INTERGALACTIC 

THERE’S GONN A BE A JAILBREAK, SOMEWHERE IN THIS UNIVERSE… SKY ONE’S NEW SHOW I NT ER GA LA C T I C FOLLOWS A GROUP OF ON-THE-LAM FEMALE PRISONERS. WE VISIT THE SET TO THE PRODUCERS AND THE CAST AND SPEAK

WORDS: IAN BERRIMAN

WE’RE STANDING IN THE shadow of the snout of a dirty, scorched spaceship, its gangplank lowered. You can easily imagine Firefly’s Malcolm Reynolds striding out. Zoom out from a tight focus, however, and the illusion’s broken. This is just a small slice of set –a place to shoot exits and entrances, aided by bluescreen. Behind it, across a road, humdrum residential housing stretches out on either side.

It’s February 2020, and SFX is on the backlot at Manchester’s aptly-named Space Studios. Last time we visited it was home to Sky One’s near-future road race series Curfew. Now it’s hosting a space-faring sci-fi show from the same production company, Moonage Pictures. 

A short stroll away, a main street set has been constructed. Lined with market stalls, its buildings are painted in Mediterranean shades of green, orange and turquoise. A menu on a wall listing dishes en français further suggests a European influence. If it sounds like a possible holiday destination that’s only because we haven’t mentioned the tyre-tracked mud underfoot, boarded-up windows and bullet holes. Welcome to the planet Skov.

It’s just one of the colony worlds featured in Intergalactic, whose eight-episode run centres on a bunch of escaped prisoners on the lam in a stolen ship, pursued by Earth authorities as “enemies of the state”. Thinking “Sounds a bit Blake’s 7”? You’re not alone. But there are plenty of differences from Terry Nation’s ’70s space saga – not least that these convicts are all female.

THE GREAT ESCAPE 

Showrunner Julie Gearey has form when it comes to prison drama, as executive producer Iona Vrolyk explains. “The original premise was hit upon by [Moonage producer] Matthew Read, but Sky really wanted Julie to do it, because she’d written Prisoners’ Wives. Obviously, this show is about escaped prisoners on the run, and she always innately puts women’s stories at the front of her shows. They felt that she’d be the perfect showrunner.

“The brief was to come up with a show that would sit in a busy science fiction marketplace, but feel unique and distinct,” she continues. “Hopefully that’s what we’ve done. Whilst it is science fiction, it’s also a mainstream ensemble show.”

The story begins 150 years from now. The properties of a new element, Neworum – brought to Earth by a meteor – have enabled intergalactic travel. The planet’s also been through ecological collapse. In response, the world’s nations united in one government, the Commonworld. “Humanity’s gone off to other planets and galaxies, and colonised,” Vrolyk explains. “The overriding reason was to bring things back and rehabilitate Earth. But in 150 years there’s been corruption within that global authority.”