WHODUNITS love ITV Choice. The channel is laden with the most extensive menu of engrossing crime dramas.
And The Widower marvellously slots into the mix of murder and mayhem.
The drama is based on the real-life story of male nurse Malcolm Webster, who was convicted of murdering his first wife and poisoning the second with the third wife already in the wings. The role of Webster was given to Reece Shearsmith.
The part called for someone who looked harmless, though was anything but. His menacing traits surface in his reckless and lavish lifestyle.
The Widower documents his deceptive life over a 13-year period. It has Sheridan Smith as his first wife, Claire Morris, and Kate Fleetwood as Felicity Drumm, Claire’s replacement.
British actor Shearsmith was won over by the character when he read the script. He admitted: “I felt it was a huge journey to be able to go on. The real ‘horror’ is to be able to play the innocence of his reality as he saw it. He’s not doing it with a twirl of a moustache – the entire thing is a means to an end. Every step of the way, he’s justifying his actions. It was a big part for me, and a real challenge. It was also quite scary. I thought, ‘God, do I really want to be in that world?’ It’s a horrible thing to take on. But I couldn’t not try.”
For an actor, inhabiting a fictional character is one thing. But slipping into the skin of a real person – well, that’s a different beast altogether. And, it could be mind-blowing and on-point or go horribly off-kilter.
And Shearsmith conceded to feeling the pressure of the responsibility he’d taken on.
He pointed out: “With The Widower I felt I needed to capture the spirit of Malcolm Webster – I’m not trying to do an impression of him. I also felt a responsibility because he is a convicted murderer and people were profoundly affected by his actions. There’s a duty to care that he is not presented frivolously.”
He also wanted to play the character from a consciously ordinary perspective.
“I wanted to get across the ordinariness of the evil,” he explained. “Everyone I discussed this with said there was never even a glimmer of evil and, ironically, all the women felt completely safe with him. On the whole, the person they spent a lot of time with wasn’t evil to them in the slightest. They find it hard to square that with what he did. We also show the evil side of him, a side that was completely alien to the world, and only about greed.”
Webster was masterful at concealing his dark side. In fact, he played it so well that he came across as timid and unthreatening.
This role demanded a lot of Shearsmith and he was game for everything that was asked of him – including shaving his head.
He recalled: “There’s no getting around the fact that it was me shaving my head for real as there were three cameras on me. You wouldn’t normally shave hair from that length. But they wanted a proper tramline through the hair. I asked: ‘What if my razor jams?’ They said I must just keep on going as they got only one take for this. My legs were shaking when I did it and I didn’t sleep that night. But that’s the commitment to the truth of the story.”
There are endless jaw-dropping moments in this series and these are complemented by the level of tension and suspense. It’s chilling, more so because it is a true story.
l The Widower is on ITV Choice tonight at 9pm.