0x5 Stephen Poliakoff Remembers... Shooting the Past Episode overview
Air date
Aug 13, 2025
Having forged a reputation with films such as She’s Been Away, City Sugar and the Bafta-winning Caught on a Train, Shooting the Past was Stephen Poliakoff’s first three-part series for .. show full overview
Having forged a reputation with films such as She’s Been Away, City Sugar and the Bafta-winning Caught on a Train, Shooting the Past was Stephen Poliakoff’s first three-part series for television. Taking inspiration from the closure of a photo archive, it weaves a tale of the effects of sudden change. The eccentric staff with their own catering, losing all they’d worked for; the revelation through photos of stories both global and intensely personal.
Stephen explains how he was given the brief to write something 'totally different from anything seen before', exploring how long he could push the length of scenes, how the cast held real photos in every sequence rather than adding them in after filming and how the casting of Timothy Spall completely changed the perception of that character. And he describes how the core elements of the story, institutions facing sudden closure, the loss of personal knowledge to corporate systems, still has relevance today.
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