David Farnor | On 19, Jun 2021

Jason Watkins, Victoria Hamilton, George MacKay and Jerome Flynn will star in BBC One’s The Trick, a conspiracy thriller telling the real life story of 2009’s Climategate affair.

Produced by Vox Pictures, the team behind Keeping Faith, and written by Owen Sheers (The Snow Spider, Aberfan: The Green Hollow), The Trick tells the story of world-renowned Professor Philip Jones, the Director of Climate Research at the University of East Anglia who back found himself at the eye of an international media storm and the victim of cyberterrorism.

With time running out against an unseen enemy, The Trick looks at the potentially devastating consequences to humanity from climate change denial; how a media storm undermined public confidence in the science and how the concept of “truth” took a back seat causing us to lose a decade of action. The film also charts the unjustified persecution of Phil Jones, his wife Ruth’s fierce support of her husband and the fight for the ultimate exoneration of himself and the science.

The powerful single drama will star an ensemble cast including Jason Watkins (Line of Duty, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies) as respected scientist Professor Phil Jones and Victoria Hamilton (Doctor Foster, Life) as Phil’s wife, Ruth.

The cast also includes Adrian Edmondson (The Pact, Save Me), Aneirin Hughes (Hinterland, Keeping Faith), Pooky Quesnel (The A Word, The Victim), Richard Elfyn (The Pact), Rhashan Stone (Keeping Faith, Finding Alice), Justin Salinger (Hanna), Tara Divina (Line of Duty) and David Calder (Time, The Hatton Garden Job).

Jason Watkins says: “It is rare that a drama marries the personal and the public in such a compelling way – the urgent need to tackle the effects of the earth’s warming is not going away and the research into this project has been sobering. It is a privilege to play the brilliant scientist, Phil Jones, whose own private world was so threatened from outside and whose research and efforts have been so vital globally in combating the effects of climate change. I’m delighted to be performing alongside Victoria, the whole exceptional cast and with Pip Broughton, whose singular and beautiful work I so admire.”

Victoria Hamilton says: “This project is a call to arms in favour of the climate change cause, and I’m genuinely thrilled to be part of it.”

Owen Sheers says: “The Trick is both a story of a particular moment in time, and a story for our times. The events that came to be known as Climategate were a powerful coalescence of forces that have since shaped much of our last decade. At its heart, however, this is also a story about the people caught at the eye of a new kind of storm, and how in the end despite attack from all sides, the integrity and truth of their important work won through.”

Filming will take place in Cardiff, London and Norfolk.

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