A sparky HETV reimagining of Naomi Alderman’s award-winning speculative novel, The Power, subverts gender dynamics with an electrifying twist.  We speak to three of the show’s DPs – Ollie Downey BSC, Ruairí O’Brien BSC ISC and Carlos Catalan – about their work.

In a rather literal bolt from the blue, women suddenly find themselves armed with the ability to electrocute at will in The Power, the small-screen adaptation of Naomi Alderton’s 2016 Women’s Prize-winning novel. Its nuanced web of plotlines, locations and characters – including a Seattle mayor and her family, a Nigerian video journalist, and a troubled foster child in the Bible Belt – lends the sci-fi story perfectly to an episodic format, with no sacrifice in scale.

The Amazon Studios and Sister production’s journey to the screen has been as charged as its scripts, it seems. Production kicked off before the pandemic in 2019, with Reed Morano ASC and Colin Watkinson BSC ASC as block one director and DP respectively; in 2022 Deadline revealed the pair had departed the project, along with then-stars Leslie Mann and Tim Robbins. Toni Collette and Josh Charles later stepped into Mann and Robbins’ shoes for reshoots, while Raelle Tucker joined as showrunner. Despite the personnel fluctuations, the result is a glossy homage to Alderton’s writing.

Read the full interview here in British Cinematographer.