64 LISTENER JUNE 8 2019
I
t’s the life of an actor: one
month, you’re enduring
bitter winter conditions in
Ireland filming one of the
longest battles ever made
for television, the next, you’re
in 40-degree African heat tell-
ing the origin story of a deadly
disease.
After spending eight years
as Davos Seaworth in Game of
Thrones, Liam Cunningham
has a new gig: The Hot Zone
(National Geographic, Sky 072,
Monday, 12.30pm) is a thriller-
ised adaptation of the 1994non-fiction book of the same
name by Richard Preston.
The six-part series, which
screens as a marathon, tells
the story of the origins of
Ebola and also brings it right
to America’s door by depict-
ing how it nearly got loose in
Washington DC in 1989.
Julianna Margulies plays
Nancy Jaax, a US Army veteri-
nary pathologist who had a
key role in containing the situ-
ation after a research monkey
at a lab in Reston, Virginia,
became sick and died.Cunningham’s role of Wade
Carter is an amalgam of a
couple of people, created to
conflate events and “show
how information came to us
and to keep this story moving
along”.
Carter is an outlier who
has been shunned by his
colleagues. However, when
Jaax finds an Ebola-like virus
in monkey organs sent from
Reston, she knows she needs
his expertise. What follows is
a series of close calls, hazmat
suits and very sad monkeys.Carter is also seen in
flashback in Zaire, trying to
hunt down the source of a
horrific virus with his Cent-
ers for Disease Control and
Prevention colleague (James
D’Arcy).
Cunningham didn’t read
Preston’s book before taking
on the role; he says it’s almost
a rule of his: “I didn’t read the
books for Game of Thrones,
either.” But he believes The
Hot Zone highlights “how
serious the situation was and
is”, particularly in light ofToo hot to handle
A marathon series dramatises the true story of how the deadly
Ebola virus almost got loose in the US. by entertainment editor FIONA RAE
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