11:59am Monday 1st March 2010
Five Days (BBC1, 9pm today to Friday)
THE question has to be asked, especially in Coronation Street’s 50th anniversary year.
Will actress Suranne Jones, so memorable as feisty Karen McDonald in the soap, be returning as part of the celebrations?
The answer, as far as she’s concerned, is a very definite no. “I loved Karen Mc- Donald but I’m moving forward not backwards,”
she says.
That rules out a return to the screen as the character. “I’d like to go for dinner with everyone as Suranne, in a nice dress celebrating the fact that I was part of Coronation Street, because it’s an amazing thing to be a part of.
“But there’s absolutely no plans to go back,” she says, matter-of-factly.
Last year’s well-received drama series Unforgiven earned her excellent reviews and finally laid the memory of Karen to rest. Now she’s back on the small screen in Five Days, the BBC drama on consecutive nights this week.
This second series, again written by Gwyneth Hughes, has a different story and a different cast. As well as Jones, the cast includes Anne Reid, David Morrissey and Bernard Hill.
Set in Yorkshire, it opens with the discovery of a new-born baby in a hospital toilet at the same time that a Trans- Pennine train crashes because of a suicidal jumper.
Jones plays Detective Constable Laurie Franklin, who is on the train with her elderly mum (Reid) and becomes embroiled in the investigation.
“She’s a detective who lived in London for 15 years, was married, now divorced, and her mother gets taken ill, so she takes a demotion to move back to her hometown in Yorkshire,” she explains.
“I’m back to being a PC, which I hate, and sleeping in a single bed in my mum’s bungalow, which I also hate. At 36 years old it’s not the best place to be.”
The day before she starts her new job, Laurie is taking her mum to hospital to sort out her drugs for Alzheimer’s when they’re caught up in the train crash.
Besides having to cope with a sick mother, Laurie faces sexism at work and is something of a loner.
“I gradually find myself in a relationship with another loner, played by David Morrissey, but there are a lot of men where we work, verging on sexist, and they struggle with my character,” says Jones.
OLDHAM-BORN Jones was only 21 when she landed the part of seamstress Karen McDonald in Coronation Street and in the four years she was there, won awards for best, sexiest and most popular actress.
Since leaving, she’s starred with Ray Winstone in the detective drama series Vincent and played a bisexual sex therapist in Kay Mellor’s Strictly Confidential.
But the performance she’s most proud of to date was as convicted murderer Ruth Slater in ITV’s Unforgiven.
“That, I think, was a particular job that comes along once in a blue moon, where it’s a female protagonist that you’re following and such a strong character-driven piece,” she explains.
“After that, I was looking for something that would interest me because it’s hard when you’ve done something like that, to think ‘what can I do next?’”
Five Days came along just at the right time. “It’s an intelligent drama that you have to piece together,” she says. “My character is basically a camera for the audience, meeting everyone throughout the whole process. I was probably the only actress in the cast who got to work with everybody.”
Jones has also been doing theatre work, having just finished a run in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in Manchester, and appeared in a play for an old friend last year, who paid her in coffee.
This year, she’s gearing up for two very different challenges. She’s training for the London Marathon, in April, for Clic Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, and will walk the Great Wall of China three days later for The Fire Fighters Charity.
“Every year I set myself a big challenge, so it will be exciting, but at the same time it’s daunting,” she admits. “It will be tough, but nothing like a child going through chemotherapy or a firefighter recovering from burns.”
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