Platform Seven

Product Information

The first 30% or so of this novel proposes a slow and atmospheric take on the ghost story. Louise Doughty's use of the supernatural, although patchy, allows her to create a mosaic of the lives and troubles of the people working at Peterborough Railway Station. Forgotten and largely overlooked, they are forced to deal with horrific situations such as suicides. Through Lisa Evans, the ghost of a suicide victim, we follow some of the night staff in their everyday lives. Lisa is somehow able to tell what these people feel and think, and there is a sense of quiet resignation in the people she observes. Although depressive, very much so, it was interesting to glimpse the fears and desires of the people observed by ghost-Lisa. I found Dalmar, Tom, Melissa, and Andrew's lives interesting and affecting. Platform 7 is adapted by one of the UK’s most accomplished screenwriters, Paula Milne. The multi award-winning screenwriter is best known for The Politician’s Wife, Him, White Heat and The Virgin Queen. Filming on the production from Dancing Ledge Productions, (The Responder, The Salisbury Poisonings) took place earlier this year. Dancing Ledge Productions’ Managing Director, Chris Carey (The Responder, The Salisbury Poisonings), was executive producer on the drama alongside the company’s CEO, Laurence Bowen (The Responder, The Salisbury Poisonings) and BAFTA winning executive producer Kate Triggs (A Very British Scandal, The Trial of Christine Keeler). Paula Milne and Louise Doughty were also executive producers. There are two annexes in these standards that list the skills nurses must have, and the procedures they must be able to do when they join our register.

This is a novel that makes for an interesting construct. It ponders the nature of a purgatorial afterlife – although at times it can feel a bit woolly – but it gets into its stride when describing the intricacies of the relationship between Lisa and Matthew. It also looks at the effect of suicide on the wider community, how many people inevitably do become involved in the aftermath and the toll it can take on individuals who remain in the world. Lisa can also observe the life that comes after her demise. The story is excellent on people and setting and offers readers a chilling frisson, a read, poised on the knife-edge of life. When it does air, the four-parter will be an ITVX premiere, exclusive to ITV’s new free streaming service, many months ahead of linear transmission on ITV1 main channel. The drama is a haunting thriller following central character Lisa who, after witnessing a cataclysmic event on platform7of a railway station, finds her own fragmented memory jogged to reveal a connection between her own life and that of the event she has just witnessed.Supernatural elements combine withcontemporary realismin this chilling drama." Platform 7 cast - who's in it? This is no traditional ‘spooky’ ghost story. It’s the tale of a ghost on a quest to discover who she was and the events that led to her untimely death. Her story is a celebration of indignation versus passivity and truth versus lies. While writing it from Louise Doughty’s astute and emotionally intelligent novel, I began to feel she’s the ghost in all of us; the unseen part of us when we find ourselves reflecting on the wisdom of our past decisions. Sometimes with regret, occasionally with rancour but more often with the complicated relish of what it means to be human.”Commissioned by ITV’s Head of Drama Polly Hill from Fremantle’s Dancing Ledge Productions, (The Responder, The Salisbury Poisonings), the 4x60” series has been adapted by acclaimed and multi award-winning screenwriter Paula Milne (Him, The Politician’s Husband, White Heat) from the globally renowned, best-selling novel of the same title by Louise Doughty. A 5* rating seemed likely, however I became less enamoured with the actual story by the time I was at the halfway stage. The prose and the way Louise Doughty uses language is second to none but genuinely I did feel it went on a bit. And on..and then on a bit more. As the ghostly figure endlessly drifted and self contemplated so did my mind wander.

As Evans’s ghost can now see past and future, her partner’s former girlfriend, and also Shelley, the single mother with whom Matty will have another child, perhaps a story as well told as hers can open the eyes of the reader to patterns of behaviour that may be entirely plausible but can destroy and kill. ITV’S Head of Drama, Polly Hill, has commissioned gripping psychological thriller, Platform 7, from international production company Dancing Ledge Productions (The Responder, The Salisbury Poisonings).

Definition of platform

Finally, Doughty wraps things up. By that I mean that she explores how different characters have reacted or will react to the various events of the story. That might sound a bit basic, but Doughty makes it anything but. Despite the supernatural elements of the novel, Platform Seven is all about people making sense of their surroundings or situation, getting on, getting by, following a path or designing one for themselves. The range of characters before us is carefully assembled and we watch them all search for the thrilling within the mundane. Lisa herself needs to come to terms with her situation but the denouement doesn’t quite work for me. I am not sure why. Lisa absolutely owns the right to make the decision she does, and it’s in character. If pushed, I think it is because her declaration about it is triumphant which is understandable but jarring. I wonder if that’s what Doughty had in mind: to make us realise that we judge the outsider, the sad-hearted and even the dead. Instead of rushing to criticise, we should take joy in the vibrant and vivid colour of carrots. Recent television adaptations of Louise Doughty’s work include Apple Tree Yard and Crossfire which is also produced by Dancing Ledge Productions. Yet Platform Seven is neither a ghost story nor a murder mystery. Seeing the plot unravel through the eyes of the ghost of Evans is an interesting twist on the idea of an omniscient narrator. Perhaps it is more than that: Evans’s ghost, like all ghosts, can pass through doors, and go with apparent ease where the living struggle to go or fear to tread. Thus, fiction can be a way to reflect on matters of life and death which may be too painful to explore in real life, real though they may be to those who encounter them. This is, perhaps, true of historic sexual abuse, but also of coercive control and suicide, two of the subjects explored in Platform Seven.