ITV hit drama Trigger Point, starring Vicky McClure (Line of Duty, Alex Rider) as an Explosives Officer in London, is back on U.K. screens for season 3, and the creative team is touting its more cinematic look and feel.
Season 3 lead writer Chris Brandon (Bloodlands) and director Jamie Donoughue (Doctor Who, A Discovery of Witches), who joined Audrey Cooke (Trigger Point, DI Ray) on the new season, are two key players in making sure the series returns with a bang.
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Produced by Jed Mercurio’s (Line of Duty, Bodyguard) HTM Television, in association with All3Media International, which distributes the series internationally, Trigger Point follows a team of bomb disposal officers in London, dedicated to keeping the capital safe from dangerous devices and terrorist threats.
Returning cast members include Eric Shango (On the Edge) as Danny, Nabil Elouahabi (Blue Lights, Unforgotten) as Hassan “Hass” Rahim, Natalie Simpson (North Sea Connection) as DS Helen Morgan, and Maanuv Thiara (DI Ray, Landscapers) as DI Amar Batra. Jason Flemyng (Gemma Bovery, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) guest stars in season 3 as the antagonist.
THR caught up with Donoughue and Brandon to go behind the scenes of season 3, which premiered on Sunday, and shooting season 4, set to debut in 2026, right after.
Loud bangs, plus wires and explosives that must be defused, may provide much action and tension, but Trigger Point runs much deeper, both emphasized. “I actually think the emotional journey that Lana goes on is what attracted me to the show more than any action, because that’s when a director really connects with an actor, when we can really dig in and find those special moments,” explained Donoughue. “Ultimately, that’s what the audience connects with – the emotional journey that the characters are on. That’s how people can relate. The bombs and action are a lot of fun, but getting that balance right is key.”
McClure gets the nuances of this balance right, the director noted. “Vicky is the queen of being able to do these technical performances around bombs and explosions, but then also being able to tap into that emotional journey of what’s happened to Lana,” he said.
“When we create the story, we always endeavor to ground it and bring some truth to it,” explained Brandon. “That’s why we brought a complex antagonist for Lana who would add to her own psychological complications and make her go, ‘Where do I stand?’ So it’s been fantastic having Vicky and Jason.”
The writer enjoyed unwrapping layers of a story and complex characters across multiple episodes. “Where we are now in drama is a really unique position to be able to show the very human story that gets somebody from A to B, whether that’s a to b as a bomber or a to b as a bomb disposal expert,” he told THR. “Because we’re so used now to short sound bites, it’s great to be able to just take somebody on a very muddy journey. They might not seem or be nice, but this is the reason they’re there.”
At the same time, Trigger Point wanted to return for season 3 with a more cinematic look and feel. “It was a real conscious way to go at it and elevate and evolve the show wherever we can, especially visually and cinematically,” Donoughue told THR. “If we can elevate it, it brings something fresh to the audience. And Trigger Point is one of the gems of ITV and British TV, and it should be standing up to the big American shows as well. So, I worked really hard with our DP Chas Bain to evolve its look. It needs to still feel familiar to the audience, but we wanted to lean into that cinematic experience more.”
McClure told THR she was very happy with the result: “The previous two [seasons] remain really strong pieces of telly, but we have elevated the show from there. We’ve moved into a different kind of realm. We’re watching something that all of a sudden just feels like it has got a much bigger budget than it does.”
How was shooting seasons 3 and 4 consecutively? “It all worked in blocks. So I took the first three episodes, and all those three episodes, every scene, were jumbled up together into a schedule,” explained Donoughue. “We can’t shoot in chronological order. So keeping this jigsaw in your head is hard from a continuity point for me, but also for the actors. Jumping into scene 27 of episode 3 before we’re doing scene 13 of episode 1 can be crazy. So we should all give a shoutout to our script supervisor Hannah [Kenneally-Muir]. Her knowledge of scripts is insane, and that’s who we rely on, because it is too much for us all to keep in our heads.”
Brandon loved having a broader two-season canvas to paint on. “It has been really interesting this year, filming two seasons back-to-back,” he told THR. “Doing a run of 12 episodes is fantastic. And being able to think about that in two slightly different rhythmic balances. Because I write to music, I tend to think in terms of music. So, it was really nice to be able to go across two seasons and create a rhythm that is different.”
His approach was to think of key story destinations. “We need to move the story to this point by the end of season three, and then kick it on in season four and add something different again so that hopefully there’ll be variety,” Brandon said. “I think of it like a Dan Brown book. When you get to the end of a chapter of a Dan Brown book, I’ve got to read the next one. You want to find that kind of drive.”
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