MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG – Season 1 Key Art | ©2025 Acorn TV

English actor Amanda Redman has been in a significant amount of British film and TV crime thrillers, including SEXY BEAST, FOR QUEEN & COUNTRY, EL C.I.D., BECK, THE SIGHT, SUSPICION, HONEST, NEW TRICKS, THE TRIALS OF JIMMY ROSE, and ON THE EDGE.

While Redman has also performed in a large number of other types of material, including an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s LITTLE DORRIT, the pregnancy comedy BUMPS and the news drama SCOOP, is she considered a crime genre icon?

Redman laughs at the question. “I don’t think so.”

Would she say she’s at least a genre name? Is that why she was approached to costar in the new miniseries MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG?

“I don’t know,” Redman replies. “You’d have to ask them that.”

Based on the novel of the same title, the first in the Canon Clement Mysteries series by Reverend Richard Coles, MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG is streaming on Acorn TV, with new episodes available every Monday.

Set in the 1980s in the village of Champton outside London, MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG introduces us to Canon Daniel Clement (Matthew Lewis), the rector at Champton’s Anglican church. He is horrified to discover the body of a murdered parishioner in the pews.

The situation becomes worse when it appears that Daniel may have been the intended victim. But that’s not his only problem. Daniel’s mother Audrey, played by Redman, has come to live with him, and she’s not the easiest of housemates.

Redman offers over an exclusive Zoom interview, “I think it’s a big thing for a mother and a son to live together – and they have to, because financially, they didn’t have another choice – but I think she cares about him and she tries to look after him, but of course, at times, that becomes cloying. And then, he could be warmer towards her. It’s an interesting thing.”

Redman wasn’t familiar with the novel, though she has read it since becoming involved with MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG, after the production team sent her the first few scripts. “I really loved the style of the writing, and I loved the character. But not just my character – I liked the other characters in this as well. I found them all incredibly interesting. And I loved the idea of this small community. It’s like a cauldron of resentment and secrets and lies that can easily bubble over into violence. And so, I found it very believable, [not] the normal kind of Agatha Christie-type thing. I found it far more interesting.”

Asked to describe Audrey, Redman replies, “I think she’s a woman of her time. She was very young during the Second World War. Everything that they had to go through here in the U.K. during that period meant that women suddenly were out of the kitchen and doing things that usually men would do, like, for instance, stripping engines, learning how to be mechanics. She drove an ambulance during the Blitz. All of which makes her, in my view, incredibly brave. That generation really did know how to just get on with things, and they didn’t whine a lot, they just got on with it, and I have huge admiration for that.”

To be fair, Audrey does whine a bit at Daniel.

Redman laughs. “Well, I think that’s just being a mum. I mean, she just wants what’s best for him. At the same time, she can be very annoying.”

Were there elements in the scripts that Redman felt helped her better understand Audrey?

MURDER_BEFORE_EVENSONG | ©2025 AcornTV / Robert Viglasky

Redman cites a scene where there’s an article in the local paper, accompanied by a full-length photo of Daniel, about the cleric ministering to AIDS patients. In the late Eighties, there was a lot of bigotry and fear, especially in small towns, directed at people who had AIDS and those who advocated for them. Audrey speaks sharply to Daniel about the photo.

“You expect her to be annoyed with Daniel because he’s gone to speak to AIDS patients, therefore, the controversy that will erupt from that would be something she wouldn’t approve of. But actually, that’s not it at all. She’s [upset that] he’s got bad fashion sense, because he’s wearing white socks with dark trousers. And that to me said it all about her. that she’s not judgmental, and she’s not a cliché. She’s actually a far broader-thinking person. And so, I kept thinking about that, and the fact that she’s a mother and still worries. But she also doesn’t take shit from anybody. And that’s great.”

How does Audrey feel about Daniel’s spiritual vocation? “From the books, she’s not a huge fan of the Church, so I don’t think she approves of it. She’s far more likely to approve of her other son being in the theatre and the life choices that he’s made.”

How is working with Lewis? “Oh, he’s terrific. We got on from the minute we started rehearsing, which made everything so much easier. So, it was a delight to work with him. He’s a lovely, lovely lad.”

In conversation with Redman, her normal speaking voice, which she describes as “pure South London,” is different from the accent she uses for Audrey.

“It’s East Midlands. So, it’s just one vowel sound and occasionally two vowel sounds, but not very often, because they’re quite near to London. It’s an interesting accent and in a way harder to do than, say, broad Yorkshire. Because that’s broader, it’s easier. This is quite subtle, and it’s the East Midlands, not the West Midlands, and so it’s not Birmingham. It’s a slightly Northern London accent.”

Redman had input into Audrey’s appearance. “We all agreed that she’d be dark, and so we looked at hairstyles from ladies of that age at that time. She loves clothes, so she would’ve styled herself, we reckon, on the late Queen and Margaret Thatcher, a mishmash of the two, really. She’s quite stylish in her way.”

While Redman is old enough to have been around in the late Eighties, her big-city upbringing did not give her personal insight into village life in those days.

“Culturally, it was very different for me. I was in London, so it was a very, very different world I inhabited. But these worlds still do exist. In fact, the various places where we were filming – in Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire – it’s really surprising how they still feel like they could come out of the Eighties. There’s still that feeling of being lost a little bit in a time warp.”

As a viewer, is Redman a fan of series like MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG?

“Yes, I am. I love them. And I love reading crime thrillers as well. It’s very much my thing.”

And what would Redman most like audiences to know about MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG?

“That it’s not ‘cozy crime.’ It’s more interesting than that.”

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Article: Exclusive Interview: Actress Amanda Redman on new British mystery series MURDER BEFORE EVENSONG

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