"Heavenly new TV role for actor Neil"

Taken from the "Birmingham Post" 17 February 1998, by Rob Driscoll

Neil Pearson relished taking on what surely amounts to the meatiest role of
his career - the power-crazed patriarch of an idyllic Amish-style community.
But he made sure that the demanding portrayal of deranged cult leader
Richard Bennett in BBC1's powerful new two-part psychological thriller
Heaven on Earth never got to him at the end of each day of a gruelling
ten-week shoot.

"There's a lot of emotional baggage that comes with a complex character like
Richard, so it was important for me to switch off and relax in the evening,"
says Neil.

One way he eased up was by staying at a picturesque cottage in remotest
mid-Wales, a couple of miles from where the drama was filmed in and around
Brecon.

"It was a cottage in the middle of nowhere with a babbling brook at the
front and back; it looked like Enid Blyton had built it!" laughs Neil, who
describes himself as a "hardcore townie".

"It was an extraordinary, dingly-dell sort of place which I thought I might
have some urban antipathy towards but I became very fond of it.
"Although I did have to stick a satellite dish out in the field so I could
watch football on TV - the Italy versus England game was on and I wasn't
going to miss that!

"The only complaint I got about the dish was from from the cows who trampled
it, so I had to move it again."

Written by Adrian Hodges, Heaven on Earth is an uncompromising and
compelling depiction of how a troubled, young middle-class family opts out
of the London rat race for a seemingly utopian alternative lifestyle in
rural Wales - and how it all goes frighteningly-wrong.

When thrusting, 30-something graphic designer Richard Bennett (Neil Pearson)
and his wife Deborah (Geraldine Somerville of Cracker fame) reach a crisis
in their lives, they lose everything - and very nearly each other.
In a desperate attempt to rebuild their marriage and secure a future for
their nine-year-old daughter, they leave the city for the place where
Deborah was brought up - the Community of the Faithful, an ancient group of
brethren who lead simple lives in the remote countryside, cut off from the
modern world.

But the idyll doesn't last and Richard becomes obsessed with the new way of
life. He even believes he is touched by God and his passionate conversion
unleashes an unforeseen brutality that puts the safety of his wife and child
at enormous risk.

After Pearson's resounding success as charmer news reporter Dave in Drop the
Dead Donkey, and cynical bed-hopper Supt Tony Clark in Between the Lines,
the sex-symbol actor's latest small screen creation may come as a shock to many
of his fans.

Neil himself sees it as part of the welcome variety of his job.
"Richard Bennett is a fascinating man to play, especially as it would be all
too easy to write him off as evil, the big bad villain," says Neil.
"In reality, he's a very sick man. And what he thinks is his conversion is
actually a nervous breakdown.

"Everything he's been suppressing and trying to cope with finally overwhelms
him.

"I certainly don't think Heaven on Earth is condemning all sects and
`opt-out' communities. I can personally appreciate the need for sects in a
complicated world where the attraction of an easy answer is obvious.
"And I think Adrian Hodge's depiction of a sect that preys on the weak and
vulnerable is very real. Anything fanatical is scary."

Avid Spurs fan Pearson had planned on taking a welarned break to coincide
with the World Cup this summer, but instead he'll be treading the boards in
the West End transfer of the National Theatre comedy hit Closer.

"I'll probably find myself playing a Saturday matinee to 40 Koreans while
England are playing Brazil in the semi-finals - so if you hear I'm a bit
under the weather that day, you'll probably guess why."

Pearson hopes he'll be making a fifth series of Drop the Dead Donkey by the
end of the year.

"We were going to knock it on the head but everyone rather fancies having a
go at a new-ish government.

"We've done five series under the Tories so it would only be fair to have a
go at New Labour. We're equal opportunity offenders - we'll have a go at
anybody."

Heaven on Earth (BBC1) starts on Sunday, February 22.