The dramedy Living the Dream (available to stream at BritBox) follows Mal Pemberton (Philip Glenister), a British man who makes the decision to relocate his family (Lesley Sharp, Rosie Day and Brenock O’Connor) from rain-soaked England to brightly sunny Florida to take ownership of an RV park. As soon as they get there, the Pembertons learn that the American dream is not all it’s cracked up to be.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, actor Philip Glenister (Life on Mars, Outcast) talked about the appeal of Living the Dream, the fun of doing lighter material, shooting Season 1 in Savannah, Georgia vs. shooting Season 2 in Spain with both standing in for Florida, why he was so interested in showing a couple with a family who still love each other, what he most enjoyed about working with this cast, and the collaborative environment on set.

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Collider:  We’ve previously spoken about Outcast, and this is certainly something that’s a bit cheerier.

PHILIP GLENISTER:  Yeah. It was nice to film something a little bit cheerier, as well, I can tell you.

Where you actually see a lot daylight and don’t have to worry about possessed people.

GLENISTER:  Exactly! There’s no demonic possession. Also, it meant we didn’t have to do so many night shoots because, apparently, demons only come out at night.

Was that part of the appeal of Living the Dream? Were you intentionally seeking out something lighter?

GLENISTER:  Yeah, funnily enough, I was still finishing off shooting the second season of Outcast, when I got a call from my agent saying, “Sky wants to send you this script. It’s about a British family that move to the States, to Florida.” I was thinking, “Hang on, I’ve just been in South Carolina for the last three-and-a-half or four months.” My agent said, “You’re gonna love this.” I said, “Where is it shooting?” She said, “They’re gonna shoot in Savannah.” As it turned out, I loved Savannah. I thought it was the most wonderful. Savannah is amazing. It’s like a giant film set. So, it all worked out, really nicely. We started shooting at Easter 2017, so my family were able to come with me for the Easter holiday, and we shot for a couple of months, in great locations. It was hot, with bugs and humidity. That was the hardest part. Shooting was on this pastureland, in a wood that was on a real RV trailer park. During the day, it got very, very humid, but I had gotten used to that, through doing Outcast. It was fun.

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Image via Britbox

Was it nice to play a character where you don’t have the pressure of having to save the world?

GLENISTER:  That was fun, for sure. It’s a shame that we didn’t get another season of Outcast. I think they drew they storylines out too long. It needed more to happen. A few of us kept saying, “Come on, it’s too much of a slow burner.” I quite like slow burners, but after 20 episodes, you need to really give the audience a clue to what’s going on.

For Season 2, you got to move to Spain to shoot, even though the show was still set in Florida. What was that like?

GLENISTER:  The Georgia thing was, obviously, because of the tax breaks. There’s so much that gets shot now, in and out of Atlanta. One of the reasons that we relocated to Spain was because we could guarantee more sunshine, believe it or not. With that stretch of Georgia, the weather can be fine one minute, and then you can have a huge storm coming in, right from nowhere, and you can’t film because of all the generators and electrical equipment. It’s just too dangerous. And as soon as you start losing hours in the day for shooting, it costs big money. So, we figured that we could relocate to Spain, on the Southern coast, and re-create Florida there. Having seen the second season now, if you hadn’t told anybody, nobody would have guessed it was shot in Spain. Our first director, Saul [Metzstein], spent two weeks in with a couple of drones and a few other people, and just shot some generic stuff there, and it looks absolutely fine. The only difference is the color of the sand in Spain. It’s much darker in Florida. But then, with the wonderful thing of CGI, you just lighten the sand, so it works. It was great.

This is a show that seems like it would sound so strange on paper, but it really works, when you watch it. When you first heard about this and read the script, did you have a lot of questions?

