NO ONE SAW MEASA PSYCHO

As she returns in a second series of Bancroft, Sarah Parish says casting her as the murderous detective is what makes it so gripping

Sarah Parish has a laugh so loud it nearly rattles the windowpanes in the room. And Sarah laughs an awful lot. So it surprised her when she started becoming depressed while filming series two of Bancroft, the ITV drama about an icy police chief who bumps off anyone who gets in her way.

‘Of all the characters I’ve been, she’s the most depressing to be inside,’ admits Sarah. ‘The scenes are intense. It was hard to shrug her off and by the end of it I really did feel depressed. I hid myself away in a flat in Manchester for the ten-week shoot. I never socialised – and I’m always socialising! I’m sure when I went home at the weekends I wasn’t very nice to be around.’

Since she’s best known for depicting warm characters in shows such as Cutting It, Mistresses and Broadchurch, viewers have been unsettled to see her as a murderous psycho. ‘I asked why they cast me and they said, “Because you’re nice”. They thought it’d be interesting for viewers to think, “Oh, it’s Sarah Parish. Oh my God, she’s killing someone!” It’s unexpected.’

Sarah, 51, excels as Elizabeth Bancroft, a ruthless killer who could have come straight out of a Jacobean drama. In series one we learned she’d been successfully covering up the 1990 murder of a lover who’d spurned her. When a couple of police colleagues began looking into the cold case and suspected Elizabeth of the crime, she shot one of them in the head.

As series two opens two years on, Bancroft has been promoted to Chief Superintendent. But her world starts to unravel when her estranged son Joe (Adam Long) is implicated in a double murder.

Excluded from the case due to the conflict of interest, Bancroft is frantic about what will happen to Joe; worse, she faces a new nemesis. She’s also being closely watched by Supt Cliff Walker (Adrian Edmondson). The threepart series is being shown on consecutive nights, starting in a prestigious New Year’s Day slot, but Sarah may not be watching the opener. ‘I’ll be hungover,’ she laughs. ‘We’re having a party, lots of drinking and dancing.’

A juicy lead role in a drama like this is a boon for any actress, let alone one in her 50s. Sarah never expected her career to flourish in middle age after older actresses told her the roles would dry up. ‘They scared the life out of me! They’d say, “Make hay now, when you get to 40 that’ll be it.” But producers know that the demographics of TV watchers are women in their 40s and 50s, o we want to see good parts or older women. I’m very lucky.’ Acting isn’t the only string to er bow. Since 2014 she and her husband, Suspects and Primeval actor James Murray, have become a fundraising power couple. Sarah and James lost their first child, Ella-jayne, to a congenital heart defect in 2009. They set up the Murray Parish Trust and have since raised enough to fund a paediatric emergency department at Southampton Children’s Hospital. ‘It’s a tiny charity, but suddenly we’ve raised £5.2 million and this new A&E has opened,’ says Sarah. ‘I go there and see all the children and think, “Wow, we did this!” We’re now trying to raise £5.5 million to build a suite for a revolutionary IMRI scanner there. We’re happy our daughter has a great legacy. We feel proud of what that little life has done for lots of other little people.’ ■

Bancroft is on from New Year’s Day until Friday at 9pm on ITV.

arah, and left) as ancroft ith Supt liff Walker