Ever since Charlotte Regan made her feature directorial debut with 2023’s brilliant Scrapper, we’ve been chomping at the bit to see what her next project would look like. And now, following eye-catching gigs directing episodes of The Buccaneers and The Responder, that next project — subversive BBC crime drama Mint — is nearly here. Starring Emma Laird (yes, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple‘s Jimmima) and Benjamin Coyle-Larner (yes, the multi-talented rapper Loyle Carner) as two star-crossed lovers from rival crime families, Mint already sounds like another Regan banger. And you can see Empire‘s exclusive first teaser for the show below;
Night-time train station meet-cute? Check. Coyle-Larner turning on the charm with that silk-smooth voice? Check. Slo-mo shots and close-ups that are at once incredibly tense, incredibly intimate, and emphatically Regan? Check, check, and triple check. Some gravity defying park-based frolicking? Yup — there’s that, too! Yeah, we’re thinking Charlotte Regan’s back. And while this teaser really is just that, a tantalising glimpse at what’s to come in Mint, it sets up the series’ hook perfectly. By the looks of it, we’re in for a contemporary Romeo & Juliet type love story, only instead of Montagues and Capulets you’ve got two British crime families whose doe-eyed kin — Shannon (Laird) and Arran (Coyle-Larner) — find themselves embarking on a forbidden romance.
The prospect of seeing two instantly magnetic screen presences like Laird and Coyle-Larner bringing Shannon and Arran’s relationship to life is enough to have us very much in already. But, as the show’s synopsis teases, Mint‘s not just a mob love story: it’s a crime drama that shifts focus from ‘the crime world’ and ‘politics of succession’ to the human lives at the centre of its story, to the way Shannon and her loved ones deal with patriarch Dylan’s (Bulk‘s Sam Riley) decision to step down as the head of the family for ‘mysterious reasons’.
So Mint is a love story. It’s also a crime drama. But it’s also doing its own thing in a way that looks and feels totally fresh, with oodles of talent both behind and in front of the camera. Sounds pretty, well, mint to us. We’ll definitely be tuning in when the full series hits BBC iPlayer — and the first episode premieres on BBC One — on 20 April.
