He screamed: “Get in that car and walk away. I'll f*****g die because of honour. I'll f*****g die right now.”

What set off his rage is unknown, but he went on to point two fingers in his own eyes and yelled: “See my eyes - respect them as you'd respect me."

3. Megan Fox and Michael Bay

Although we never got to see their on-set arguments in video format, both Fox and Bay have spoken publicly about their divisive relationship during the filming of the Transformers franchise.

In an interview with Wonderland magazine, Fox compared Bay to Hitler.

Fox said of their relationship: “God, I really wish I could go loose on this one. He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him.”

In response to the interview, three anonymous and “loyal” members of Bay’s crew blasted Fox in an open letter, accusing her of being, among other things, “dumb-as-a-rock”, “the queen of talking trailer trash” and “about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom”.

Strangely, Bay failed to cast Fox in Transformers 3.

2. Christian Bale

Christian Bale famously delivered an expletive-laden rant at director of photography Shane Hurbult in 2009, during the filming of the new Terminator movie. For our amusement it was leaked onto the Internet. Here’s a snippet of the transcript from his explosion:

Bale: It's the second time that he doesn't give a ---- about what is going on in front of the camera, all right? I'm trying to ------- do a scene here, and I am going "Why the ---- is Shane walking in there? What is he doing there?" Do you understand my mind is not in the scene if you're doing that?
Hurlbut: I absolutely apologise. I'm sorry, I did not mean anything by it.

Bale: Stay off the ------- set man. For ----- sake. All right, let's go again.

McG: Let's just take a minute.

Bale: Let's not take a ------- minute, let's go again.

Bale: I'm going to ------- kick your ------- ass if you don't shut up for a second! All right?

Unknown voices: Christian, Christian. It's cool.

1. David Russell

Director David Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings) completely lost it with actress Lily Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees. Tomlin remained surprisingly calm as Russell ranted, swore, slammed doors and kicked over any object within reach. There are no more words for this, the video says it all…

Good Girl Gone Bad?

2011-10-06T12:38:34Z

Sweet, sweet Rihanna. She started out just like Britney Spears, a wholesome young starlet destined for big things.

But now, increasingly, her performances and actions are being branded “lewd” and “offensive”.

The most recent Ri-Ri bashing in the press today followed her appearance on her Loud tour at the 02 Arena in London wearing something less than a full-length smock.

Or, as the Daily Mail described it… Rihanna “initially arrived wearing a bottom-skimming blue jacket but quickly stripped down to a barely-there jewelled bikini, nude fishnets and neon platform boots”.

Just last week the Bajan singer was told to cover up by an Irish farmer, who suggested she acquaint herself with a “greater god”, after she wore a red bikini for her latest music video, filmed in his field.

One columnist in The Telegraph newspaper used it as an opportunity to write: “It’s not enough to be tough on sluttiness, we must be tough on the causes of sluttiness.”

Is this sluttiness? Or is this a young woman expressing herself? And is it so threatening that we need to somehow stop her wearing a bikini?

Sex sells and Rihanna knows it, and more importantly – so does her management, but is she damaging pop music and her youthful audience’s minds?

Former Spice Girl Mel C thinks so, weighing in on the debate she told the Daily Mirror: “"Rihanna has responsibility and although culture's always changing, it's changed too much. It needs to be dealt with."

So what happened to change Rihanna from that doe-eyed girl from the Island who sang about dancing and high-school crushes, to the fishnet-clad temptress who claims “chains and whips” excite her?

After moving from her home town of St Michael in Barbados at the age of 16, Rihanna auditioned for former Def Jam record label head Jay Z, who reportedly told her, "There are only two ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal. Or through this window."

No one can blame Rihanna for signing that record deal. It’s subsequently made her an internationally renowned pop star who, at the age of 23, has dozens of Billboard, Brit, MTV and Mobo awards under her studded leather belt.

As her fame and achievements have rocketed, her image has changed and the criticism has increased.

It is hard to quantify how far this change has been influenced by the trauma of her former relationship with R&B singer Chris Brown.

This destructive union culminated in an early morning argument inside a rented Lamborghini on a Hollywood street in February 2009, which saw Brown arrested and charged with assault.

