Niamh Algar: Mullingar marvel is licensed to kill in The Iris Affair

Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander on their explosive new series, in which the actress gets to keep her Irish accent

Niamh Algar at a premiere of Sky series, The Iris Affair. Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire

As she read the script for explosive new techno-thriller series  The Iris Affair, Niamh Algar made up her mind. Her character – a globe-trotting, ferociously smart assassin named Iris – would hail from the old sod. An Irish Iris. Why not?

“She could have been from anywhere. There was nothing set in stone as to what the character's nationality was. So I decided to use my own voice,” says the Mullingar actor over video link from London.

Iris is an international woman of mystery with an off-the-charts IQ and a genius for puzzle-solving. She could complete your morning Wordle in the blink of an eye and finish a Rubik’s cube faster than it takes to pop the kettle on.

Essentially, she is a cross between James Bond and Alan Turing, the father of modern computing (not by coincidence Iris spelled backwards is Siri – the name of Apple's AI]. However, Iris Affair showrunner, Neil Cross (creator of the Luther series), omitted one crucial detail: her nationality. That was a blank space for the actor to fill in. To Algar, it seemed perfectly sensible to make her an Irish prodigy and to utilise her own midlands accents. The world, she decided, was ready for a Mullingar mega-mind.

“It's far and few between that you see Irish characters that aren't depicted drinking or fighting. I've never actually seen an Irish character that is a genius and has a mind the size of a planet. I think there are smart Irish people out there. Hopefully it's an odd to them and they see themselves.” 

Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander in The Iris Affair.

The Iris Affair is tremendous fun. One of its big draws is the crackling chemistry between Algar as Iris and Emmy and Bafta-nominated character actor Tom Hollander as the enigmatic – and flamboyantly monikered – villain Cameron Beck.

The story begins with Beck hiring the mysterious Iris to hack a supercomputer (it’s a bit more complicated than that, as is inevitably the case with scripts by Cross). But things take a turn for the unexpected, and Iris goes on the run with something that Beck needs very badly indeed. If he doesn’t retrieve it, he will bring down the wrath of the exceedingly nasty people to whom he owes a lot of money.

Iris isn’t to be reasoned with, however. She believes that the fate of the world is in the balance. No matter what happens, Beck cannot have his gadget back. Should that come to pass, the consequences would be disastrous. The game is afoot - all unfolding against the gorgeous backdrop of Cagliari and Alghero in Sardinia.

As fans of Luther will know, Cross’s scripts tend to be pulpy with a vengeance, existing in a heightened reality where people behave not like characters in real life but protagonists in a noir movie. 

That is certainly the case with Iris. The show isn’t prestige television, and, in that regard, is very different from Hollander’s previous foray into coastal Italy in series two of The White Lotus. It is a romp, a caper – a latter-day Bond movie, albeit with one crucial difference. Here, the licence to kill is held by a woman.

“The fundamental difference is that the central James Bond character is a woman, and that’s a massive shift,” says Hollander. “That’s a paradigm shift. So we're now in an era where that is starting to happen, and that's profound. So it's completely different from all those references in that respect.”

 Algar sees it as a mash-up of some of her favourite films. First of all, there is Iris’s eccentricity and her genius. Added to that is the eye-candy Italian setting – where the sky is an aching azure, the sea a blinding blue. And there is a lot of action, much of it involving Iris dispatching bad guys at close quarters.

“It's like an amalgamation of, I thought when I read it, Good Will Hunting meets Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bourne Ultimatum. Matt Damon, would love it. Matt, if you're listening to this, give it a watch.” 

Niamh Algar in The Iris Affair.

Yet for all its fantastical elements, Iris also nods towards present-day events. We are introduced to Iris through the rantings of a TikTokker who believes her existence is a conspiracy theory. Plus, there is the Maguffin that leads to the conflict between Iris and Beck – a self-aware supercomputer with the power to solve disease and split the atom. Yes, it’s another high-octane thriller where the ultimate villain is AI.

“There is a news story today that the Nobel Committee has given three Nobel prizes to researchers who developed quantum computing,” says Hollander. 

Algar nods: “It’s more relevant now than when we shot it.”

 Cross is both famous and slightly notorious for his dark dramas. Luther, to give the best-known example, chronicled the descent of Idris Elba’s titular detective into self-destructive paranoia after the failure of his marriage. But the showrunner tries something different with The Iris Affair.

There’s plenty of commentary on the grim state of the world. As Algar points out, in depicting AI as a bogeyman, the plot could have been ripped from the morning headlines. But The Iris Affair is also visually stunning and brims with glamour.

 Cross has explained that he wants to write something that he and his wife could enjoy over a glass of wine in the evening – a drama that had a certain amount of froth and a lot of escapism.

“One of my early editorial dictates was that Iris should never drive a car with a roof,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “If Grace Kelly wouldn’t drive it, neither should Iris. We didn’t fully stick to that, but we did end up with Ferraris and all kinds of supercars.” 

Supercars and also super-wits. Amidst the mayhem, The Iris Affair is darkly funny. The two leads bring a wry quality that doesn’t so much undercut Cross’s vision as sprinkle it with wit and self-awareness.

“Our inclination is to take the piss out of possibly what we’re doing – maybe that’s found its way in,” says Hollander. “It’s on a fine line, a little bit. It’s a sassy thriller, isn’t it? It’s dry, black humour most of the time. The jokes don’t puncture the stakes. But they do entertain you.”

 For Algar, The Iris Affair’s crucial quality is that it never pauses for breath. From the moment Iris takes off with Beck in hot pursuit, the pedal is pressed firmly to the floor. “These kind of chase thrillers , where the plot is, I’ve taken something, you want it back, I say no. We got on an incredible adventure. And we throw characters into difficult situations and see them struggle their way out. That’s hugely satisfying.” 

• The Iris Affair begins on Sky Atlantic on Thursday, October 16, at 9pm