Having worked on Merlin, Demons and Hex, Paul Cripps is no stranger to creating a colourful fantasy show on a budget. We sat down to chat with him about his work on Atlantis, from what inspired his set design to the practicalities of putting the show together in under a year.

What can you tell us about the different styles and influences on the set?

We tried to avoid too much of Classical Greece. Most of the Greek myths were set in an earlier time anyway. Everybody has an expectation of what ancient Greece looks like, and it’s normally Classical Greece [c480 – 323 BC, with the architecture of Classical Athens particularly well known – DoG], but we wanted to move away and make it a little bit more tribal, a bit earlier, so we’ve taken it more towards Bronze Age Greece, which kind of when the myths are set [c3000 – 1200 BC, covering the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean periods. Often associated with the Mycenaean period, c1700 – 1200 BC, which is also the setting of the myth of the Trojan War – DoG].

We also, because we were going to use Morocco, felt we had to encompass some of the elements that were in the Moroccan locations, so we moved it East as well. Nobody knows where Atlantis was, so we tried to suggest it was further East, that it was more Persian – there are elements of Persia, and elements of more Eastern areas. We’ve also moved the Iron Age back a bit to allow for elements of fighting with swords – it isn’t all bronze implements.