#1i19

Shot on location in an old bomb crater in Painshill Park, Surrey, the Them’s hideaway is contained by steep, sloping banks that deliberately echo the walls around the Garden of Eden. It forms the perfect place for Adam and his hell-hound to hang out with his friends.

“As soon as I saw a photograph,” says Michael, referring to a shot of the proposed location, “I knew the crater would be significant. This is where Adam has found his world, his Eden, unaware that he’s the Antichrist, and a bomb has gone off here. It was a happy accident!” he declares, before explaining how further subliminal visual strands weave through the show. “You don’t see the ‘through line’ when you read the script,” he says, alluding to the main theme or idea that runs through a piece of work, “but I have the needle that stitches it all together. You can only do one piece at a time, and one influences the next, but the whole thing comes together as circular storytelling. So, in Hogback Wood we have the crater, and that mirrors the shape of the Garden of Eden and Aziraphale’s bookshop. It’s the ball, your eye, a water drop, our Earth, and one of the oldest images in the world of the snake eating its own tail. It’s also Yin and Yang,” Michael points out, mindful of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship as he refers to the Chinese theory of opposing forces coming together to form a whole. “The circle of life itself.”