March of time

MISTRESSES star Shelley Conn is an international celebrity these days.

She’s among the cast of ITV1’s new supernatural drama Marchlands, “attending” the London press launch by satellite from Los Angeles. And she’s just completed filming the £100m Steven Spielberg TV series Terra Nova, in Australia.

The Spielberg drama is set in prehistoric times and Conn beat competition from many of Hollywood’s leading ladies to grab the role.

“It was pretty overwhelming to get the lead female in a Steven Spielberg production,”

she admits. “Of course, I’m over the moon and am enjoying the work a lot.

It’s not every day you get to work with dinosaurs.

“I’ll admit I was a little unenthusiastic about the first audition because I never thought I had a chance of getting it. But my boyfriend encouraged me to take it seriously and he did a great job of filming the action-packed scenes – shaking the camera for explosions and roaring for the dinosaur ‘noises off’.

“The response to this first tape was positive and then followed a series of further auditions which culminated three months later with me going to LA.”

Conn’s previous TV work includes Down To Earth, Mersey Beat, Casualty and Party Animals (with Doctor Who Matt Smith). But she’s most recognised for her role in Mistresses. “Kids still remember my tiny role in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (she played Princess Pondichery) and I still get asked whether there will be a second series of Party Animals,”

she says.

ITV1’s five-part drama Marchlands follows three families living in the same house in the Sixties, Eighties and the present day. They’re linked by the spirit of a young girl from the Sixties family who died in mysterious circumstances.

Conn features in the present day strand as pregnant Nisha, who’s disturbed by the ghost of a little girl. She says the subject of the supernatural fascinates rather than terrifies her. “I’ve never had a close encounter with a ghost, but I have seen and felt things that felt other-worldly to me,” she says.

“I believe in souls and am quite fascinated by what happens to a soul when a person dies.

“Maybe the energy gets absorbed back into the universe, maybe it gets absorbed into a new body. I don’t know, but it has to go somewhere.”

IN Louis Theroux: The Ultra Zionists, the presenter spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Even mainstream settlements in the area are regarded as highly controversial and one of the key obstacles to a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, but the extreme settlers are basing their claim to the land on the promises made by God.

Some are prepared to take what they consider to be practical action to achieve their goal.

The presenter meets Daniel Luria, an Australian from Melbourne, who now lives in the occupied territories in the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. He believes that the presence of Jews in Jerusalem is a crucial part of the redemptive process that will ultimately pave the way for the coming of the Messiah.

He works for a group whose stated aim is to rekindle Jewish life in East Jerusalem by buying properties in heavily Palestinian areas and moving in Jewish students and families.

However, as Theroux discovers, those who take up the offer can find themselves subjected to stone-throwing and hostility from their disenfranchised neighbours, and in need of private security, which is paid for by the government.