Paapa Essiedu’s new BBC drama Babies is an intimate story about pregnancy loss
Charting a couple’s relationship as it is reshaped by grief and endurance, Paapa Essiedu’s new BBC drama Babies is an intimate story about pregnancy loss.
Paapa Essiedu’s new BBC drama Babies is an intimate story about pregnancy loss.
The 34-year-old actor plays Stephen in the show, which premiered at Series Mania, and charts a couple’s relationship as it is reshaped by grief and endurance.
It follows Lisa – played by Siobhán Cullen and Paapa’s character, who portrays her partner – as they navigate repeated loss and its emotional aftermath alongside family and friends.
Created and directed by Stefan Golaszewski, the show explores how differing responses to trauma can both strain and define a partnership, with Stephen attempting optimism while Lisa struggles under the weight of their experiences.
Stefan told Variety about the series: “I have experienced what’s discussed in the show, but it’s not autobiographical. It just started to feel, to me, like a story I needed to tell – but tell it with hope. The ultimate aim of the show is to connect with people who have been through that, or even just been through loss. Which is kind of everyone, I suppose. I wanted to make them feel less alone.”
The series marks another high-profile role for Paapa, who has recently been in the spotlight following backlash to his casting as Severus Snape in an upcoming television adaptation of Harry Potter.
In Babies, his character’s emotional restraint contrasts sharply with Lisa’s more direct confrontation of grief.
Stefan added: “With the flashback in episode three, for example, I tried to show not just the foundation of their relationship, but also the foundation of their outlooks.
“The same outlooks that are causing them trouble in the present are the outlooks that attracted them to each other in the past.”
He added: “Lisa goes head first into a rage – Stephen avoids it for as long as he can, until it just becomes unavoidable. These responses to grief are rooted in who they are and how they were brought up.”
Produced by Snowed-In Productions, Money Men Studios and All3Media International, the series aims for realism in both its emotional tone and visual world.
Flats appear lived-in, finances are a constant concern, and characters are grounded in recognisable circumstances.
Stefan said: “A lot of writing is about ‘un-writing’ in order to achieve a greater sense of throwaway truth about how people speak, what clothes they wear or what their environments are like. People would ask me: ‘What’s the color palette here?’
“We don’t usually color-code our lives! Perhaps if Lisa and Stephen were a little older and more middle-class, they might have some interior design aspirations. But they don’t. There’s a kind of glorious chaos and mess that feels like a more truthful representation of the world.”
While early episodes dwell on loss, later instalments trace the couple’s attempts to rebuild.
Stefan said: “You bounce between them first getting together and them in the present day, so you juxtapose the joyful hope of the beginning of love with the first fire they’re stepping through.”
He added: “It’s kind of all there is. It’s all that matters. Love is what pulls them through.”
Babies airs Monday, 30 March, and Tuesday, 31 March, on BBC One and all six episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer.
