WHAT'S KRAKEN?

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS RETURNS FOR A SECOND SEASON AND THIS TIME, JUSTICE IS BEING DONE TO THE SEA OF MONSTERS

- JACK SHEPHERD

SFX HAS ONLY JUST SET FOOT ON Canadian soil, yet already Disney is chauffeuring us away to an idyllic beauty salon, where everyone wears white robes and guinea pigs roam freely. It may sound like a wonderful, all-expenses-paid holiday, yet the reality is somewhat less glamorous: we're really standing on a set, built inside a studio just outside Vancouver, and the temperature this January morning has just hit six degrees. Before us, the cast of Percy Jackson And The Olympians - a modern-day spin on the Greek myths are filming a scene for the show's second season.

Walker Scobell and Leah Sava Jeffries, who play Percy and his friend Annabeth, are speaking in hushed tones, having just realised that their host, the Goddess of Magic, Circe, may not have benevolent intentions towards them.

They start to move quickly, until a director calls cut. The pair shuffle off stage for a break, meaning SFX can snoop around. The set's an intricate build: faux-marble sculptures are all around; Circe has a wonderfully large office with an overlarge, wooden desk; corridors lead to even more rooms, some fully constructed.

"I can't believe that we're on the second season," Rick Riordan, who wrote the books and co-created the show, says once we're sitting in a black tent, watching the action through a monitor. "It took us a long time to get here, so it's wonderful to see it all come to fruition. It's really wild to think that we're almost done with filming the second season.

I don't know how that happened. The time seemed to fly."

ACKY RACES