Since a shocking photo showing welts on Rihanna's forehead above each of her eyebrows, marks on her cheek and bleeding around her lips was leaked to the press, she has done everything in her power to erase that image of her as a victim. This has included dramatic haircuts and an altogether more sultry appearance.

Rihanna has released two more albums since the assault – Rated R and most recently, Loud. Both include songs with far more provocative lyrics than her former records.

If any more explanation is needed to explain Rihanna's rebellious ways, the singer has previously said that life with her parents, Monica Braithwaite and Ronald Fenty, a former crack addict, forced her to grow up early. She revealed, “I saw too much. I was way too mature for my age.”

Critics' concern over Rihanna’s risqué image and the effect it might have on her young fans first came to a head in the UK last year, when she thrusted her way through a performance on the (pre-watershed)X Factor, in a high-fashion version of pants and a strapless bra.

This year she’s been warned to cover up if she appears on the X Factor again, following thousands of complaints over her skimpy outfits and the TV watchdog, Ofcom, announcing stringent new guidelines for pre-watershed programmes.

This kind of controversy is nothing new. For example, the frenzy conjures up thoughts of the furore over Elvis Presley in the fifties and sixties. In 1957, Ed Sullivan's producers decided that their cameras would only shoot him from the waist up, as they considered his hip-swinging to be too suggestive. Isn’t this, in essence, what Ofcom are doing to Rihanna now?

Her sex-pot image may have been produced and marketed by a greedy record-label who know their star will make more hits and front pages scantily clad. But it’s also worth considering the role Rihanna herself has to play in her image, after all, she recently told Rolling Stone: “I love feeling like I'm somebody's girl... I love to be tied up and spanked.”

Is the world turning into an amoral , overly promiscuous, sex-obsessed abyss because of Rihanna's outfits and dance-routines? Well no, probably no more than it already is. In reality, she’s not innocent and she’s not a teen anymore, thus her image and music reflects that. But do you think she needs to tone it down? Take a look at the photos below and let us know.

SLIDESHOW: Rihanna then and now...

Complicated 'Love Life'

2011-09-22T12:54:50Z

UPDATE 15:45pm: ITV has clarified their earlier statement, saying: "ITV and the BBC are talking about the title, Love Life, and a decision will be taken further down the line once both dramas have been produced."

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At the end of August, BBC One announced an exciting new drama commission titled Love Life.

The show, created by award-winning writer and director Dominic Savage, boasts a strong cast of British actors including former Time Lord David Tennant, Billie Piper, Jane Horrocks and David Morrissey.

And this week ex-EastEnders’ star Lacey Turner and Bafta-winning actress Vicky McClure were added to the cast of the “improvised drama series”.

It all sounded great.

So you can imagine our confusion when we received an email from ITV this morning unveiling a new drama commission for ITV One called, yes, you guessed it – Love Life.

Had ITV bought the show from the BBC already, because it looked like such a ratings winner?

Or were the creative television juices running so low inside ITV HQ that they’d resorted to nicking the BBC show’s name?

A spokesperson for ITV said: “We did check with BBC before announcing our commission and its name.

“The BBC aren’t planning to use that title for their drama any more, we had another chat and they are changing their name.”

However, it seems not everyone at the BBC is aware that these discussions happened, or that they are changing the title of their show.

A BBC spokesperson referred us to the original press release and stated: “The BBC's drama, Love Life, was announced on the 26th of August and discussed at Edinburgh Television Festival.”

To be clear, the name is the only thing that’s the same about the two programmes.

The ITV version is written by Bill Gallagher (The Prisoner, Lark Rise to Candleford) and is set in Manchester.

Their cast is yet to be announced, but the show’s blurb reads:

Love Life will tell the story of Joe and Lucy’s faltering relationship. Feeling in a good place and as if she’s ready to settle down, Lucy mentions she might stop taking the pill which sends commitment-phobic Joe running for the nearest airport to travel the world and scale Mount Everest before he gets tied down. Twelve months later, travel-bedraggled Joe returns from trekking in the Himalayas and having conquered Everest to find Lucy has moved on with her ‘love life’... The drama will intercut between present day and flashback to the previous twelve months as we piece together the jigsaw that is their lives.

