This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

 Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Roughly 30 miles west of London lies the cozy town of Marlow. Beautiful meadows, quaint shops, and the gentle ripple of the Thames provide residents and visitors with a deceptively calm, tranquil atmosphere — the unexpectedly perfect setting for a murder. 

Our protagonist, Judith Potts is hard at work on this week’s crossword on a blistering July day. Once she finishes creating her latest puzzle, she rewards herself with a travel sweet, and then it’s off to the river. But nothing could prepare her for what happens next.

CLIP

Stefan: No, get away! Dear god, No!

(gunshot)

Judith: Mr. Dunwoody? Are you alright? I’m coming!

A kerfuffle followed by a gunshot at her neighbor Stefan Dunwoody’s house catches her attention while swimming, leading Judith to call the police. But when the police doubt her version of the events, Judith decides to do her own investigating and heads to her neighbor’s property. She soon finds not only the bullet casing, but also her murdered neighbor in the river. Despite being ordered to leave the case alone, Judith is far too invested to walk away.

CLIP

Tanika: Mrs. Potts, my name’s Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik. We spoke this morning.

Judith: We did.

Tanika: Can I ask, what made you return to Mr. Dunwoody’s property?

Judith: Oh, that’s easy, the gunshot I heard last night. If you weren’t going to take it seriously.

Over the course of Episode One, we meet our two other protagonists, Suzie Harris and Becks Starling, whose own stories get swept up in Judith’s orbit. At the end of Episode One, we find Judith at the police station talking with Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik about the brick and note that were recently thrown into Judith’s house. Suddenly, they get some news that makes their case even more complicated.

CLIP

Tanika: I’ve lived in this area my whole life, Mrs. Potts, and I can tell you categorically, there are no hitmen operating in Marlow.

Jason: Excuse me ma’am, there’s been another shooting in Marlow.

Today, we talk with actor Samantha Bond about playing the inquisitive and mystery-loving Judith Potts, and what might be in store for the rest of the season. 

Jace Lacob: This week, we are joined by The Marlow Murder Club star, Samantha Bond. Welcome.

Samantha Bond: Thank you. It’s lovely to be here.

Jace Lacob: Episode One of Marlow Murder Club offers Judith Potts a strikingly apt introduction. She methodically creates a crossword puzzle, strips off her clothes, and goes for a swim in the Thames. She is a woman who lives by her own rules, relishes mystery, and revels in her own freedom. What did you make of Judith when you first read the scripts?

Samantha Bond: Oh, gosh. I was sent the scripts on a Friday night asking if I’d like to be considered. And I read them over the weekend and then sent an email to my agent on the Monday saying, yes, please, very much. I hadn’t done wild swimming in the Thames, and that’s a bit of an adventure in itself, but I love a crossword puzzle. I like a glass of whiskey, but I don’t have mine at six o’clock at night, which Judith likes. It’s to give her the strength for the river, I think. But I just thought the scripts were so brilliantly, I use the word “convoluted” in a good way, because a murder mystery needs to be complicated. And that’s exactly what Robert Thorogood has done.

Jace Lacob: Mm. Robert’s Marlow novel begins with, “Mrs. Judith Potts was 77 years old and entirely happy with her life. She lived in an arts and crafts mansion on the River Thames. She had a job she loved that took up just enough of her time and no more, and best of all, she didn’t have to share her life with any man.” While your Judith is considerably younger than 77, do you feel that summation still sums her up entirely, particularly the bit at the end, that she didn’t have to share her life with any man?

Samantha Bond: Yes, I think that is a very good summation of it. She doesn’t share her life readily with anyone. She meets the other two women who are going to be crucial to solving the mystery, but she doesn’t welcome them with open arms. She is used to her own company. She’s very used to it. She’s been alone for a long time before we meet her.

Jace Lacob: As you say, she doesn’t welcome anyone with open arms. She sort of has closed arms, but closed arms are also a self-embrace. And I think that’s what I love about Judith is as much as she is sort of a solitary figure, she’s entirely content within her solitude. She likes her life, a life that she has created.

Samantha Bond: I think that’s a great description of her. Yeah, she’s very comfortable with herself, herself and her cat, I should say. She likes her life. She will enjoy the intrigue that is coming because as an archaeologist, she loves delving. She has a forensic interest in how things come around. And that’s really there from the very beginning of Season One.

