Are Martin and Ben in love in ITV’s The Party? What we know so far

ITV’s The Party opened on Sunday night with Ben Fitzmaurice’s lavish birthday celebrations at his family’s country home, and it left viewers with a question about the two men at the heart of it.

Are Martin Gilmour and Ben, played by Luke Evans and Tom Cullen, simply the most loyal of old friends, or is there something deeper between them that neither is ready to name?

How Martin and Ben met

Martin was raised by his working-class mother, Sylvia, played by Joanna Scanlan, and won a scholarship to an elite boarding school.

It was there that he met Ben, the son of Lord George and Lady Katherine Fitzmaurice, played by Douglas Hodge and Lindsay Duncan, and the Fitzmaurices gave him a sense of belonging he had not found at home.

The drama keeps returning to those years in flashback, following the pair from school to university and on through their party days in London.

Three decades on, Martin is a political journalist with a pregnant wife, Lucy, played by Sarah Solemani, who also wrote the adaptation.

Ben is a Conservative politician married to Serena, played by Lydia Leonard. When news breaks during the birthday celebrations that the Conservative leader has resigned, Ben starts to weigh up a run for the leadership, and Martin warns him against a rash response that could expose secrets from their past.

The series moves between that night and the police investigation that follows it.

Is it a love story?

ITV’s publicity presents the bond first and foremost as loyalty, describing two men who have stayed unflinchingly loyal to each other since they met at school, and its own synopsis for the opening episode calls Martin Ben’s “lifelong friend”.

The people who made the drama have been more open about what lies underneath.

Speaking to Attitude ahead of the launch, Luke Evans said there was “no discomfort” for him and Tom Cullen in playing characters who “could fall in love”. He went on: “We both knew that we wanted this to feel beautiful and passionate and tragic and real.”

Attitude itself has described the series as the story of two men who share “an intense, closeted love”.

Tom Cullen has spoken mostly about what Ben cannot allow himself. In an interview with Where to Watch, he described Ben as a man who “is not emotionally intelligent enough to know how to navigate his feelings, his emotions, his identity”, and said that meeting Martin was “like a door opening to another world, another existence”. As he put it: “I think what Martin offers to him is a chance to be his true self.”

That is where the tension in the opening episode comes from. Ben was born into old money and now has his eye on the top job in his party, while Martin is the scholarship boy who owes his place in that world to the Fitzmaurices.

A leadership campaign would bring exactly the kind of press attention Martin fears, and Cullen’s own description of Ben suggests a man who has spent his life keeping part of himself out of sight.

Why it matters for LGBTQ+ viewers

The Party has an openly gay actor at its centre both in front of and behind the camera. Luke Evans plays Martin and is also one of the executive producers, and he has credited the ease of working with Cullen to their friendship off set, saying they “were also just really good friends, which I think helped a lot”.

Cullen has said the show “really is about what happens when someone isn’t allowed to be their true self”.

That puts the cost of hiding at the centre of a primetime ITV drama. Evans has described the series as “a gripping exploration of loyalty, class, and the truths we hide”, and the opening episode has set up all three.

If you want to know more about why the role meant so much to him, our earlier piece, The Party star Luke Evans reveals why ITV’s dangerous love story felt so personal, goes into it in more depth.

What comes next

The first episode has only begun to show what happened between Martin and Ben in the years before the party, and the drama is clearly in no hurry to give its answers away.

The Party continues on ITV1, and all five episodes are available to stream as a box set on ITVX.

Images: ITV.