Peter Kosminsky on Britz

Britz trailer



In The Times, Jasper Rees talks to writer and director Peter Kosminsky about his new two-part drama, Britz, which starts on Channel 4 on Wednesday.

You can always tell when Kosminsky has turned in a new film from the fulminating of the Establishment. Britz will be no different. He has already asked himself whether it is appropriate to humanise suicide bombers. “Does it show any kind of consideration for the relatives of people who died on 7/7? I ended up thinking, well, yes – we don’t do them a service by portraying these people as insane. That would be as silly as saying the entire German nation was in the grip of a mass psychosis during the latter half of the 1930s. It’s clear there are second-generation Muslims who are contemplating extreme action who are not monsters. I think the way to do a service to the relatives and friends of those who died on 7/7 is to try to stop it happening again. And the first step is to try to understand how it could have happened in the first place.”