Jeremy Lovering is a television director in the old sense: hired to make other people's writing work, and good at it. The one feature he wrote himself, In Fear (2013), set almost entirely inside a car, is where his own instincts are easiest to see.
Fi1m perspective
In Teachers (2001) a donkey stands in a school corridor and nobody says a word about it. Pupils turn up in fancy dress for no reason on the timetable; something goes on outside a classroom window that belongs to no lesson. Jeremy Lovering was one of the directors, with Susanna White among others, who kept that second, silent programme running behind the first, and it is still the best running joke in the series. We laughed every time, and what made us laugh was that nobody on screen did. It takes a director who trusts you to look past the people talking.
That trust is most of what Lovering does, and he does it mainly for other people. He began in the early 2000s with Teachers and then Spooks (2002–05), with single dramas and mini-series in between, and worked second unit on Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz (2007). The exception is In Fear (2013), which he wrote as well as directed: a thriller set largely inside a car, made on a small scale, in which he gave his actors no script, only a description of who they were, and then interviewed them in character to see what they would do. It is the one time his method has been the story rather than the servant of one. Some reviewers found that once the fear had been built the plot had trouble explaining itself. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it from a distance; we would like to.
Since then it has been high-end television: the first episode of Sherlock's third series (2014), the second series of Doctor Foster (2017), The One (2021), and all six episodes of the second run of Slow Horses (2022). That last is the best thing with his name on it, and our review of the show does not mention him, which in television is closer to praise than it sounds. The office is the show, we said, and the thriller plot each run hangs on is ordinary; the series gets away with it, and getting away with an ordinary plot is largely a matter of pace, which is the director's business. What we cannot say is how much of that is his and how much is Mick Herron's, Gary Oldman's or the format's.
He has described his work as "directing as a craft not an art", and the evidence supports him: he is good with ensembles, good with a plot that has six threads, good at making a corridor or a car interior feel like the only place in the world. Whether he is more than that is a question In Fear raised and the episodes since have not answered. The Undertow and Treasure Island are due in 2026. We will be watching the background.
Biography
Jeremy Lovering is a British television and film director. He began directing for television in the late 1990s and 2000s on series including Spooks, Vincent and Miss Austen Regrets (2008).
His feature debut In Fear (2013), which he also wrote, received a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Debut Director. He has directed episodes of Sherlock (2013–2014), Doctor Foster (2017) and all six episodes of the second series of Slow Horses (2022). He has also worked as second unit director on Hot Fuzz (2007) and Last Night in Soho (2021).
Lovering attended Abingdon School at the same time as actor Toby Jones.
