John Simm has warned his new thriller 'Grace' will terrify viewers.

John Simm

John Simm

The 50-year-old actor plays a detective haunted by the disappearance of his wife in the upcoming ITV show, which is set to horrify the audience by playing with their imagination.

He told the Daily Star newspaper's Hot TV column: “Often with these things it’s what you don’t see. The reaction you get from the faces of people who have seen it is often even more frightening.

“In this day and age, things on screen can be so graphic. What is there to film that we haven’t seen? I don’t particularly like watching horror films and things like that. I think people are numb to it now. Your imagination is far scarier than anything else. You can show horrors without showing the actual horror itself.”

'Grace' is an adaptation of Peter James' novels and will be broadcast in two feature-length instalments, which have been filmed in Brighton with 'Morse' writer Russell Lewis handling the script.

He said: "I'm thrilled and honoured to be involved in bringing Peter James' brilliantly gripping series of Roy Grace novels to ITV. Each story is a fantastic, hair-raising, twisting, switch-back of a roller-coaster ride that grips the reader from first to last, and the opportunity to translate that best-selling magic to television is like all one's Christmases and birthdays come at once. As his millions of fans and admirers are well aware, Peter's meticulous research and eye for detail is the stuff of legend.

"His long-established, close relationship with the police, taken together with a knowledge of Brighton and the South Coast that is the sole preserve of the born and bred lends his stories an unimpeachable veracity of place and procedure. That John Simm will be breathing flesh to the bones of Roy Grace really is the cherry on a dark, and troublingly encrimsoned cake ..."

However, John was worried the series would not be able to wrap filming due to the coronavirus pandemic.

He added: “I was terrified we might not be able to film it at all. We really thought it was in jeopardy.”


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