“It’s really a horror on a personal level”: Helen Baxendale, Emun Elliott, and Tunji Kasim on The Dark

Adapted from GR Halliday’s novel From the Shadows, six-part British crime thriller The Dark follows Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy (Laura Donnelly) as she investigates the chilling, ritualistic murder of a young man in the rural Scottish Highlands – and the fear, grief and suspicion it sends rippling through an already wounded community. But while the investigation drives the series forward, its atmosphere is rooted just as strongly in the people surrounding the case, with Helen Baxendale, Emun Elliott and Tunji Kasim playing characters whose lives are pulled into the darkness in deeply personal ways.

For Baxendale, the pull of the project was immediate. “I read the script and was wrapped up in it immediately,” she said, “ It’s not a procedural police drama, and it’s about a community of people.” She also noted one of the ways the series shifts away from familiar genre expectations: “the victims aren’t young women; they’re young men – which is also tragic, but refreshing in a way”.

Kasim was similarly struck by the script’s attention to character and place. “The writing, first and foremost, was fantastic,” he said, praising the level of detail in the script. His character Michael, a social worker connected to several of the young men, immediately felt rich with possibility: “Michael seemed like a very complicated and fascinating character,” he said, “like a lot of them”. Kasim described him as “a beautiful onion on the page, beautifully written onion” – with many layers that are gradually revealed as the story progresses. 

For Elliott, who plays Barclay, the biggest appeal of The Dark was its mood. “I love darkness when it comes to the arts,” he said, “But it’s a really delicate balance to get that tone right.” He adds that the isolated Highland setting was central to that atmosphere. “There is this sort of strangeness about that part of the world being so isolated,” he said, “but that really bleeds into the community and the characters.”

That landscape ranges from being a striking backdrop to playing an active role in the drama. Baxendale recalled filming on “a real working farm with like 300 geese and a dead calf on the day we got there”, describing the environment as “rain-soaked”, “wind-blown” and “a blasted farm”. For her, the harshness of the setting deepened her understanding of Bethany: “It seemed to fill in parts of our character,” she said, adding that it “really filled out my understanding of who she was”. The landscape’s “epicness” made it feel like “another character”.

Kasim agreed that the setting brings an immediate psychological weight. “You get the character’s backstory for free when you put people living in those environments,” he said. The choice to live somewhere so remote reveals something about the characters before they even speak: “There’s a particular type of person that chooses to make those decisions and live in that environment.” He also appreciated that the series avoids overly romanticising Scotland, instead capturing a harsher truth. “There is beauty in the reality,” he said, and portraying something “a bit more dark, a bit heavier, a bit more realistic can draw out the natural beauty in things”.

At the centre of the story is a crime that reopens older wounds. When the series begins, Bethany and Barclay are already living with the disappearance of Bethany’s oldest son. “They’re already in crisis,” Elliott said. “There’s a massive amount of trauma there.” Monica’s arrival with devastating new information only adds to that heartbreak, forcing the couple to confront the possibility of losing another child. For Elliott, the drama lies in watching how that grief changes them: “To watch what that does to a couple in isolation, I think, is really fascinating.” Rather than pushing them in one obvious direction, the news tests whether they will come together or draw a wedge between them: “It’s not black and white, it’s really complicated.”

“It’s kind of a horror story, as well as a detective story – each character has their own private horrors already going on before the actual horror arrives,” Baxendale agrees, adding that even before the events of the show, “Bethany is dealing with so much already and trying to hold it together.” For her, the terror of The Dark is not only in the ritualistic crime itself, but in the private devastation it unleashes: “It’s really a horror on a personal level.” 

Michael’s relationship to the case is different, but similarly fraught. As a social worker involved with many of the victims, Kasim said Michael has “boundary issues between his own personal life” and the way he relates to those he is meant to protect. Without revealing too much, he hinted at the character’s morally dubious role in the drama, particularly “how complicit or not complicit he is in the disappearances of these young men”. 

The cast also reflected on why audiences remain so drawn to stories that explore the darker sides of human behaviour. “I’m fascinated by true crime and thrillers and the dark side of life,” Elliott admitted, suggesting that part of the appeal lies in being able to watch fictional darkness from a safe remove. Kasim, meanwhile, pointed to the fascination of seeing a world where “the norms are being broken”, while Baxendale saw it more instinctively: “I think it engages our fight or flight mechanism in a safe way.”

Christina Yang

The Dark is released on ITVX on 12^th July 2026.

Watch the trailer for The Dark here: