DUCKIN' HELL

ALL HANDS (AND OTHER BLOODY BODY PARTS) ON DECK! WRITER RYAN J BROWN INVITES YOU ON BOARD THE SACRAMENTUM FOR THE TRIP OF A DEATHTIME

- ROBBIE DUNLOP

A MEGA CRUISE SHIP, somewhere in the middle of the ocean. A missing crew member, and a brother who will stop at nothing to discover the truth. A masked killer, slaughtering a crew of teenagers in increasingly grisly ways...

No, that isn't the preview of the latest Hollywood horror blockbuster; it's the premise of Wreck, a six-episode black comedy slasher series from writer Ryan J Brown. And it's British. Hang on... a British slasher TV show?

No one could have been more surprised than Brown himself. "I've always found that horror in general is the most difficult sell in the UK for television," he tells SFX. "I was constantly told commissioners were not really looking for that, but I kept ploughing away."

Brown, who was awarded a BAFTA New Writing Prize for TV Drama in 2016, insists "It's my favourite genre. I've only been writing for five years, but from the off I wanted to create a horror series, a British horror series."

Key to Brown's pitch was the location. "It had to be the perfect setting, something that we'd not seen before. And no one's ever done a cruise ship - ever." He considers. "Obviously in films they have, like in Ghost Ship. But it's empty. It's not a fully working cruise ship.

"It's the perfect setting," he adds, "because that whole world is fascinating and scary in so many ways."

Brown may not have set foot on one himself, but after five years' research, he's now fully up to speed on the cruising scene. "I trained as an actor a long time ago, so I know a lot of cruise ship performers. There were lots of people I could speak to from different levels on board the ship. And there are so many things you can read out there there are some strange websites. There's a cruise ship deaths website; it's people who keep track of murder, missing people and assault."