A love triangle, rather than a real-life espionage case, was the starting point for BBC One's new Cold War thriller Honey. Writer Emma Moran initially wanted to create a rom-com with a "Bridget Jones style love triangle", before finding that adding a spy thriller element "weirdly felt quite natural". The result is a fictional story set against the backdrop of the Cold War, with some genuine spy details woven in. Honey makes its debut tonight, 14 November, at 9pm on BBC One.
The series follows Martha Schmitt (Ann Skelly), a 24-year-old deep-cover MI6 operative whose cover is constantly at risk. She must evade the suspicions of Friedrich Baumann (Jannis Niewöhner), the newly appointed Stasi Head of Counterespionage against British Targets, Berlin Office.
The BBC teased: "Finding herself caught between Friedrich and the reckless, arrogant CIA operative Aaron Neeland (Nate Mann), she is blindsided by desire in this Cold War ménage à trois. The risk of being garrotted or incarcerated is nothing compared to the horrifying ordeal of falling in love. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable and bearing your heart and soul? She'd rather have her fingernails pulled out."
While the setting is historical, the storyline is entirely fictional and is not based on real events. Moran told the BBC: "I found it easy to combine a brutal Cold War setting with comedy. When you read a lot of the history around that time, so much of it feels just completely absurd.
"When you're trying to squeeze people's really messy lives into a political framework that requires quite defined edges, it naturally becomes inherently silly." Discussing historical and political accuracy, Moran said she did some "baseline research" to make sure they were not going "down the completely wrong road".
She explained: "But we're not holding ourselves to completely specific historical accuracy in every way as this is a love story, it's not a documentary. There are some incredible real spy details that have made it into the show, which make it better.
"When Martha opens Kurt's spy kit, there's a pair of fake testicles in there, which was fully ripped from the CIA's own handbook - you put them over the natural ones, and then you can keep stuff in a little pocket. The truth is stranger than fiction sometimes."
Moran also drew inspiration from other works, frequently referencing the film An Officer and a Gentleman during the writing process. She added: "There was also a book of photographs from Stasi archives that I kept going back to because it was photographs that weren't massively important or categorised.
"There's this fantastic photo of a Stasi officer who had been surveilling someone, and then there's this photo of his cat on his bed. You just see a little bit of humanity in that moment. They are just people. It was those photos I kept coming back to remind me of the tone."
Skelly described the series as playing with familiar romcom tropes and characters while placing them in recent history. She said it was about "very oppressive governments with very oppressive political ideology that try to control and infiltrate people's relationships and lives".
Discussing its exploration of desire, she added: "But the nature of people and human nature is that we can't help but push through and Honey reflects the resilience of that effort. The show also explores the importance of love, sexuality and eroticism and the stakes of what it means to be alive."
Honey airs tonight, 14 November, on BBC One at 9pm.
See more of the stories you love from Daily Express and find us easily in Google by making us a Preferred Source. Free and easy-to-do, just click here to activate or add us as Preferred Source in your Google search settings.