Smash hit

“Still, what I have learnt is that while I absolutely love motherhood and really enjoy it, I also very much need to act. When the Frankenstein script landed on my doorstep I found myself completely fascinated. I felt instantly lured back.”

Jed Mercurio, the former medic who penned hard-hitting and acclaimed TV series such as Cardiac Arrest and Bodies is the writer and director behind ITV’s modern reworking of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror.

Set in the very near future, it features McCrory in the central role as Dr Victoria (as opposed to Victor) Frankenstein.

Aside from the gender realignment of the eponymous leading character there is another modern twist in that Dr Frankenstein is now a brilliant medical bio-technician working on a project to create organs for transplant from stem cells.

On the professional front, Victoria is driven by a desire to push the boundaries of science. But there are personal reasons for her quest too. Her son, William, is terminally ill. And, perhaps, her work could save him.

Secretly, she takes a sample of her son’s blood and incorporates it into the Universal Xenograph Project. But as the cells grow and mutate in the Graft Lab tank, she realises with horror that that she has created an entire living being. When he escapes the tank there is mayhem and panic.

“On one level, he’s a monster, but on another he’s her creation and she feels for him,” she says . “I sympathised because, let’s face it, when you are pregnant you never fully know that your child will be ok. But your responsibility to that child is exactly the same, no matter what. I think Victoria has very complicated feelings. He is both a monster and yet, in a sense, her child.”

Purists and devotees of the original novel may not approve of Mercurio’s version - even if, thanks to the production company, Impossible, who gave us Primeval and Walking with Dinosaurs, it does feature an all-singing, all-dancing CGI’d monster, as opposed to the vintage image of man with a bucket on his head and a two bolts through his neck.

It’s possible, too, that they won’t buy the notion of Victoria Frankenstein as a scientist playing with a monster as though it were her child. But at the same time, they will have to admit that, as ever, McCrory is powerful in the role.

“What I found interesting was being able to play the character without the usual clichés. You see a monster and stand there in your nightie screaming, “It’s alive!” I don’t think she feels that way at all and I was glad that we were able to play her very differently.”

McCrory, who was classically trained at London’s Drama Centre is driven, she says, by a desire to interpret different people’s views of the world. “I became an actress, I suppose, because I’m a natural interpreter. I don’t originate ideas, but I have a huge respect for people who write fantastic plays or scripts and I feel that you learn so much about people by playing them. That is the attraction for me, anyway.”

She is blessed too, she says with the rootless instincts of the actor. There again as the child of a Scottish born diplomat, she lived in Cameroon, Tanzania, France and Scandinavia. “My childhood was very peripatetic. We moved around a lot and, therefore, from a very young age, almost by necessity, you lived in the moment because you didn’t know where you were going to be tomorrow and where you were today was very different from where you were yesterday. So you don’t search for stability and you adapt very quickly to different situations. I don’t think I’ve ever felt trapped at any point in my life.”

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