New ITV crime drama After The Flood opened with Lee Ellison (Jonas Armstrong) diving into a raging torrent to rescue a baby!
The infant had been washed out of his mother's arms by a surge of flood water, but Lee plucked his car seat from the water and handed him to PC Jo Marshall (Sophie Rundle) before being swept away himself.
It was a scene that had millions of viewers on the edge of their seats and set the tone for a fast-flowing opening episode, in which PC Marshall found herself investigating a sinister murder. But how was it filmed?
We spoke to the cast and crew who made it all happen...
"We filmed that scene right at the end of the shoot," says Jonas Armstrong. "It was the one I was looking forward to the most — you couldn't get me up there on that bank quick enough!"
Jonas says the original plan was to film the action sequence in various different sections, yet after completing the different shots, the actor spoke to the show's director Azhur Saleem and asked if he could try to complete a more complicated take.
"All in all, I think I was swept down that river more than 20 times," he explains. "We decided to do it in sections, but on the last day we tried to part of it in one shot."
In the episode, Jonas runs down the bank, jumps into the water and retrieves the baby from some debris, before being forced under a bridge, where the baby comes out of its car seat. Jonas then emerges from under the bridge with the baby in his arms and passes it to Sophie Rundle.
"We tried to do the bit where Lee goes through, gets over to Sophie, passes her the baby, grabs the rail and then gets swept off, in one go — but we couldn't do it the first time and I smashed my leg!" he says. "We decided to have one more go and on the very last take we got it, so everybody was delighted."
The scene gave viewers a taste of what it might be like to be caught up in rising flood waters, but After The Flood director Azhur Saleem says it was actually filmed in two separate locations, 250 miles apart.
"We filmed al lot of it at The Tees Barrage, which is like a white watercourse in the North East," he says. "We recced it in October, but it was pretty cold by the time we shot it in January and February last year. We storyboarded that opening scene over and over again and treated it like the writing process, where we just kept refining it and refining it."
"We were really getting very specific about where to put the camera and getting right in there with the characters. This is a real event that happens all the time all over the country, so I didn't want to have kind of a glossy feeling to it, we wanted the audience to be in there with the characters and experience it."
Saleem explains that while everything in the water was filmed at The Tees Barrage, everything else was filmed on a road in North Manchester.
"My favourite cut is when Jonas jumps in," he says. "Because it's a separation of three months and 250 miles! Fair play to Jonas, he did the exact same jump!"
Armstrong rightly earned plenty of plaudits for his commitment during the shoot, yet Sophie Rundle also had to spend hours in the water, as her character PC Jo Marshall helped rescue the baby.
"It was amazing how strong the water was, even when it was at a very low level current," she says. "I was like, 'I'll be fine, I'll wade in!' But the power of the water went from zero to 10 and at a level three you could barely stand up! We had this amazing water safety team rescue team, who were basically massive blokes. They said 'if you fall over, just just go with it and we'll catch you down the river somewhere!' By the end I had bruises all over me, but it was really good fun!"
After The Flood airs on Wednesdays at 9pm on ITV
