If you make a feelgood film which is complete candyfloss, where everybody is good and everything is beautiful and hunky dory, it won't appeal to the audience.
Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.
The birth of democracy in Iraq is one of the great positive changes of our era.