The plot of a family moving to a remote area to start a new life may not be new, but the location of Craster in Northumberland certainly is. Steve Pratt reports on the result of Peter Davison and Samantha Bond shooting a new drama series called Distant Shores.

ACTOR Peter Davison had a sense of deja vu while filming the new ITV1 series Distant Shores off the Northumberland coast. He plays a successful plastic surgeon who moves with his wife and children to an island off the North-East coast, but other doctoring skills are needed when he's called on to deliver a calf.

The scene in which he puts his hand up a cow's backside brought to mind his time on duty as vet Tristan Farnon in another TV series, All Creatures Great And Small. "It was a trip down memory lane," he jokes. "I didn't think I'd be doing that again, but I did feel I was the expert."

Co-star Samantha Bond, who plays his screen wife Lisa, had a brush with local cattle too. "I had to be quite brave with the longhorns," she recalls. "The most interesting thing I can tell you about them is that the bull is the calmest in the herd. One of the herd gave birth while we were there and they called it Sam."

As well as seeing a repeat of Davison's veterinary skills, viewers may also be reminded on another ITV1 series while watching surgeon Bill Shore and his family relocating to a remote community. Didn't ITV1's recent hit Doc Martin deal with something similar - namely Martin Clunes as a doctor leaving London to live in a remote Cornish village?

Davison says the Distant Shores team were obviously aware of Doc Martin. "But ours is completely different in tone. We just made our series as well as we possibly could," he says. "There's probably room for two series about doctors. It would be a shame if we were put side by side."

Bond adds: "The similarity is the doctor, although ours is a great deal remoter."

Distant Shores was shot on location in and around Craster, which meant cast and crew were away from home for months. Bond "completely fell in love" with the area, saying: "It's the most beautiful corner of England. I was not familiar with it. We were put in a hotel on the runway outside Newcastle and then persuaded them to move us up to Alnwick.

"We were asked to open the Craster fete and instead of giving us a bottle of something they gave us a whole salmon. Everyone was wonderful to us, very keen and supportive." Davison also enjoyed the experience of filming in the North-East "Everyone was very helpful, considering we brought chaos to their village. A lot of local people were used as extras in the series," he says.

Bond feels that Lisa is more like her than any role that she's played on TV. "I tend to play quite tense woman - I don't know why," she says.

The actress was seen as Tom Conti's wife in last year's pilot of forthcoming ITV1 series Donovan and appears in the latest Adam Dalgleish detective drama The Murder Room on BBC1 over the New Year.

"Caroline in The Murder Room is very uptight and sitting on a whole lot of secrets, she's about as cold a fish as you are going to find," she says.

She's waiting to hear what's going to happen with the next James Bond movie. Shooting has been put back until 2005 while producers seek an actor to replace Pierce Brosnan as 007. Bond has been Miss Moneypenny in recent screen adventures. She's said in the past that if Brosnan isn't Bond, she doesn't want to continue as Moneypenny. Now she qualifies that statement: "I'm not going to say who I want to be the next Bond, but there's one actor and, if it's him, I'd like to be there."

Whatever happens with Bond, she feels she achieved something by plunging into the cold North Sea for a scene in Distant Shores. She began by wearing a wet suit but kept bobbing up from under the water. So she stripped to a bikini despite the freezing temperatures. "I was cold down to my bones afterwards. I got into the bath and was so cold that the water around me froze. So I sat in the bath putting more hot water in," she recalls.

Both reckon they could leave civilisation for living somewhere remote like the fictional Hildasay island in Distant Shores - provided communications were improved. Only one mobile phone network can be picked up around Craster and the TV signal is poor. "I was desperately perturbed that I couldn't get a mobile signal and bought another phone," he says.

* Distant Shores: ITV1, Wednesday, 9pm.

* The Murder Room: BBC1, New Year's Day, 9.40pm and Sunday, 9pm.

Published: 30/12/2004