THE controversial new TV version of Jekyll and Hyde comes with at least a few moments of light relief – thanks to a Bournemouth film company.

Some viewers have complained that the ITV1 drama, starring Tom Bateman, is too strong for its early-evening time slot.

The show is punctuated by sponsorship ‘bumpers’ for the Dorset-based insurer LV=, which were filmed by a local business.

The Light Side is the sister business of Bournemouth film company White Lantern Film and specialises in commercials.

The LV= spots were developed and directed by Dan Pringle, whose own horror movie K-Shop is to get a limited theatrical release next year.

Dan, creative director at the Light Side, said: “We’ve been working with LV= for some time. We have a pretty good relationship with their marketing team.

“They approached us and said did we think we could come up with something cool for the idents and turn it around in a short space of time. It was about six or seven weeks.”

The series sees Robert Louis Stevenson’s story – written in Bournemouth in 1886 – updated to the 1930s.

Dan’s clips are also set in the 1930s, with period cars and motorcycles transformed on screen into their modern equivalents.

Dan and business partner Adam Merrifield used 1930s sets at Basingstoke Milestones Museum and also shot on Hampshire’s Watercress Line.

“We came up with all these different ideas that related to different types of insurance and collaborated with LV= on what insurance products they wanted to represent,” said Dan.

“We spoke with a couple of other local companies that supplied us with a lot of 1930s products and garages that specialised in 1930s vehicles.

“It’s probably our biggest job to date in terms of the amount of content we had to produce for it.”

He said he had suspected the drama, adapted by Charlie Higson, would be controversial.

“We went to the premiere of the first episode with the cast and crew and LV=. We sat there watching the first episode in a cinema and we were looking at each other thinking ‘This is pretty dark for 6.30/7pm’,” he said.

Dan’s own film as writer-director, K-Shop, will shortly get its first screening ahead of a limited cinema release. It is believed to be the first feature film entirely shot in Bournemouth.

The Sweeney Todd-themed horror tale was inspired by his experiences working above a kebab shop in St Peter’s Road.