Downton Abbey’s Rob James-Collier returns to screens in Love Life

Nothing tears the guts out – or makes for spellbinding tv drama – like a tug of struggle over a child.

BBC Leisure has an emotional gut-puncher on its arms with Love Life, a brand new collection about 4 folks, one unplanned child and a young Gordian Knot of a relationship tangle.

The story begins with a footloose dreamer named Joe (Rob James-Collier), simply again from a year-long jaunt to climb Everest, the place he fled to flee the strain to get married and have infants along with his girlfriend Lucy (Andrea Lowe). He bumps into his ex solely to find she’s now married and severely pregnant. It’s a devastating blow; he instantly sees the error of his methods. However right here’s the twist – Lucy will not be married; she’s mendacity. Worse, the actual father has no clue she’s in a household manner.

Lucy refuses to say who the daddy is, however Joe uncovers a bombshell – it’s her ex-boss, Dominic (Alexander Armstrong), who’s married to the prickly Penny (Sophie Thompson). They’ve been making an attempt to have a baby for years, and Penny’s child obsession drove Dominic into a short fling with Lucy. When Joe unintentionally reveals to Dominic that Lucy is pregnant, the foursome’s collective angst shifts into excessive gear.

For her half, Penny is torn to items by the very notion that one other lady is having her husband’s child. Then it hits her – if solely she may have that youngster, her life could be full. She convinces herself that she and Dominic have simply as a lot proper to the kid as Lucy. A romantic, heart-rending, thorny mess ensues because the drama unspools in a extremely entertaining vogue.

Lowe discovered this collection candy serendipity on each a private {and professional} stage. When she first auditioned to play the mum-to-be Lucy, she had no thought she was pregnant herself. However by the point she received the half, she knew.

“That’s once I advised the producers, simply to verify they nonetheless wished me,” Lowe says in an interview with the Every day Mail.

“I didn’t inform the remainder of the solid and crew till I’d had my 12-week scan, partly so I knew the child was all proper and partly as a result of I didn’t need the being pregnant to get in the way in which of labor. Individuals suppose pregnant ladies are actually delicate and I didn’t need any particular remedy. I simply wished to be handled usually.”

“I suffered horrible insomnia and, weirdly for a vegetarian, I had this large longing for meat,” provides the 38-year-old. “I additionally craved bananas, eggs and chips and by the top of the shoot I used to be consuming my physique weight in chocolate each day. It’s a marvel I didn’t balloon.”

For James-Collier, the a part of Joe is his first TV function since taking part in the scheming footman Thomas in Downton Abbey.

“Working with Rob was enjoyable,” says Lowe. “He’s making an attempt one thing totally different with this – a change of path for him after a few collection of Downton Abbey. He’s a beautiful, down-to-earth man who’s straightforward to get together with and a very good chuckle.

On set, James-Collier additionally proved himself a heart-palpitating prankster.

“We used actual infants and prosthetic ones [in the series] and would swap them round,” he says. “We had lots of enjoyable fooling the crew by throwing faux infants round once they didn’t know if it was an actual child or a prosthetic one. We’d  shout ‘Catch!’ and watch for the response!”

• Love Life is broadcast at 9pm on Wednesdays on BBC Leisure

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