The Bay series 2 episode 5: Daniel Ryan has known about Tony Manning’s secret inner turmoil since series 1

Warning: spoilers ahead for series two episode five of The Bay.

In the latest episode of The Bay, everything in Tony Manning’s (Daniel Ryan) life appears to be crashing down around him, from the breakdown of his marriage to the lack of progress in the case of Stephen Marshbrook’s (Stephen Tompkinson) murder.

While he is usually the voice of reason and stability in the police force, the end of the episode sees Lisa Armstrong (Morven Christie) retrieve Tony from the pub, her boss incapable of walking on his own because of the amount he has drunk and bloodied from a bar fight he instigated.

Leading up to this point, there were several hints that all was not well behind-the-scenes in Tony’s life, including the fact that Lisa spotted him sleeping in the office rather than at home.

During a recent Zoom conversation with Metro.co.uk, Daniel revealed that the show’s creator, Daragh Carville, clued him in on where Tony’s story was leading all the way back when they were filming series one, which aired in 2019.

‘I knew that all of this was bubbling under during series one,’ he said. ‘Daragh had given me a really interesting biography of the character and he mentioned that he was struggling with his home life.’

In series one, there was a very subtle reference to the fact that Tony’s marriage was on the rocks when was shown on one occasion sleeping on the sofa in the office.

‘But that could be for any reason – I knew why that was,’ Daniel explained.

‘So in terms of long game and in terms of really great writing, I knew what was going on and what was coming, so I was already sitting on top of something that was troubling at home. Getting to see exactly what that was was great to play.’

While filming the intense series two scenes on The Bay, Daniel recalled ‘channelling quite a lot of inner turmoil’ from his ‘own personal life’, as his son was unwell at the time.

A year on, the actor believes it will have been quite ‘surprising’ for viewers to see his character in this state, with the stress Tony is experiencing in his life ‘reaching this crescendo’.

Daniel explained that there wasn’t much dialogue in the script for the pub scene, with the actor basing his performance on the ‘brilliant building bricks’ Daragh had provided.

The lines that Tony does come out with when he gets into the altercation with the other pub patrons ‘was just what was coming out of my mouth’, he said.

The Steel River Blues star emphasised that he wanted to depict Tony’s state of inebriation in a ‘tragic’ way, to highlight how the moment is ‘an accumulation of losing one of his team’.

‘I’ve been told by police that it is literally – it seems obvious – but it is completely and utterly the worst thing that can happen to you, that you can lose one of your team,’ he stated.

‘For those who it’s happened to, I wanted to kind of represent how much they have to go through.’

Addressing the future of The Bay, Daniel is looking forward to discovering where the narrative will take the cast in series three, which will see Morven replaced by Marsha Thomason as the new lead character Jenn Townsend.

Daniel acknowledged that Marsha ‘has to fill shoes that were very beautifully filled’ by Morven.

‘Bringing in a new element, a new person, I think it’s always exciting,’ he added.

The Bay returns next Wednesday at 9pm and is available to watch on ITV Player.

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