ON SET WITH... Douglas Henshall

as DI Jimmy Douglas, 51, best known

Shetland, Perez in dark Scottish drama

William plays real-life police officer

In Plain Muncie in ITV’s new series killer Peter Sight, about Scottish serial through a Manuel. Here he talks us set... week on the show’s Glasgow

11

MONDAY

Peter Manuel murdered at least eight people between 1956 and 1958, and like many people in Scotland I knew about him. My mum was about 17 when he was notorious and I remember her talking about how nervous and frightened people were. It’s really shocking, and also very sad how accidental some of his most heinous crimes were. He murdered one family but he wasn’t actually targeting them, he was going for the family next door but got the wrong house. It’s an astonishing story.

12

TUESDAY

It’s been interesting getting into the head of William Muncie, who first got to know Manuel when he arrested him for burglary ten years before he started murdering. He was convinced Manuel was behind the killings but no one believed him at first. I read Muncie’s book The Crime Pond where he talks about Manuel as a heron and his patch as a pond. Today we’re filming Muncie at home where he has books on bird-watching – consciously or not, he used bird behaviour for his work.

13

WEDNESDAY

Today I’m filming a scene with Martin Compston who plays Manuel [right]. We don’t have many scenes together; filming tends to be either a Manuel day or a Muncie day, so he’s often leaving the set as I arrive. But we’ve been out a few times socially.

14

THURSDAY

We’re working in Glasgow and I know many of the places we’re filming from my own life. Some are just up the road from where I was brought up. The Manuel family house is still there. His sister Theresa lived there until her death in 2008, but we’re not filming there. Some of the streets we’ve filmed in still look like they would have done in the 1950s. Muncie and his family lived in a police house across the road from the police station and when Manuel started dropping taunting notes through his door it must have been very frightening.

15

FRIDAY

Although this is a drama we do have a responsibility to get it right, mainly to the victims. Muncie’s daughter is still alive and our writers spoke to her about her dad. She might not recognise her father physically, but I feel an obligation to try and recreate the spirit of the man. Today I’m doing a scene with Shauna Macdonald, who plays Muncie’s wife Agnes. Despite all the terrible things he must have seen, he didn’t bring his work home and I’ve tried to show that. I wanted to try and make him an identifiable human being. He was a decent, good man.