Cold Blood, a six-episode miniseries based on the novel by Ian McGuire and starring Colin Farrell, will premiere on Movistar +. The fiction will be able to be seen from November and will also be available on demand.
The series follows in the footsteps of Patrick Sumner (Jack O’Connell), a young surgeon still scarred by the horrors of his experience as a sergeant in the British Army in India. With the idea of hiding from the ghosts of the past, he opts to enlist as a medic aboard the Volunteer, a whaler about to set sail from Yorkshire on an expedition to the icy waters of the Arctic.
During the hard journey, Sumner meets the ship’s official harpooner, Henry Drax (Colin Farrell), a cold and ruthless fellow who seems to have grounded all sense of morals. In the midst of a hostile environment, surrounded by men in daily struggle for survival, the young and inexperienced Sumner is soon caught on a disastrous journey under the latent threat of a bloody psychopath, with no other outlet than the icy vastness of the ocean.
Created, directed and written by Andrew Haigh, the cast also features Stephen Graham as Captain Brownlee in command of the ship; Tom Courtenay as Baxter, the owner of the whaler; Sam Spruell as Cavendish, the ship’s first mate; and Peter Mullan in an episodic role in the last chapter.
“This is a story about the shadows that exist within the heart of man,” Farrell said of the project. “Drax – the character played by Colin Farrell – is more than a villain, he’s a monster,” McGuire noted.
The production has been shot in the English city of Hull and in the frozen archipelago of Svalbard, located in the Arctic. The filming unit traveled for three weeks at 81 degrees north, to what is considered the northernmost point that has never been filmed before. The ship is also a real recreation physically taken to the Arctic to roll. “We felt like we were on another planet,” Graham said. “It was scary and damn cold. We had a feeling we shouldn’t be there,” Spruell added.
