Brideshead was never like this.
All is not going swimmingly on the set of Trinity, ITV 2’s latest home-grown drama about ancient wood-panelled Bridgeford University, a highly sensationalised version of Oxford, starring Charles Dance as the scheming don Professor Maltravers and It-girl Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe as the stunning but cold Rosalind.
While Dance and Calthorpe, daughter of society beauty Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon and reputedly an old flame of Prince William’s, have no problem with the drawling upper-crust accents their parts demand, their co-star, Yorkshire actor Christian Cooke, (The Last Van Helsing, Echo Beach/ Moving Wallpaper) is having a tougher time.
Cooke, 22, has been undergoing emergency voice coaching to help him iron out his trademark northern vowels and quiet, obliging manner to play spoiled, manipulative aristo Dorian, Rosalind’s cousin.
“Christian’s grown a long, floppy fringe for the role,” said an insider , “but although he’s very beautiful and looks the part, he’s had huge difficulty trying to do suitably cut-glass tones as he’s been able to use his natural Yorkshire accent in most of his previous work. He’s also found it hard to come over arrogant and languid enough and the producers were even considering re-casting his role. Luckily the voice-coaching seems to be paying off as they’ve decided to stick with him.”
The aristocratic Calthorpe by contrast is teased for her ‘Wycombe Abbey giggle’ and characteristic head-toss which she learned at her Swiss finishing school.
The series is also tipped to re-ignite interest in Oxford’s ultra-elitist Bullindon Club, (war-cry: “Buller Buller Buller! We’re rich - we’re bloody rich!”) whose alumni include David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. Members of Trinity’s fictional version, the Dandelion Club, sport yellow waistcoats and drink, scheme and intrigue nearly as intensely as their real-life counterparts.
With its tag-line ‘recreational sex, casual drugs and casual murder’, Trinity is also expected to send applications to Oxford through the roof.
The 8-part series is produced by Ash Atalla (The Office) and is due to be aired in September 2009. (There was apparently a bad case of handbags at dawn when ‘Trinity’ which had been slated for March 2009 was postponed for 6 months to allow ITV to screen the appalling “Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend” instead.