What To Expect From ITV’s Steamy New Drama Adultery With Dominic Cooper & Romola Garai

Attraction plus an obstacle equals excitement. That’s the biological equation at the root of extra-marital affairs the world over, and the idea behind ITV’s latest drama Adultery. But what happens, this TV show asks, when the attraction is too strong? And when the obstacles are too great? Affairs are messy enough, no matter with who, and on whom, you’re cheating. But sleeping with your teen child’s girlfriend’s dad? That’s a very steep obstacle to climb. 

Written by Danny Brocklehurst (Shameless), Adultery centres around Beth Brookes (Romola Garai), an overworked, overtired mum, putting her career on the backburner, grieving the loss of her best friend, and dealing with her husband Neil’s (Matthew McNulty) antics. It’s no wonder then, when she runs over a hunky GP named Tom (played by Mamma Mia’s Dominic Cooper) that she finds herself blushing like a schoolgirl, and eager to meet again. Little does she know that she’ll have plenty of opportunity to – as he’s father to her son’s new girlfriend (played by Heartstopper’s Leila Khan). Intrigued? We caught up with Dominic and Romola to find out more about this twisty new romance.

Cast Interview: Adultery

Neil (Matthew McNulty), Beth (Romola Garai), Tom (Dominic Cooper) and Hannah (Shelley Conn) in Adultery. © ITV Plc

Could you give us a quick elevator pitch for Adultery…

Romola: Tom and Beth are married. They have busy lives and teenage kids, and their teenage kids are dating each other, which is how Tom and Beth unexpectedly meet. An uncontrollable attraction happens between them. The show is really about how good, responsible people with caring responsibilities can find an attraction they can’t resist. It asks how much they owe to themselves and how much they owe to other people, and that question dominates the show.

What drew you both to the script?

Dom: When I first read it, I was very moved by it, but I also found it painful. It was really heartbreaking. It’s a careful view of human nature and what we’re capable of doing to one another, set in something most people experience: finding their way through relationships, love, family and parenting. And I don’t think it’s judgemental. It’s just: this is how it is. This is what two very nice people are capable of, and what they can cause when they’re trying not to hurt anyone but choose to go with their feelings.

Romola: I really loved it. I loved the writing. It felt so true to me straight away. I thought: I know that woman. I know 50 of that woman. She’s lost her best friend, which is a devastating loss for a woman, and she’s lost her business. I couldn’t believe it was a man who’d seen all that. Danny is an amazing writer.

That’s not to say they don’t do terrible damage to other people, and the show isn’t afraid of that. There are lots of shows about affairs, and it’s quite scary as an actress to be in one, because the cheating woman is the ultimate story, isn’t it? It goes back to Eve. It’s our central narrative. But this is not that at all. It’s so careful in how it describes every single character. I thought it was a brilliant show from the off, and I was desperate for them to cast me.

Beth (Romola Garai) in Adultery. © Poison Pen Studios

How would you each describe your characters?

Dom: On the surface, Tom is a good man, the perfect father. He met his wife when they were very young and they stayed together. They’ve got three beautiful kids. But he’s completely and utterly flawed, and I think he really wants someone to see him. He has to keep up this facade, and then there’s the relief when he meets Beth.

You don’t see Tom’s crumbling inner life on screen as much as you see Beth’s struggles, like losing a friend and the fragility of her marriage. I’d describe him simply as a really good man who is actually destroyed inside and needs help.

Romola: I think they’re mirrors of each other. She’s a really good woman. She does a job she doesn’t really enjoy to support her family. It’s not her passion. She’s supporting her husband, who she obviously loves but who’s in a bit of a mess. She’s taking the kids to school, doing the laundry. Ninety per cent of her life is looking after other people and what they need. Because of that, and because of the accident of fate of meeting someone she’s incredibly attracted to, she’s capable of doing something very bad.

But I think an important part of the show is that Tom and Beth both really don’t want anyone to find out. In trying to protect people, they actually do more damage. That’s often the way with these situations, isn’t it? So: good people doing bad things.

Tom (Dominic Cooper) in Adultery. © Poison Pen Studios

Your characters come from slightly different worlds. How did you build the dynamic between you and convince us of that irresistible spark?

Romola: You read the script and the stage direction says Tom and Beth have an instant, irresistible, animal attraction, and you think, ‘Oh God, we’ve got to convey that’. But I think the heavy lifting is done by showing what’s going on in the rest of their lives. What I really took from reading it was that you’re open to that kind of attraction when the rest of your life feels empty of pleasure. Then of course we also had to deliver it in our performances, which I hope we did.

Both characters do some morally questionable things. How did you balance that with making them people the audience will still root for?

Dom: That was what we were really worried about. I’ve sat with men who are in the process of leaving really young families, and I’ve been so confused. Can’t you just hold it together? Just fix this. It’s painful to watch, and it was painful to try to become one of them and ask: what on earth makes you carry on down this path?

But you’ve got to understand what it’s like to be suffering in the world they’re suffering in. No one really knows what’s going on in someone else’s head, or what they’ve been through in their family. And we all understand what it’s like to need something different, to want to be seen. We’re also so used to having what we want these days. We don’t allow ourselves to be bored any more; we’re constantly staring at a gadget.

Hannah (Shelley Conn) and Tom (Dominic Cooper). © Poison Pen Studios

How did you each prepare to get into that headspace?

Romola: Some scripts you read and think: I know that woman. I know so many versions of her. She was so alive to me. Normally I’d order a load of books and do research, but I didn’t have to research Beth. I know those women, and they’re everywhere. They’re busy all the time, ferrying kids to school and football and working two jobs because they’re struggling to make ends meet, until what they want for themselves has stopped being part of their lives at all. Put that together with the age we live in, where what you want is supposed to be everything, and it’s a tricky balancing act. This is one of very few projects where I didn’t feel I had to do a lot of work. She felt fully formed.

Dom: It was so affecting because of my own experience: how I’ve been treated, and how I’ve treated others. In the great scheme of things, the characters we’re playing have great lives. But whatever your life is like, when it comes to love, our families and our children, the things we care about more than anything, I could see how this guy could do it. I know lots of people who’ve been through it. I’ve had feelings where I’ve destroyed, or almost destroyed, or been destroyed. So it was a kind of beautiful pain. It reminded me that, as much as I love running down mountains and shooting spaceships, this is why I got into this job.

Neil (Matthew McNulty) and Beth (Romola Garai). © Poison Pen Studios

The show deals with some heavy material. What was the atmosphere like on set?

Dom: It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. You’re having interesting conversations, and it’s proper work you’re talking through, but I was surrounded by people I felt completely supported by. I was going through some stuff myself, and this was very affecting, but I was laughing every day, because I was with like-minded people. It was creative and focused, but a lot of fun. Romola, Shelley [Conn, who plays Hannah], everyone is brilliant, such good actors, and that makes it a joy. We never had to change the writing, and we never had to work through scenes we felt weren’t quite right. We were all firing on the right cylinders. When I watched it, it was better than I could have imagined. I think it’s a really poignant, great bit of television.

Romola: Sometimes, not always, the writing becomes the mood of a show and seeps into the experience of making it. This show has a lot of sad things in it, but also real humour. Danny really finds the humour in those moments of domestic disappointment, and the atmosphere on set was quite like that. There were serious conversations and intense moments, but we’d also laugh a lot, because people are just a nightmare.

Adultery will air on ITV and ITVX from Sunday 25 October 2026.

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