Jace Lacob: Like Judith, you yourself have a passion for puzzles.

Samantha Bond: I do!

Jace Lacob: How does this manifest within your own life?

Samantha Bond: Well, I love a cryptic crossword. There were other things that I didn’t realize when we were filming Season One is how many similarities there were between Judith and my mom. Because my mom loved a crossword. She loved a glass of whiskey. She taught me how to do cryptic crosswords, because there is a sort of a learning curve to them, to know which clues you’re looking for, which clues to discard. So yeah, she’s someone I feel very familiar with.

Jace Lacob: Did you connect as well with that sort of cleverness on the part of your mother as well, that maybe that was what sort of drove that puzzle solution? Was it a cleverness? Was it additionally sort of a need for mystery?

Samantha Bond: I don’t think it’s to do with cleverness. I don’t think me or Judith or my mum would necessarily describe ourselves as clever, but hugely curious and hugely determined to solve. I think cleverness is a slightly different thing.

Jace Lacob: There is a tranquility and beauty to the opening scenes of Marlow Murder Club with Judith, a sense of freedom that’s both physical and psychological as she swims au naturel in the river by her home. There’s the physical aspect, but you’re also working here to establish this character from the jump. How challenging was it to film these swimming, punting scenes?

Samantha Bond: It’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done in nearly 43 years in this business. The River Thames is beautiful, but it is awesome. And at Marlow, it’s very, very big. You know, I live very near the Thames in London, but the Thames in London is kind of quiet. In Marlow, it’s immense. And that was a very daunting day.

Jace Lacob: Your husband Alex is a keen wild swimmer. Did he offer you any tips ahead of time before you jumped in?

Samantha Bond: No, he didn’t. But he is a keen wild water swimmer, and he talked a lot about the cold but no, all I can say is it’s very frightening and I was being very brave, and I would pay squillions to have been in a water tank but I wasn’t.

Jace Lacob: I love the moment when DS Tanika Malik calls and asks for Judith Potts and Judith says,

CLIP

Judith: Hello.

Tanika: Good morning. This is Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik. Is Mrs. Judith Potts there?

Judith: I’ll just get her for you. [clears throat.] Hello, Judith Potts here.

Jace Lacob: It’s such a telling moment about appearances and propriety. Why do you think she does this?

Samantha Bond: Well, it’s partly, mainly because the phone call has woken her, and she’s still very sleepy, and she’s got her very sleepy voice, and she doesn’t want to be heard like that. So, she pops a light on, she takes a slug of water, she sits up, I think, and tries to sound like the normal Judith Potts. I’m sure we’ve all done it.

Jace Lacob: I might have to after this. I pick up the phone and I’m feeling slightly not myself and pretend to be my assistant, perhaps. I like it.

Samantha Bond: Your generation will have their mobile phone by their bed, so you can see who’s calling and you can decide whether to pick it up or not. Judith doesn’t have that. As you will discover, she’s not very good with mobile phones and iPads and modern technology. But all she knows is that the landline beside her bed has run and she should answer it.

Jace Lacob: So, Stefan Dunwoody’s body is missing. The police doubt Judith’s story. But she knows what she heard. She says to her cat,

CLIP

Judith: The problem is, we’re empiricists, aren’t we Jasper? To investigate, we will need the right tools. Knowledge can be derived by what is observed and measured, and I know what I observed.

Jace Lacob: This is a transformative moment, as Judith goes from busybody to archaeologist with her kit. How did you look to play that internal shift?

Samantha Bond: I think it was just the truth of the story that Judith was in. She did know what she’d heard. I think at some point someone suggests it was a motorcycle backfiring. She knows it wasn’t. She also knows that she called out to Stefan to see if he was alright, to which there was no reply. She knows she heard a kerfuffle, which is one of my favorite words.

Jace Lacob: The best.

Samantha Bond: And I think it’s all of that that leads her to the chest of drawers to get her archaeology equipment out. She knows there’s something to be found. She doesn’t know what it is yet. That’s the way her head works. I will go and discover. And she does.

Jace Lacob: And she does. And yet, she hides her kit from Tanika behind her back, despite minutes earlier measuring bullets and using all manner of investigative skills. Why does Judith conceal her true nature here? What goes through her head in the moment Tanika walks up and she hides her kit?

