Rude awakening

As the series progresses, viewers will see that anything really does go. Cosy Sunday night is about to get seriously sexy. For too long, the schedules have been dominated by safe, innocuous drama that wouldn't hurt a fly.

Nice has been the word to describe people's behaviour in series such as Heartbeat, The Royal and Wild At Heart. The 8pm slot has become associated with good clean family fun, as inoffensive as a vicarage tea party.

The feelgood factor has even seeped into the 9pm post-watershed slot on ITV1 with Kingdom, the gentle Stephen Fry series set in peaceful Norfolk where nothing much happens, where nobody swears and people are more likely to fall into ditches than into bed with one another.

Even Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, drafted in from time to time to fill the slot, manage to make murder most foul seemingly inoffensive.

So anyone settling back in their armchair with a mug of cocoa and a copy of The People's Friend are in for a rude - very rude indeed - awakening as the action unfolds in Talk To Me.

Not that anyone's doing much talking in this four-part drama from Danny Brocklehurst, who's written on TV series including Clocking Off, Shameless, Linda Green and Sorted.

His latest set of characters are too busy having fun to talk. Our hero is given oral sex under the bedsheets within the first ten minutes. Other explicit sex scenes follow, like commercials, at regular intervals. There's also drug-taking, a lesbian kiss, and a teacher bedding a schoolboy in future episodes.

The makers offer no apologies for the full-on approach with a frank depiction, in word and deed, of the complex love lives of the group of thirtysomethings inhabiting the drama.

"We knew we didn't want to make a genre show, about doctors or police. Danny said he wanted to write about being in your 30s from the hedonistic 20s to settling down and responsibilities," says producer Matt Jones.

Max Beesley stars as womanising DJ Mitch. He's in love with Claire (Laura Fraser), who's getting married to his best friend (Joseph Millson). Mitch's sister Kelly (Kate Ashfield), unhappy in her marriage and desperate for a child, begins an affair with 15-year-old pupil Aaron. Claire's sister Ally (Emma Pierson) is up for anything, bed-hopping in search of happiness.

Beesley's used to baring his bottom, having taken the title role in the BBC1 adaptation of the lusty period romp, Tom Jones. Familiarity doesn't make it any easier. "It's really uncomfortable for me personally doing those type of scenes. I've not really met anybody who enjoys doing them," he says.

Director Dearbhla Walsh made it easy by taking him and Fraser out to dinner the night before shooting the scenes and showing them a French film.

"She said that was how she'd like to shoot those scenes. We were both quite nervous about it. It couldn't just be a physical thing, it had to be really heartfelt, with a very serious connection between the two of us," recalls Beesley.

"This French film was absolutely beautifully shot and really helped us."

Walsh reckons shooting those scenes was as challenging and intimidating for her as for the actors. "They're not easy at all to do and it completely depends on trust," she says.

"A key direction in Danny's writing was that it shouldn't be telly sex because the whole story is an exploration of love, not so much about sex as love.

"I tried very much to put in different aspects of love-making and tenderness between the different couples. Mitch and Claire have a very explicit, maybe for nine o'clock, but very mature way to their feelings.

"With Aaron and Kelly, he's a minor and we wanted to transcend the notion that it's a schoolboy, to get beyond the taboo because all these characters feel real tenderness for each other."

Brocklehurst says: "I wanted it to feel authentic and not cop out as a lot of telly does. It's our barometer of taste and decency and, hopefully, it will be the audiences too."

* Talk To Me begins on ITV1 on June 10 at 9pm.