The Golden Hour : Playing Alec Track

Richard Armitage's character in The Golden Hour, Dr Alec Track, is the leader of a team of four doctors in a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service.

"He's a brilliant doctor, a good leader and a motivator who guides his fellow doctors," said Richard Armitage. "He's 90% married to his work, but that's not a choice. His work just pulls him in." [1]

This causes problems in his relationship with team member Jane Cameron.

"She wants more from him, but he has this great fear that any distraction might compromise him. That's his conflict." [1]

He insists on trying to keep their relationship secret, for the sake of the team, but Paul soon finds out, which causes friction because of his own feelings for Jane.

Richard Armitage and the other actors trained with the real HEMS team in London. He was clearly impressed with their work. "They're the closest you can get to what I consider to be a superhero. They arrive out of the sky, save lives and disappear again. The patient might not even see them if he or she is unconscious throughout." [2]

"The nature of their job - they are trauma doctors - makes you assume they're going to be traumatised by what they see because it's so extreme. But they work on quite a different level, they are completely calm and methodical." [3]

Richard Armitage tried to bring that to his portrayal of Alec. "He works on a calm and almost spiritual level. He's confident with his own ability and the way he runs things." [3]

As Alec, he had to look and sound completely comfortable in the medical environment, which meant a lot of preparation and practice for the role, particularly of the medical terms.

"Because I was saying these things at speed, I wanted to make sure it didn't sound like they were words that were alien to me. I wanted to sound like I used those terms all the time," he said. "There's even a special way of handling the equipment to make it look like you do it every day. Because the real doctors use the equipment constantly, it's just second nature to them to pick something up in exactly the position they'll use it. Observing the doctors demonstrating techniques was really important, even down to the way they carry their equipment." [3]

The exhaustive preparation paid off - Jaci Stephen, writing in the Mail on Sunday, praised Richard Armitage's Dr Alec Track as "one of TV's most convincing medics ever". [4]

Acting the part was also helped by the realistic nature of the dummies and prosthetics used in the series. "These were moments where suddenly there was no acting required. I just stood there with my mouth open in awe. I couldn't believe how realistic it looked. I felt more excited than queasy," he said.

On one occasion, he went off for a break and the dummy he'd been working on was replaced by an actor while he was gone. "I'd disappeared to get a cup of tea, so when I came back and started to rehearse the scene, I leant over to shine a torch in his eyes and he said, 'all right, mate' and I just jumped out of my skin. I thought it was still the dummy.

"It was similar with the pregnancy dummy. The feet just looked brilliant, really realistic and I kept getting really confused as to whether the foot belonged to the dummy or the real actress. I was about to stick something into this foot and kept thinking, 'is it the actress or is it rubber? I can't tell'. " [3]

After all this training, did he think he could perform any of these procedures for real? "I think I could do cardiac pulmonary resuscitation - massaging the heart - but whether I would know when to do it is another question entirely. I can now suture wounds, take someone's pulse, give them aspirin. In fact, I could probably do quite a few procedures now. Not legally though!" [5]

But talking about the real HEMS doctors, he said, "I've always wondered why anyone would put themselves in a position to experience such horror and trauma for so little financial reward, but talking to these guys, I got it. It's not about praise, it's about pride. It made me feel guilty and a bit ashamed for being an actor." [6]


Sources:

[1] Radio Times, 1st - 7th October, 2005
[2] What's on TV, 10th - 16th September, 2005
[3] Northern Echo, 8th September 2005
[4] Mail on Sunday, 18th September 2005
[5] The Times, 10th September, 2005
[6] Daily Express, 10th September, 2005

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