Samantha Bond: Oh, that’s a very good question. Is it because she doesn’t want Tanika to know that she’s measured the bullet? She doesn’t want to disclose. She’s disappointed already with the police investigation so far, so why should she share with this woman that she doesn’t yet know? I think it’s all of those things combined. I think, yeah, just not wanting to give away too much, not until she knows the truth.

Jace Lacob: So, we’re still in Episode One. We’re a long way off from establishing the crime solving team of the series. But I am curious, what does Judith make of Tanika initially, as either a possible collaborator or a foe? What does it mean that DS Malick is a woman rather than a man here? Does it complicate or simplify their dynamic at all?

Samantha Bond: I think Judith would be even less willing to share had it been a man. But I think it’s Tanika really who shows wariness of Judith rather than the other way around. Although, as I’ve just said, I think that Judith doesn’t believe the police have done a good enough job and if Tanika is the front of that, then I think she would be wary to trust her.

MIDROLL

Jace Lacob: There’s a lot of unexpected humor within The Marlow Murder Club. I love the scene, for example, where Judith finds Becks hiding out inside the church cupboard. How do you think humor differentiates The Marlow Murder Club from other murder mysteries? Do comedic moments like that one help to puncture some of the show’s tension?

Samantha Bond: I think absolutely the humor is hugely important. And yes, as you say, the scene with Becks is gorgeously silly. And I think that’s where Robert’s so clever. Just when you think things are getting a bit, maybe a little bit too serious, something sometimes, frankly, ludicrous happens. I think the humor’s a huge part of it.

Jace Lacob: Judith uses her tin of travel sweets to her advantage, but she also excels at finding people’s emotional triggers. She quotes the Bible at Becks, “Whomsoever knows what is right to do, and fails to do it for him, it is a sin.” to get her on side. Where does Judith’s emotional intelligence, knowing how to push the right buttons, come from?

Samantha Bond: Well, I think we were talking about cleverness earlier, but she may not be, or she wouldn’t think of herself necessarily as clever, but she is enormously well read, enormously well educated, and she will draw on anything to get to the soul of someone else.

Jace Lacob: I love, “…get to the soul of someone else.” I love that. What does Judith make of Becks and Suzie? Does she see herself in them somehow, kindred spirits? They all, to me, seem a bit lost in their own way, initially.

Samantha Bond: Yes, I think that’s true. I don’t think that Judith initially thinks of them as kindred spirits. But I think she thinks they could be useful. She’s not shy of using people. And they offer different things. So, Judith is relatively new to the area, as is indeed Becks. But Becks is part of the church, and therefore a solid part of the community. Suzie knows a whole lot of different people. So, I don’t think Judith is shy to use their knowledge, to use the other bits, frankly, that they can bring to an investigation.

Jace Lacob: What is it like filming in the real-life Marlow in Buckinghamshire, which is most distinctly not a murder hotspot?

Samantha Bond: It is not a murder hotspot, but it is beautiful, and all the locations you see are in Marlow. So, we never go more than, oh, I don’t know, five, seven miles outside. And I lived there, I stayed there. And just the warmest people and they could choose two things. They could decide that we were really, really annoying and could we please go away? And then they decided we weren’t terribly annoying. So, it was a gorgeous experience doing it. And every cafe you see, every coffee shop, every auction house, everything you see is real and is in Marlow.

Jace Lacob: Does that lend itself some kind of reality? Does it anchor it in a way that other shows set in fictional locales that are not shooting in actual places can’t achieve?

Samantha Bond: Yeah, I think it gives it an authenticity. And in Season One, we have the regatta and there are actors there, obviously acting at the regatta, but the rest of the regatta is going on regardless. I mean, it’s just heaven.

Jace Lacob: By the end of Episode One, Judith hasn’t yet crossed paths with Suzie, but the sleuths are starting to come together, particularly as Suzie is drawn into this web through the discovery of the body of her client, Iqbal. What can you tease about what lies ahead in the next three episodes?