GLENISTER:  The first thing that appealed to me was the fact that it shows a couple with a family, in their middle years, but who still love each other, and still really like each other. You see so many negative stories of people on television and film who are married, and then the kids have grow up and they suddenly go, “Do you know what? I hate you. I don’t love you. You’re horrible. You can fuck off.” And you just think, “Ugh!” So, we thought, “Let’s turn the tables a bit. Let’s show a couple that still have got a zest for life and want to go on an adventure, and they go and buy a trailer park in Florida, and see what happens.” That was the premise that really appealed. It was the positivity. When there’s so much negativity going on, not just on the telly, but in the world, it was really just wanting to be a part of something that you could escape with for an hour. It’s a bit of sunshine, laughter and comedy, that lets you get away from the real world for an hour, and just be entertained. It’s quite simple, as a premise, but it’s just quite nice to be part of a show that’s got positivity written all over it.

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Image via Britbox

What do you think it was about a trailer park that made this guy want to make such a big leap?

GLENISTER:  One of the reasons is that, when you look at somewhere like Florida, there’s something like 1.7 million Brits, alone, that visit Florida, and there’s over 700,000 that have actually moved there and made it their home. There’s this idea that the Brits think of Florida as the Sunshine State, and as being this Disney theme park. There’s something built into thinking, “We have to go to Florida. It’s all going to be wonderful and sunshine and an easy life.” Of course, the world doesn’t work like that, especially when you go and try to run a business. Mal, my character, tends to run before he can walk. In many relationships, it’s the woman, Lesley Sharp’s character, Jen, who’s the one to rein him in and who keeps the whole family going. I think that’s true in many marriages. Women are far more clever, much better at multi-tasking, far better at dealing with tricky situations and thinking about things before the horse bolts.

Do you think that, if he really knew what he was getting himself into, Mal Pemberton would still have taken this adventure anyway?

GLENISTER:  Yeah, probably. It’s a great premise for comedy and drama because you can keep moving it on with different characters who come into the park. You can get new characters coming in and moving out, and you can get people visiting. You’ve got so many options, in terms of creating fantastic characters and getting an eclectic mix. I think we’ve got an amazing mix in Season 1, in the park and with our neighbor. I love all of the little quirks and things. There’s great room for characterization. And as a family, we’re the backbone and the constant of the piece.

What did you most enjoy about working with Kim Fields, and playing that fun neighbor dynamic?

GLENISTER:  Because they’re swingers, you know, and we’re being very repressed and British, and there’s just a fence between us, it’s a great dynamic. She’s this gregarious, outgoing, big personality, and he just doesn’t want to be seen. It’s a metaphor for the differences between our countries. We speak the same language, but don’t necessarily come off the same page. Those scenes were great fun to film. We just had fun doing them.

And then you had the dynamic with Kevin Nash to balance that out.

GLENISTER:  In the show, we’re quite at odds. And there’s the difference with Kevin’s height, so we played with that. Every time he comes over, this shadow comes over Mel. We just played it for the comedy. We used to just mess around on set with that and work out little bits of stuff.

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Image via Britbox

Was it a very open and collaborative set, in that sense?

GLENISTER:  It was one of the most enjoyable shoots that I’ve ever worked on, to be honest. Except for the bugs and the humidity, it went really, really smoothly, and everybody got on. We just felt like a family. That’s always such a huge advantage because, when you’re away from home for a long period, you want the cast and crew to become your family, and we were very fortunate. I know how hard American crews work. They just get on with it. If you need a crane shot, they’ll build a crane and do it fast, so that you can get to filming. It was just very productive, very creative, an a really happy, good atmosphere on set, which I think is so important because life’s too short. There’s no room for divas.

The relationship between Mal and his kids is nice, too.

GLENISTER:  Yeah. But again, in a funny sort of way, Brenock [O’Connor] and Rosie [Day] are fabulous. They became Lesley and I’s TV family, to the point now where my daughter, Millie, who’s 17, has written a 10-minute short film that Rosie is going to direct. When we were filming in Spain, they all went out with each other – my real kids and my TV kids – and they hit it off. It was lovely. It was really nice that they got a good friendship going with them, as well.

Living the Dream is available to stream at BritBox on May 14th.