The Monster of Loch Ness Is Human
The spirit of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, is still alive and well today. Every year, the Inverness Courier, a local Scottish newspaper, runs a competition for the best Nessie sighting with a cash prize. There is even a webcam above Loch Ness so that people across the globe can try their hand at Nessie spotting.
Last year, a woman walking her dog saw what looked like a skeleton of Nessie on the shore of the Loch. Intrigued, she snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook, causing a big stir. Were these really the remains of Nessie? Actually, it was a prop skeleton used for the first episode of Loch Ness, a new original TV show on Acorn TV. Loch Ness takes place in this iconic and haunting area of Scotland where local detective Annie Redford realizes that Nessie isn’t the only monster in town. There seems to be a serial killer among their tightly knit community. We asked the cast what they think of the popular folktale monster.
“It’s rather like Sherlock Holmes,” says John Sessions, who plays Frank Smilie. “People make him alive. They want him to be real. It’s bread and butter for that region. It’s tourism.”
Siobhan Finneran, who plays DCI Lauren Quigley, says, “I think if you’ve seen something or you have an experience, you are much more likely to say, ‘Yes, I believe in Nessie.’ I think it’s best to say that I am open to all that kind of world. I mean, I believe in Father Christmas!”
Nessie may or may not be real, but the region certainly does have real geological and historical turmoil. Breaking Bad’s Laura Fraser, who plays DS Annie Redford, says, “I did some research on the geography of the countryside around Loch Ness and found that a lot of Scotland is on this rupture, this fault line, from an eruption way back in time and I thought that was quite interesting in terms of there being a ‘rupture’ in the community in our story. A serial killer breaks the community apart. So there’s this rupture and at the same time they are living on a fault line. It’s a paper thin veneer of civilisation within the community and everyone is pretending it’s all okay. But actually, beneath the surface, it’s threatening, similar to the depths of the murky water of Loch Ness.”
Sessions, who grew up in Scotland, adds, “Glen Coe lowers over you. It’s a spooky place. It’s a part of Scotland with a very bloody history. You’ve got the massacre at Glen Coe, the Highland Clearances, a lot of bad stuff, mainly done by the English. There’s a lot of heartache there and it’s in the air. The pain is in the air.”
What better place for a suspenseful drama than a town teetering on a fault line, haunted by their bloody history, and concealing their own mythical monster? That is, as long as the skies hanging over Scotland cooperate. Finneran recalls, “The weather was horrendous when we were filming. There was a scene with Laura and me walking along the cliff and we got drenched!”
Watch the six-part series Loch Ness on Acorn TV.
Jaime Pond writes about British television and is the editor of Anglonerd.com.