SECTS education

Ben Aldridge stars as a detective whose latest case implicates the isolated religious group he was raised in…

- HANNAH DAVIES, STEVEN PERKINS, ALISON SLADE

DRAMA

The Long Call Monday-Thursday, ITV HD, 9pm

NEW

Finding a trait that you share with your character is a gift to any actor preparing to take on a role – but for Our Girl and Fleabag star Ben Aldridge, the part of DI Matthew Venn in ITV drama The Long Call was an uncannily good fit.

Matthew has recently moved back to North Devon with his husband after 20 years away. Matthew left after being excommunicated by the Barum Brethren, the religious group he grew up in, when he declared that he no longer believed. Now, as Matthew investigates the murder of a man whose body is discovered on a beach, the case leads him back to the Barum Brethren – and his estranged mother (Juliet Stevenson).

‘There are so many coincidental crossovers between this story and my own life,’ says Aldridge. ‘I was born and raised in Devon, and both of my parents were raised in the Brethren church. They left just before they met, when they were 18, and I was raised as an evangelical Christian, so I have a real inside perspective on the faith – and having moved away from that myself, I suppose I understand the journey of faith progressing beyond Christianity.’

SHARING SIMILARITIES