Programme Information

Becci Gemmell talks to Programme Information's Tony Matthews about her role as Joyce in BBC Daytime's Second World War drama Land Girls.

If ever a character epitomised the spirit of war-time Britain, it's surely Joyce in Land Girls. Straightforward, patriotic, ever willing to do her bit, Joyce, played by Becci Gemmell, takes every blow in her stride, while concealing the pain beneath an apparently sunny disposition.

The war has been particularly hard on Joyce. In the first series of the popular Forties drama from BBC Daytime, first shown in September 2009, she already knew the true cost of war as she had lost her home and parents in the bombing of Coventry, which is why she ended up becoming a land girl. This time, with the story having moved on several months from the end of the last series, she faces the terror of her husband John serving in the dangerous Bomber Command.

"It wasn't comfortable to film," says Becci, for whom playing Joyce presents a considerable emotional challenge. "I constantly had to question how she would react to a series of dilemmas, it's been brilliant though and makes for very interesting drama."

The second series of Land Girls actually gets off to a flying start for Joyce, when John arrives in an RAF Tiger Moth training plane and takes her flying for a birthday treat – it's an all-too brief moment of happiness. "The plane was gorgeous," says Becci, "unfortunately they wouldn't really let me fly in it, although I was taxied around, which was hilarious as I was wearing half a wig and it's open top. It made such a racket, and there were buttons and levers everywhere, this guy was manually trying to get the propeller going and it wouldn't start and there was such a terrible smell of gas, I thought we were going to go up in flames."

Joyce is soon left with nothing again. "Having already lost her family, she's now lost her husband while Nancy, the friend she made in the last series, has also gone," says Becci. "And then she comes face to face with a German airman who has crash landed, presenting her with another massive challenge. Lovely Joyce is so patriotic and hopeful, but she's frail as well. She goes through the mill and by the end of this series she is a completely different girl to the one who started out in the first episode of series one."

At that time, Becci was also starting out as a TV actress, winning a Midlands regional Royal Television Society award for best newcomer for her portrayal of Joyce. "As an actress I felt I was finding my feet with the show at the same time as the character was finding her feet with the farm and being a Land Girl. But if I thought this was something steady, the writers have pushed her into a completely different direction."

Does Becci find it easy to relate to the life of a Land Girl? "When you are on tour with actors you're living and working together and have to learn to get close to people quickly," she says. "The Land Girls also did that, living on top of one another, sharing a bedroom and then having to go out and work for 12 hours a day. But it's so easy in the modern world to nip out for a coffee and have five minutes on your own, and that was much more difficult for the Land Army. They were also doing work that was completely alien to them. Joyce was a hairdresser in Coventry and then suddenly she's in the middle of nowhere, digging beetroot in the freezing cold. It was really hard graft and yet thousands of women signed up to be sent miles away from home because they knew the country needed feeding and they had to do it. It was incredibly patriotic and they had a real work ethic. It makes me incredibly proud to be a woman and to think of what they achieved and that they really changed the roles of women and the way they worked."

What did she know of the Land Army before she played Joyce? "Not much," she says, "but I researched it in the British Library and read about how they lived and the fact is we'd have starved without them. It's shocking that they weren't recognised officially until 2008, when there was this big apology... because they really were an army with conscription and a uniform. The story is one that is still within living memory and it means a lot to those who went through it. I've spoken to a few people since the series first came on and so many have connections to it. We could have made something very gritty, but really this series is about people's lives. It has a wide appeal because it picks up on the hope and camaraderie and on people from all walks of life pulling together. It's a heart-warming drama."

There's also a considerable element of class in it with the different characters form the manor house and the farm. "There is," Becci agrees, "the first series really established that kind of Upstairs Downstairs feel, so now we're focusing more on what happens to the characters individually rather than the working relationship between the manor house, where there's a love triangle, and the farm. We also go into the village more and meet the people there. It shows how people were thrown together."

The returning cast has also been strengthened with the introduction of several new characters. "So many of the people in the first series came back that it was like a family reunion," says Becci, "but there are also new actors coming in like Raquel Cassidy [Teachers], who I just adore, also David Scofield, Clive Wood and Seline Hizli as new girl Connie Carter, who is the opposite of Joyce and ruffles a few feathers. She is brilliant and has so much energy, it's really fun."

So what does the future hold for Becci and how would she like to see the character of Joyce develop? "It was an incredible bonding process for the Land Girls to have lived through it for so many years and, while some went back to their previous lives, lots of them married farmers or farm hands. This series has gone above and beyond what I was expecting – it's a much more ambitious show and I'd love to know where it might go next. I've just finished a stage tour of Lark Rise To Candleford and as an actress you never know what's going to happen, but I really hope to go again with Land Girls to see what happens to Joyce as I think they've been incredibly creative about how the drama will unfold."