Netflix has added the Toby Jones drama Captial, a critically acclaimed but widely forgotten series that originally aired on BBC One.
Based on John Lanchester’s best-selling novel of the same name, it tells the story of how one London street is transformed by huge increases in property prices. The three-part drama, first shown in 2015, has been hard to find and isn’t available on BBC iPlayer, however, Netflix UK users can now enjoy it.
Capital follows the lives of the people on the street and sees their fear when they all receive an anonymous postcard through their front doors bearing a simple message: “We Want What You Have”. Who is behind the anonymous hate campaign? And what do they want?
Capital has a great cast including Toby Jones (Mr Bates vs The Post Office), Lesley Sharp (Scott and Bailey), Rachael Stirling (Detectorists), Wunmi Mosaku (Passenger) and Gemma Jones (Wicked Little Letters).
Talking at the time about his character and why he took the part, Toby said: “Roger isn’t an evil banker, he’s a slightly complacent banker. He’s become used to a certain way of life and has a self-imposed pressure to live that way. He spends a lot of money on things that other people don’t spend money on — for example fixtures and fittings — but that is normal to him and his wife. He is not totally in charge of his life or his work.
“What really attracted me to the part was that he’s a very well-educated, functioning human being on one level, who has obeyed the rules and earned a lot of money; but on another level, something is happening to him internally that he doesn’t have the language to articulate.
“Something is shifting and changing within him, and what happens to him in the story makes him realise that his life is not all it might be. It’s a creeping dissatisfaction, a creeping sense of loss and directionlessness. He has no way of expressing that or even understanding it himself. He’s not self-reflective in that way and lives with someone who seems to be totally un-self-reflective too.”
Capital reminds us of The Hour, in the fact it was another BBC drama that was critically acclaimed but almost forgotten and is now available to enjoy on Netflix. The Hour, starring Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai and Dominic West, was set in the 1950s and revolved around a news show.
You can watch Capital on Netflix in the UK now (in the US you can watch it via BritBox and PBS).