Samantha Bond: Judith has got to the point in Episode One when she even hears a police siren, she reacts. So, she knows that Stefan was killed. She knows that. She’s certain. And then she hears police sirens just a wee bit across town, so she pursues them. And that’s when she first meets Suzie, who’s very distressed, because it’s, as you say, a client of Suzie, the dog walker, who has been killed. So, Judith makes an absolute point of befriending a woman she’s never met before who might have some secret or an opening into the next crime.

Jace Lacob: Your earliest television roles include Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park and Miss Liz in Rumpel of the Bailey. Your parents were both in the industry. How did your desire to act professionally come about?

Samantha Bond: Oh, well, what I wanted to be was a ballerina. And I went to regular school, but I was training three or four times a week with the junior Rambert. And when I was 14, I was like a stick insect. And then I did puberty, and I became rather large, and my mom used to call me the bouncing ballerina. However, at the age of 15, you apply to senior ballet schools, which I did, and I didn’t get in. And then I walked back into my grammar school in the September, and I had this incredible teacher called Berenice Goodwin, who taught handwriting, calligraphy, art and history of art.

And when I walked back into school in the senior years, I don’t know what they are in American terms, but I was 16 years old. And she went, oh, you’re still here. I didn’t get into ballet school. And then she puts the script of Electra into my hands. And she had worked professionally in the theater as a director, as a dancer, as a choreographer. So, our school plays were in a small, but professional theater in London. And that was it really.

She directed me in three plays. We had a boy’s school down the road and I must’ve done three plays with them. There’s a famous production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in which I appeared with Hughie Grant and Nigella Lawson, none of us playing the leads. So, it was really the script Elektra, let’s do it. And that was it really.

Jace Lacob: Amazing. I was going to ask about Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which is amazing to me that you were on stage alongside Hugh Grant and Nigella Lawson in a school production, of all places, is amazing. I saw you perform opposite Dame Judi Dench in Amy’s View at the Aldwych, which remains a hallmark of theater for me. How did that experience shape the actor that you are today?

Samantha Bond: Oh, gosh. That’s a huge question. I’ve got to try and do this without crying, okay?

Jace Lacob: Oh.

Samantha Bond: But no, it’s okay, because we’ve just lost Maggie. So, I did Three Tall Women with Maggie Smith when I was about 35, and then I did Amy’s View with Judy when I was 38-ish. And you’re working with, oh, it’s like being on stage or trying to race against some thoroughbred horse. And you do everything within your power to… you can’t equal them, but to support them well enough so that they can give the performance of a lifetime.

And both Maggie and Judy, in those two plays gave the performances of, I mean, they’ve both given many, but it’s an immense privilege. You have to try quite hard not to be too daunted. And of course, the thing about Judy is it can always make her laugh. Maggie didn’t corpse.

Jace Lacob: That tracks, that tracks. You mentioned Dame Maggie Smith. We are sadly speaking shortly after her passing. On the day her death was announced, I went back and watched Downton Abbey: A New Era again. Did the end of that film, did filming those funeral scenes for Violet take on a new resonance now that Maggie has passed?

Samantha Bond: To be honest, I haven’t… I’ve got a tissue. The shock of her passing and the grief at her loss has been so immense, that I haven’t thought about Downton Abbey. That’s the truth. What I keep trying to hold on to is the immense privilege. So, if I say I was 34 or 35 when we did Three Tall Women, I’m about to be 63, so to have had her for 30 years and the Downton years, you know, is a huge privilege. And then in the theatrical charity world, we have here a charity called the Royal Theatrical Fund, and I’m very honored to be currently the chair. But Maggs has been a vice president for, oh, maybe seven or eight years.

So, when she wasn’t working, once a month, we’d meet anyway, and we might have lunch. Sir Derek Jacobi is another vice president, and of course they’ve known each other since they were 25. So, I just feel, as I say, immensely privileged to have had that friendship in my life.

Jace Lacob: Samantha Bond, thank you so very much.

Samantha Bond: It’s been a great pleasure, bless you.

Next time, Judith, Suzie and Becks work together to gather more information. 

CLIP

Becks: The receipt for it is written in Elliot’s handwriting.

Judith: How can you know that?

Suzie: Because Becks managed to get a photo of it.

Becks: Only because you created the most brilliant diversion.

Suzie: Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Up top.

In three weeks, actor Samantha Bond joins us once again to look back on the season and bring this whodunit to a close.