Strangers on ITV is an ambitious new international thriller packed full of twists and turns.
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It stars John Simm as a man trying to unravel the mystery of his wife’s death in Hong Kong. After he ventures across the world to identify her body, he discovers she is not the person he thought she was and his sheltered life is plunged into chaos and danger.
Meet the whole cast and their characters below…
John Simm plays Jonah Mulray
Who is Jonah Mulray? Jonah is a mild-mannered professor of International Relations. His fear of flying means he never went to visit his wife Megan when she worked abroad in Hong Kong. His life begins to spiral after Megan is killed in a car crash over there, but he unearths some shocking truths when he travels to Hong Kong to take her body home.
Where have I seen John Simm before? Simm has had a prolific television career. He has played the Master in Doctor Who for the past ten years and had starring roles in Collateral, Trauma, State of Play, Exile, Prey, Life on Mars, The Village and Mad Dogs, to name a few.
Dervla Kirwan plays Megan Harris
Who is Megan Harris? Jonah remembers his wife Megan as loving, passionate, joyful and smart, but after her death, he discovers she was practically a stranger to him.
Where have I seen Dervla Kirwan before? Irish actress Kirwan is known for her roles in the TV series Strike Back, Blackout, The Silence, Material Girl and Ballykissangel.
Emilia Fox plays Sally Porter
Who is Sally Porter? Sally is a British consul in China who is trying to assist John in the unravelling of Megan’s mystery life. She takes her job very seriously – and as the series continues we will find out how much she’s willing to risk for her loyalties.
Where have I seen Emilia Fox before? Fox is famous for playing Dr Nikki Alexander in Silent Witness for the last 14 years. She’s also starred in Home from Home, Delicious, The Tunnel, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, Fallen Angel and Merlin and is part of a family of actors which includes her father Edward Fox, uncle James Fox and brother Freddie Fox.
Anthony Wong plays David Chen
Who is David Chen? David is in many ways the polar opposite to Jonah. He’s a single-minded ex-cop with a short temper and a violent streak. He was involved in Megan’s life in Hong Kong and is also endeavouring to understand her secret world.
Where have I seen Anthony Wong before? Anthony Wong is a Hong Kong actor best known in the West for his roles in the movies Hard Boiled, Infernal Affairs and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
Katie Leung plays Lau Chen
Who is Lau Chen? David’s daughter Lau is the personification of Hong Kong’s rebellious youth-inspired political movement. After Megan’s death, Lau goes AWOL and her mutinous behaviour leads her to Becky – an American student with similar interests.
Where have I seen Katie Leung before? Harry Potter fans will recognise Leung as Cho Chang, the ex-girlfriend of The Boy Who Lived. She has starred in BBC drama One Child and also had small roles in the movies T2 Trainspotting and The Foreigner.
Anthony Hayes plays Michael Cohen
Who is Michael Cohen? Nope, not Trump’s one-time lawyer. Michael is a fictional journalist who’s hungry for a good story. He is tied up in a custody battle with his ex-wife Rachel Hargreaves over their daughter Mae, but has to juggle this with his quest to find out the truth about Megan Harris’s death.
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Where have I seen Anthony Hayes before? Australian actor Hayes starred alongside Martin Freeman in Netflix’s Cargo, and has also appeared in the movies War Machine, The Light Between Oceans and Animal Kingdom.
Strangers sees a massive mystery played out in a beautiful Chinese setting. Jonah Mulray (played by John Simm) is thrown into an enormous mystery after the death of his wife, Megan Harris (Dervla Kerwin). She is killed in what appears to be an unfortunate car accident, and it is up to Jonah to identify her body. Megan has spent a long time in Hong Kong, but her husband never went, unable to get over his fear of flying.
When he does go, a world of mystery, lies, and conspiracies await him. but there will be more drama ahead when Jonah goes to Hong Kong to identify her body. When he gets there, a web of lies and conspiracies leave him shattered, but how was his wife involved? At a recent press screening of the thrilling ITV drama, cast members John and Emilia Fox opened up on what it was like filming in bustling Hong Kong. Strangers’ writers, Mark Denton and Jonny Stockwood, explained how he had never been out to the Chinese capital before. They told press including Express.co.uk: “We haven’t really seen [a drama] set in Hong Kong in this country. “Considering our shared history with Hong Kong with the handover in 1997 and it was coming up to the 20th anniversary when we conceived the show.
Strangers ITV: ‘That was a challenge’ Emilia Fox drops MAJOR location bombshell
Strangers ITV: Jonah flies to Hong Kong to identify his wife's body
“We thought this could be interesting and it’s beautiful - we hadn’t been at that point but we had seen lots of photos and it looked really cool. so we got a free holiday…” They continued: “We wrote the pilot and then after that we went for a week’s tour around and we got to see the sights and see lots of interesting people.” Furthermore, Emilia - who most will know as Nikki Alexander in Silent Witness - dropped a huge filming bombshell. She giggled: “We had points where I would shoot one side of the door in Hong Kong and Katie [Leung, who plays Lau Chen] would answer the door in Ealing. “So that was quite a challenge,” the 44-year-old laughed.
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Strangers ITV: Emilia Fox co-stars alongside John Simm in the new drama
Thrilling new drama Strangers is starting on ITV tonight (Monday, September 10) at 9pm. The eight-part series follows professor Jonah Mulray (played by John Simm) whose life is turned upside-down after his wife, Megan Harris (Dervla Kirwan), is killed in a car crash in Hong Kong. A grieving Jonah has to travel all the way to Hong Kong where he discovers that Megan had a secret life. Here’s a look at the show’s setting and filming locations.
Where is Strangers on ITV set? Strangers is mostly set on Hong Kong Island. However, the action starts out in London, where John Simm’s character Jonah works as a college professor. Jonah is married to Megan but there’s a catch - she spends most of her time working in Hong Kong, and Jonah has a crippling fear of flying so he never goes there to see her. When he is told of her death in the first episode, Jonah has no choice but to get on a place to identify his wife’s body. From then, most of the action takes place in ultra-modern Hong Kong itself, a place with a colonial past and Chinese future. Series writers Mark Denton and Johnny Stockwood said that visually speaking, they love how Hong Kong looks. WHO IS IN THE CAST OF STRANGERS?
Strangers was filmed in Hong Kong
They also wanted to look at Britain and the UK’s “shared history”. Denton explained: “Immediately it became clear that we could incorporate this shared political history as a metaphorical foundation for the series, commenting on our main characters. “It feeds into the idea that a lot of people from Hong Kong don’t see themselves as either British or Chinese and want to be in control of their own destiny.” Stock wood added: “As a whole, Hong Kong struck us as a place where hundreds of cultures are stacked on top of each other but seem to slide past each other. “There are so many groups of people living alongside each other who have no idea how the other group of people are living. We found that fascinating, linking it to the fact that, like Jonah, you may not know the person you sleep next to.” WHEN DOES STRANGERS START AND HOW MANY EPISODES ARE THERE?
Emilia Fox filming in Hong Kong
Where is Strangers on ITV filmed? Strangers was filmed mostly on location in Honky Kong, although some scenes had to be finished back in the UK. All exteriors were shot in Hong Kong but all interiors were filmed back in London. Simm said that filming in Hong Kong was an “incredible opportunity and a privilege” but that it was “very hot”. “But it’s an incredible city – I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
John Simm filming in Hong Kong
John Simm filming in Hong Kong
He added: “It’s been a real eye-opener being in Hong Kong. All in all, it’s been an absolutely wonderful experience.” Anthony Wong who plays David Chen said that filming in his hometown meant that he got recognised a lot. “People want to stop me and take photos all the time, which is absolutely fine,” he said. “The director, Paul Andrew Williams has been brilliant. He has shot a lot of footage in the city, and he’s really captured the excitement of Hong Kong.” Emilia Fox who plays Sally Porter revealed that shooting exterior and interior scenes in different locations was challenging.
Strangers airs this September on ITV
In February, John Simm was inescapable, appearing in two prime time dramas simultaneously, a pun not lost on wry observers. On BBC Two he was a politician in Collateral, while in ITV’s Trauma he was a grieving father railing against the surgeon who failed to save his son.
Simm can hardly be blamed for the scheduling, but the effect was unnerving, as if we were living in some crackpot junta where an amiable northern dictator had seized control of the broadcast tower to display his full range of embattled middle-aged men.
It is one way around the risk of viewers switching channel: simply ensure you are on all of them. Sadly it didn’t work. Quantity is not the same as quality. Collateral had its moments, but Trauma was mainly cobblers, and six months later Simm finds himself slightly in need of a hit.
He is about as prominent as British actors get without being truly bankable. You are never sorry to see him, but nor do you set the Sky+ box by his presence.
Strangers (ITV) is his latest tilt at frontman, a glossy eight-part thriller with lofty ambitions. He plays Professor Jonah Mulray, an academic working in London who travels to Hong Kong to identify the body of his wife Megan (Dervla Kirwan), who has been killed in a car crash.
In the compelling opening minutes, the certainties in Mulray’s life are removed one by one, like a stage set being dismantled. Megan was married to someone else, David Chen (Anthony Chau-Sang Wong), and had been for many years before Jonah and Megan met.
They had an adult daughter, Lau Chen (Katie Leung, who you might remember from such Harry Potter characters as Cho Chang). Listening to a voicemail Megan had left herself in her final moments, Mulray learns she had got mixed up in something. With his life in pieces, he decides to investigate. Gangsters, detectives and shady government shenanigans ensue.
As the title hints, the message of the first episode is how quickly the things we think we know can become unfamiliar. At the outset Mulray happily lectured his students on nationhood, explaining that they are only consensual illusions.
He soon learns that if you find yourself in a foreign land without a passport, with only the consulate in the form of Sally Porter (Emilia Fox), nations can seem very real. Relationships, families and sense of self are more fragile.
In one sense Mulray’s discoveries about Megan change nothing – the fact of the time they spent together, the things they did, their feelings for each other are still there, preserved forever by her death – yet they also change everything. Her secrets are like an abandoned mine beneath a village which might have lain undiscovered and harmless but instead brings the whole edifice toppling down.
Hong Kong is well chosen as the setting for this collapse. It is only 20 years since handover but aside from a few place names and the ever-smaller cadre of drunken bankers, the British influence is rapidly fading.
The idea that Britain might have even thought about ruling this rocky Chinese island, let alone actually done it, is increasingly difficult to credit. A Brit adrift in Hong Kong is an easy metaphor for Britain in the world, ever-more toothless in the face of rising Asia.
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We see the city as it appears to Mulray, a hard and hostile place beneath the glowing towers. Simm plays disintegration deftly, even if the vicissitudes of the plot require more exposition than one might expect in a chat between two husbands of the same woman who have just found out about each other.
Oddly for a thriller, Strangers is best in its quiet moments. The more it tried to force the story forwards, as with the Lau Chen subplot, the more it creaks. A sassy-babes-in-jail scene, in particular, was excruciating.
The series won’t be Simm’s hit, but it confirms that few actors are better at relatable bafflement. Through him, we understand that the things we most love – nations, wives, lives – may be illusions, mere false representations of what they purport to be. Simulacra, perhaps.
Strangers airs on Mondays on ITV at 9pm
