GRANTCHESTER
CORKING SERIES FINALE FRI 14 FEB, 9PM, ITV
A woman’s body is found, but how can it be, as she died five years before? Will and Geordie are thrown into a puzzling affair, involving visits to a convent (with Tracy Ann Oberman playing a sinister Sister) and a brilliant moment when the “no sex please, I’m religious” Will actually succumbs to temptation! Elsewhere, Leonard takes centre stage – telling his awful father (the word “sissy” is used) where to go – and shows Mrs C the love. More please!
Can you sum up the series?
It’s very different to New Lives In The Wild [Ben’s other show]. It’s still about changing your life, but it’s less extreme. I wanted to do a slightly more realistic and achievable series for viewers, who can watch and not just dream, but actually maybe do something like this for themselves.
And you talk about your own dream, which is to open a boutique hotel...
I’ve often joked with Marina [Ben’s wife of 14 years] that when the work dries up, we might just abandon city life and go and find a little island somewhere really remote. I think we all have dreams – mine is to have a little hotel. I think if I could really and truly be myself, I would wear those colourful hippie trousers and a hand-knit sweater every day, and I would grow my hair long…
You discover hard work also comes into it…
The reality is that it’s a constant hamster wheel of work. So, while you may have untied your shackles of sitting at a computer 9 to 5, you’ve swapped one heavy workload for another.
It’s a classic case of ‘the grass is always greener’, so it was a good insight for me. That doesn’t mean the dream has gone, I just think I’m more of a realist now. We see you help with chores – are you domesticated?
I love hoovering. Maybe it’s a dog-owner thing, but I find there’s a great satisfaction in sucking up big mounds of dog hair. I hate ironing. With all due respect to people out there who iron professionally, I think if you do it at home as an extracurricular activity then you are just wasting your life. You don’t need an ironed pair of pants. You don’t even need an ironed shirt. Crinkles are a bit like wrinkles – it’s a sign that you have lived, not ironed…
This year is 20 years since you did Castaway [where Ben lived on an island in the Outer Hebrides for a year]...
I went back there with my daughter, Iona [eight] at the beginning of January. I’ve been touring the country with a stage show – Tales From The Wilderness – which is the story of my life since I was on the island to now. I thought it would be nice to put on a performance on the beach for all the locals, and hundreds of people came out to watch. It was magical and so moving. Castaway was such a life-changing experience and one I’ll never forget. I often think about it.
Do you ever watch your own TV shows?
I used to hate watching myself, but two things have changed that. One, I think it’s important to do so, otherwise you won’t be able to learn and improve. Two, my children [Ludo, ten and Iona] are now at an age where they want to watch the shows I’m in. Given I have so many absences from home, I want them to see what I was doing. When I say, “I’m going off to Siberia to meet some people trying to bring back the woolly mammoth,” they can then watch that documentary six months later and actually see where
I was and the people I met.
It’s become a kind of Sundaynight ritual now, which sounds fantastically vain, but I feel a great pride that they get to watch and absorb.