The BBC have yet to respond to ITV's assertion that they will be changing titles.

Photo mock-up by Huffington Post UK picture desk.

Tracy-Ann Oberman Talks Riots, Apocalypse And 'Earthquakes In London'

2011-09-20T15:33:41Z

"We live in strange times where there is so much poverty and starvation and yet so much excess. With economic collapse and an earthquake every other minute somewhere in the world, it makes you wonder what the next 30 or 40 years will bring.”

This isn’t a political activist or charity campaigner talking, but former EastEnder’s star Tracy-Ann Oberman, best known for playing Chrissie Watts, the woman who put a fatal end to Dirty Den’s villainous ways.

Nearly six years since leaving the Square, people still think she’s living in Walford, but Oberman has recently had her celebrated claws stuck in to something more political.

Currently preparing to star in Rupert Goold’s sell-out play Earthquakes in London, Oberman speaks to The Huffington Post UK as she navigates her way through Plymouth on a short rehearsal break.

She explains she signed up this summer after being sent the script for the acclaimed all-singing, all-dancing, cabaret-packed production, about to set off on its first UK tour.

“I knew Mike Bartlett [the playwright] a bit and I obviously know the work of Rupert Goold very well, I’ve loved everything that Headlong the touring theatre company have ever done…

“It really spoke to me, there’s a line in the play that says ‘it’s the Weimar Republic time, it’s cabaret time, it’s near the end but the enemy this time has no guns and gas chambers, it’s the world we live in’ and I really can see that right now.”

The play, which is set in London - starting in 1968 and playing through to 2525 - tells the tale of modern excess, population explosion, family crisis – and ultimately the end of the planet.

It’s a production that presents issues that we’re dealing with now, claims Oberman.

“The play, when it was written, was a political piece about climate change but actually with everything that’s gone on with the riots it feels like this apocalypse that he sees is very real.

“This idea that society is crumbling from within and it can’t carry on much longer. It’s more that an earthquake is an earthquake of everything we know.”

Does she think the London riots were a cultural uprising or a criminal act?

“Well wasn’t it something like 80 per cent of the people involved in the riots had criminal records anyway? I think that probably needs to be looked at. The fact that there’s so much instability and that they were allowed to go on like that worries me, they weren’t nipped in the bud at the beginning. I think it was criminal activity but I think there’s probably an underlying issue.”

Oberman who plays the lead role of Sarah, the eldest of three sisters, all struggling with issues that have arisen from modern day lifestyles…

“Sarah’s the minister for climate change in the coalition government, she’s totally driven by work and trying to get her green message across, while her marriage is collapsing around her ears.

“The middle sister is pregnant and going through a major depression and sees apocalypse everywhere and the youngest sister is destroying herself on drugs and sex and booze. Sarah’s trying to keep that altogether while pushing forward the green message.”

Although Oberman says Mike’s play has a apocalyptic vision to it and there’s a lot in the play that people will recognise about excess in the Western world, that’s not the reason she wants people to come and watch it.

“Really I hope it attracts people back to the theatre, it’s exciting theatre and every bit as good as watching television.

“There’s a line that says ‘why would I want to go to the theatre? It’s just like the television but more expensive and further away.’ It would be great if it attracted more people back in to the theatre, which I think is what playwrights like Mike are doing.”

With the number of people arrested in relation to the riots exceeding 2,500 with more than 1,500 of those facing charges, it seems the perfect time for a play about anarchism, excess and the end of life as we know it to bring people back to the theatre.

Failing that, Oberman says she’ll always return to EastEnders: “What’s so great about when you’re Chrissie Watts in EastEnders is that you have such an impact and so many people watch it. I’d love to return.”

Earthquakes starts on 22nd September at the Theatre Royal Plymouth.

PHOTOS: A Day In The Life Of A Stunt-Driving Rookie Cop

2011-09-20T11:32:30Z

J-Turns and 180-spins weren’t "skills" I’d heard of before last week.

And high-speed hand-brake turns certainly never cropped-up during driving lessons with my frail 71-year-old instructor.

