Lewis Arnold’s strength is his care with actors, especially when institutions put their characters under pressure. We recommend his patient, character-led television, while giving strong writers and ensembles their share of the credit.
Fi1m perspective
Lewis Arnold is willing to keep the camera running and let actors try something unplanned. He prepares with storyboards and mood boards, then leaves room for changes on set. That seems the right order of priorities for a director drawn to people living under pressure from institutions and their communities. We value his care with performances, and his willingness to let preparation accommodate what an actor brings.
Misfits (2009) needs some care as a starting point: Arnold directed two episodes of its final series in 2013. We laughed because Howard Overman’s writing made the characters’ unpleasantness funny enough to bear. Its performances make the superhero material believable, although the characters can become wearing. This is a programme whose actors have to persuade us to stay with people we might otherwise avoid, and they mostly manage it. Arnold’s contribution belongs within that achievement; two episodes do not make the whole series his.
The first four episodes of Banana (2015) followed, before assignments on Humans (2015–16) and Broadchurch (2017). Directing and co-creating Des (2020) marked a move towards fuller involvement in a miniseries. His habit of working with writers early in development, sometimes over several years, helps explain that progression. With Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama Time (2021) and James Graham’s Sherwood (2022), the material gives him room to develop his attention to institutional life and community.
Time is the clearest recommendation for his grounded handling of an ensemble. The warmth and attention to landscape in Sherwood also suggest that he need not make dark subjects look uniformly forbidding. He went on to direct all seven episodes of The Long Shadow (2023), taking sustained responsibility for the storytelling. There is a limit to how much a list of serious subjects tells us about a director, however. Start with Time for the people, rather than the importance of the subject.
Biography
Lewis Arnold is an English television director. He graduated from the University of Gloucestershire in 2007 with a first-class honours degree in video production and later earned an MA in directing fiction from the National Film and Television School in 2013.
Arnold began his television career directing two episodes of the final series of Misfits (2013). He followed this with the first four episodes of Banana (2015) and went on to direct episodes of Broadchurch (2017), Humans (2015–2016), Des (2020), Time (2021), Sherwood (2022) and The Long Shadow (2023). He has received BAFTA nominations for directing Time and The Long Shadow.
