This article contains spoilers for ‘Two Weeks in August’
For the past month, BBC One’s Two Weeks in August has gripped thousands of us with its sun-soaked holiday drama. Set on a scorching Greek island, it follows a gang of forty-something friends who set out to have the holiday of a lifetime, only to discover their friendships – and their marriages – aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Neither, it seems, was filming. “When we got out there it was the beginning of March. It hadn’t warmed up yet,” says Antonia Thomas, who plays villain-apparent Jessica. “That’s when we were filming the early scenes in bikinis and jumping in pools. It was freezing. Production had to run in with blankets.”
By the end of the five-month shoot – which was in Malta, standing in for Greece – the temperature had reached unbearable levels. And not because of the fire that had swept across the island. “There was no real fire,” says Thomas. “We had to keep being reminded that we had to make it seem like there was. We kept being told, ‘It’s smoky, you’re in peril, the stakes are high!”
‘Jess just has a slightly different social filter,’ says Thomas (Photo: Various Artists Limited/BBC/Colin Hutton)