In fact, I failed my second test for driving over a speed bump too fast and his anxious voice has since permeated my every wheel turn.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” he would reason, dampening any chance of me re-enacting a scene from The Italian Job along Bucks’ winding country roads by my home.

So when Universal challenged me to a day of stunt driving to mark the release of Canadian cop drama Rookie Blue series two you can imagine my intrigue.

Someone was finally going to let me loose in a fast car? No speed limits or bumps and my passenger would be raring me on instead of slowing me down. Fantastic!

At least that’s what I thought...

Stunt driving does, of course, involve safety and the usual mechanical problems.

First up was a flat-tyre on our cop car. The blue lights were flashing, the engine revving, but the discovery of some less than perky rubber gave me a good hour to let the nerves build up.

Surely this never happened in the Hollywood movies where I’d got my brazen car chase ideas from? Even the more "gritty" UK cop drama The Bill never featured police cars going to Kwik Fit before they set off on a chase.

However, mistakes can be forgiven, as this day is in honour of Rookie Blue, a show where things not going to plan is par for the course.

The drama, billed as the police version of Grey's Anatomy, sees five very good looking rookies, fresh out of police academy, struggle to learn the ins and outs of what it takes to be a cop in the big city.

Here I was in a glorified car park at Shepperton Studios in Surrey (the place where they film Dancing On Ice) with Stuart Baggs ‘The Brand’ from The Apprentice (he’s now working as a reporter for the Radio Times!) and Gavin Ramjaun from ITV’s morning breakfast show Daybreak – hardly a crack team of rookie cops.

Still, with bountiful amounts of enthusiasm, we were determined to act out high-speed car chases that 007 would be proud of.

As I sank into the plush leather driving seat of the getaway car, a silver Alfa Romeo and the most expensive vehicle I’ve ever driven, I chuckled at how foolish someone could be to hand me the keys.

Precision driver Terry Smith, a former motor-racer who now works with all manner of car-related stunts in TV and film, was in my passenger seat. What a brave man, I thought.

He asked me if I’d ever done any stunt driving before, I replied “no” with a giggle and I could see the anxiety building on his face.

I wondered if I was actually stepping into the shoes of an actor or if I was taking on a role that only stunt drivers can do?

“Actors very rarely do their own driving, it’s all about safety and no one can afford for them to get injured,” explained Terry.

Are there any A-list Hollywood actresses I can model my driving skills on?

“Not really, but Tamzin Outhwaite took a rally course, she does all her own high-speed driving.”

So with the thought that “if Tamzin Outhwaite can do it I can do it” lodged in my mind, I turned on the engine, not a key turn in this case but a push of a big round button.

Terry talked through the three steps to a dramatic hand-brake turn, with the main emphasis on going straight forward and turning away from the PRs, cameramen and representatives from Universal television watching on from the sideline.

That’s a shame, I thought, surely it would be more interesting to spin the car right in front of them.

It was OK. I still got my adrenaline rush and I didn’t crash into anything or anyone. Win.

At this point I had little idea that I would come away from the day with the title of "life saver".

Yes, just as the PRs and organisers thought they were safe and I was away from the wheel, danger struck as we all climbed into the police car for what can only be described as a joy-ride.

Speeding around the dirt track, screaming as we were flung in 360-degree spins and crashing over unidentified bumps, it’s fair to say we were enjoying ourselves, if not slightly petrified.

As we raced through a wall (made of cardboard boxes) I turned round from the front seat to see the faces of our three passengers, and instead spotted a completely shattered rear window.

“The window's smashed,” I cried and they laughed, thinking I was making some sort of automotive-related joke.

As the car carried on lurching around the track one of the back-seaters decided to look at the window, “Oh my God the window IS smashed!”

Our stunt driver stopped the engine and we all climbed out, I then spent the rest of the journey home being applauded for “saving their lives”.

And although I think it’s very unlikely they would actually have died from some shattered glass, I came away from the day with the same feeling as I like to imagine Andy McNally gets at the end of a Rookie Blue shift. Plus the ability to do a cracking hand-brake turn - 17-year-old boys everywhere, read this and weep.

