Humans' Joe Barton explains real-life inspiration for new show Giri/Haji
Humans writer Joe Barton has revealed the real-life inspiration behind his new show Giri/Haji.
The eight-part BBC Two and Netflix series follows the story of a middle-aged Japanese detective Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) who comes to London to investigate the murder of a yakuza boss' nephew and search for his believed-to-be-dead brother – the main suspect of the crime.
Discussing the idea behind the show, Barton explained that he came up with it when his girlfriend at the time took a forensic crime course.
"About eight years ago, my girlfriend at the time started doing a forensic crime science course at UCL and she came back and told me about her first day and she was telling me about all the other people on her course," he told Digital Spy and other press.
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"Most of them were people in their mid-20s, apart from one 40-year-old Japanese man sitting at the back, sort of minding his own business and he was a detective from Tokyo and had come over to London to learn about crime and techniques and she was telling me about that and I was like, 'That sounds like an interesting protagonist for a high-end crime drama I might write in eight years'."
Giri/Haji translates directly to duty/shame and Barton spoke about why they chose this particular title.
"We were looking for a title and the theme sort of came out of writing it and what it was," he continued. "When we were looking what to call it, we were looking at the yakuza and we wanted to give it a Japanese title and giri is a word that came up a lot.
"The idea of duty is very important to the yakuza and Japanese culture as well. So we had giri, and then we were looking for other things that seemed resonant, and it seemed like all the characters were deeply ashamed, so it seemed to work."
Giri/Haji will premiere on Thursday, October 17 on BBC Two at 9pm, and will be available as a box-set on iPlayer straight after.
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