Between the Tides

With Bergerac returning to our screens later this year, and the series set to head Stateside, all eyes are once again on Jersey and on Chloé Sweetlove, who reprises her role as Kim, the daughter at the heart of the drama’s emotional core.

Filmed on the island’s sweeping coastline and quiet lanes, the new series deepens its exploration of family, loss and loyalty. But it is Kim’s story, intimate, restrained and quietly powerful, that gives the show its heartbeat.

For Chloé, stepping back into Kim’s world meant returning not just to a character, but to an emotional landscape shaped by grief. “I was really interested in exploring complex grief dynamics,” she says. “Often in times of grief, people in intimate relationships pull to opposite ends of the spectrum.”

Kim has lost her mother. Her father, consumed by his own sorrow and spiralling into addiction, becomes emotionally absent. What emerges is not a caricature of teenage rebellion, but something far more layered, a young woman forced to parent herself, and in many ways, parent her father too. “Children who lose a parent navigate such complicated pain,” Chloé reflects. “There can be a sense of abandonment, even when you know that’s irrational. And then there’s sometimes a secondary abandonment when the surviving parent can’t show up.”

It would have been easy to portray Kim as brittle or bratty. Instead, Chloé was determined to emulate a more familiar character. “The young people I know are complex and capable. They rise to the occasion.” That rising, that quiet resilience, becomes Kim’s heartbeat.

Working alongside Damien Molony and Zoë Wanamaker, Chloé found herself in a cast that mirrored the emotional authenticity of the script. “There are no egos,” she laughs. “You get to watch actors you admire workshop scenes, ask questions, figure things out in real time. That can be so inspiring.”

And then there is Jersey itself. The island is more than a backdrop in Bergerac, it is presence. The sea, in particular, seeped into Chloé’s understanding of Kim. “A lot of the memories I created for her happened by the ocean. It just felt right.”

“I was known for walking across the road in my dressing gown at sunrise just to swim in the ocean.”

— Chloé Sweetlove

Much of Kim’s strength is rooted in her relationship with her late mother, and as the series unfolds, she faces the possibility of leaving Jersey to pursue music. It is a move that brings unexpected emotional tension. “It started to feel like leaving the island meant leaving her mum,” Chloé says thoughtfully. “As though her mum was embedded in that place. The version of Kim her mum knew was embedded there.”

“It’s a poignant idea, that geography can hold grief. That departure can feel like loss all over again. Jersey becomes symbolic: the last place her mother was alive, the last place she knew her daughter as a child.”

The tension between loyalty and independence runs quietly through Kim’s arc. She longs to choose her own future, yet feels tethered by duty. “I thought a lot about loyalty as choice versus loyalty as obligation,” Chloé explains. “Choosing loyalty is a much truer expression of love. But to do that, you need independence.” It’s wisdom that feels far beyond her years.

To prepare emotionally, Chloé immersed herself in small rituals. She listened to Joni Mitchell, music she imagined Kim and her mother might have shared. She constructed memories. She paid attention to how grief manifests not in grand gestures but in tiny, daily acts: making tea the way her mum would have; taking care of her father because that’s what her mother might have done. Grief, she understands, is rarely loud. Often, it is quiet and continuous.

Off-screen, Jersey offered its own form of therapy. Staying at The Grand Jersey, part of the Hand Picked Hotels collection, Chloé found herself irresistibly drawn to the sea. “I was known for walking across the road in my dressing gown at sunrise just to swim in the ocean,” she smiles. “There’s nothing more refreshing. It’s so good for your mental health.”

The closeness of hotel and horizon, comfort and coastline, mirrored the contrasts within the series itself: tension and tenderness, darkness and light. The Atlantic air, the ritual of hot and cold, the rhythm of tides, it all became part of the experience of filming.

As her career gathers momentum, with a lead role in Amazon’s forthcoming feature film The Last Sunrise, Chloé remains strikingly grounded. “It’s easy to think about this industry in terms of career and strategy,” she says. “But the responsibility of an artist is to protect your identity as an artist.” For her, that means reading, listening, observing. Staying alive to the world. “If I have a job,” she says simply, “it’s to be alive.”

And perhaps that is why Kim resonates so deeply with Chloé. Because beneath the crime, beneath the dark undercurrents that make Bergerac so compelling, there is something recognisably human: a young woman trying to be enough. A strength and resilience that paves her future. Trying to step into her own life without betraying the past.

Bergerac will return to screens on U and U&DRAMA in Spring 2026.