SLIDESHOW: See the professional stunt drivers in action and our cop car take over:

Photos by Maria Slough www.mariasloughphotography.com

The second series of Rookie Blue stars this Sunday, 25th September at 9pm, on the Universal Channel.

Downton Abbey's Rob James-Collier: 'Thomas Gets To Show His Vulnerable Side'

2011-09-16T10:00:00Z

Downton Abbey returns to our TV screens this Sunday evening for its much-heralded second series. With it comes more scheming and skullduggery from snake-hipped footman Thomas Barrow.

The first series saw a catalogue of cartoon villainy from the most Machiavellian of Julian Fellowes’ glittering cast, played by unassuming Mancunian Rob James-Collier – previously familiar in far more puppy-dog guise as Liam in Coronation Street – either solo or aided and abetted by the unglamorous O’Brien.

But against the genteel backdrop of Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey has been filmed throughout its run, James-Collier revealed that this autumn’s episodes will reveal some hitherto undiscovered depths to his deliciously slippery character.

We last saw Thomas’s resignation from his post as first footman, and entry into the medical corps, which he thought would be a comfortable way of elevating his social position and getting a bystander’s role in World War One.

The opposite proves to be true and, traumatised by what he witnesses, Thomas ends up shooting himself to escape the trenches, an act which has given James-Collier plenty of thought.

“At first I saw it as an act of cowardness. But then I spoke to our historical advisor, a military man,” the actor explains.

“He said ‘Well I look at it as an act of bravery, to knowingly do that and get your hand blown off, it takes a lot of courage to do it. It’s like holding your hand to the candle, can you do it?’ So I hadn’t looked at it like that.”

It becomes clear we’re going to see a changed Thomas in Series Two, something James-Collier is equally pleased to see:

“Usually he’s brilliant to play and when you play a bad guy people will focus on it. It’s all good-natured banter, when you’re walking to the bank and the ladies boo you, it’s all pantomime-esque. The war strips him down, he was scared and vulnerable and it was nice to see.”

Is Thomas growing, dare we say it, a heart?

“He does get a bit of power and he does abuse it. But also we see Thomas let his guard down with a wounded soldier and we see a softer side. But that ends in not very nice circumstances and Thomas is hurt and I think he takes that hurt to mean ‘that’s what happens when you try and engage with another human’, so he thinks, sod it.

“He gets a position of rank within the military and he takes advantage of that, so he does get nasty, yes.”

Phew - James-Collier may appreciate plumbing Thomas’s new depths, but viewers will be relieved that some of the great house’s traditions stay intact.

Downton Abbey starts again Sunday night ITV1 at 9pm. Check out pictures from behind the scenes of Series Two in our Slideshow below:

Gary Barlow, X Factor - Could It Be A Magic Combination?

2011-08-17T18:49:15Z

“I’m a much better judge than Simon,” announced the X Factor’s new top dog, Gary Barlow.

So there we have it. Any fears we may have had that Barlow lacked the requisite self-possession to replace Simon Cowell on the X Factor judging panel were soon assuaged when the Take That star took his place in the spotlight at Wednesday's X Factor launch.

There was one token stab at humility when asked how he felt about filling Cowell's polo-neck trousers.

“Simon’s the master at this, it’s going to be a tough role to fill," he said, obviously not losing sight of his flapping £1.5million paycheque.

When asked about being dubbed the new Mr Nasty, the housewives' favourite answered: “I’m serious about music, I just want to be honest with them.”

But the man who wrote Patience was quick to dismiss some of the more outlandish musical offerings paraded before him, during the sneak peek of Saturday's auditions.

When Goldie, a barely-clothed 48-year-old woman from Hong Kong, writhed around him, locking her legs around his neck and grabbing hold of herself somewhat suggestively, Barlow barely missed a beat: "It’s been a long time since I’ve had a stranger's leg around my neck – you’re wasting your time with Louis though.”

PHOTOS: Stars Turn Out For Edinburgh Festival 2011

2011-08-05T12:10:29Z

Flyers, posters and tourists will transform the city of Edinburgh this month, as people from all over the world come to see the comedy, art, theatre, music and street performances on offer at the Scottish capital's three festivals.

Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the International Television Festival all take place this month. The Fringe alone will see 2,542 shows, squeezed into 258 venues across the city over the next three weeks. And organisers are hoping to top last year's record of 1.83 million tickets sold.

The Fringe - probably the most famous of Edinburgh’s festivals - has, in the past, launched the careers of some of our beloved comedians - including the Monty Python team, Billy Connolly, Rowan Atkinson, Eddie Izzard, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais and Tim Minchin.

With thousands of acts to see and things to do in Edinburgh’s busiest month of the year, we’ve picked out some famous faces at this year’s festival - a mixture of newbies still climbing the ladder to comedy or TV stardom, plus some seasoned comics returning to their favourite stomping ground.

See them in our gallery below...

INTERVIEW: 'Downton Abbey' Makers Reveal How They Recreated The Somme

2011-08-02T14:40:56Z

We’re used to seeing chandeliers, butlers and idyllic settings in Downton Abbey. The furthest we moved away from luxury in the last series was when the scenes played out downstairs, in the kitchen.

So when Julian Fellowes wrote the new series, set during the First World War, the show’s producers knew they had a challenge on their hands.

The first scene in the first episode of the new series throws us straight into the trenches of The Somme, World War One. It’s no grand library or master bedroom.

Downton’s Executive Producer Gareth Neame and Series Producer Liz Trubridge had the task of not only making this a dramatic first scene to kick off the hotly-anticipated new series, but also a realistic representation of WW1.

Neame explained: “One thing we were conscious of, because of the success of the show last year, was that we had perhaps a larger audience on television that was going to learn about WW1 from Downton, than anything that has been on TV for years.

“There are endless documentaries about WW1 but we felt there was an entire generation that will be learning about it from this show. Because we’d achieved such a great production value here at Highclere Castle, we knew we had to get the same standard in the war scenes.

“We didn’t think it was acceptable to see Matthew Crawley going away and coming back on leave every so often.”

So how did the brains behind Downton manage to recreate The Somme in 2011?

Trubridge speaks proudly of their achievement: “We were very fortunate. We came across a wonderful man that owns his own set of trenches just outside Ipswich.

“When we saw the task and looked into what it was going to cost to recreate them by ourselves – it’s an engineering job of course – we thought we really don’t want to do this. Plus it would look just like a set which we couldn’t bear. We saw this man’s trenches and our designer said, ‘Give us two weeks and I can make this really good at a quarter of the price'.”

They also enlisted the help of Downton’s very own historical advisor, Alastair Bruce, who "was in the army and dug a few trenches in [his] time.”

Bruce added: “As historical advisor it was great fun to work with the actors and extras and talk about battle, danger and fear and how it affects people in that situation.

“I think that was part of the element that helped the overall sense of drama, for us, the people who were part of making it work, we were often quite overwhelmed after a take.”

The dark trench scenes make you think about the horrendous things the young men of WW1 went through, as do the hospital scenes featuring veteran amputees. It’s quite an achievement for an ITV drama, especially compared to the way war is often glamourised in films.

“Some of the extras we used in the war sequences were either ex-soldiers themselves or aficionados of the First World War, they cared about it and I think that makes a big difference,” Trubridge reasoned.

They certainly work well and in stark contrast with the Earl of Grantham’s luxurious home at Downton.

Although CGI was used to give the trenches “width”, the producers assured us hi-tech special effects were not enlisted.

Instead, camera men came up with a “wobbilator”. Trubridge explained: “Every time an explosion happened they’d press the start button and it would wobble – hi-tech.”

Neame agreed, basic tactics were employed: “If you have enough explosions and there are enough cameras moving around a lot then you tend to get some good stuff. Whereas, when you’re filming at Highclere, everything has to be precise and well orchestrated.”

Both promised that, although the series is still very much about Downton and the people that work there, they had to have a bit of a sense of where the men were going and what it was that impacted on them.

And impact it does. As Lady Sybil exclaims in the first episode of what’s set to be another cracker of a series, “Sometimes it feels like all the men I’ve ever danced with are dead.”