I grew up in Liverpool during the ’84 Miners’ Strike. There was only one side to be on...the NUM
SAYS DAVID MORRISSEY
It’s even in the way he sits down, as though he is about to pull out a notebook to take down the details of a break-in or read you your rights and begin an interrogation.
There is no mistaking the calm and assured clean-shaven authority of a senior policeman that seems to belong to David Morrissey.
It is probably why he has played so many of them in dramas such as Between the Lines, Out of the Blue, Five Days, and Thorne.
And tonight he will be seen in uniform again – as Det Chief Supt Ian St Clair in new BBC six-parter Sherwood.
But this could be one of the most emotionally draining roles of them all.
David, 57, admits: “A lot of coppers come my way so when they say, ‘You’re playing a police officer’, you think, ‘Oh, God, this better be different’. And this is.
“I’m always looking for the personal rather than procedural. And on Sherwood, it’s there right off the bat.”
Sherwood is inspired by real-life events: the 2004 manhunt near a Nottinghamshire pit village which, due to the involvement of the Metropolitan police, served to open the wounds in a community still divided by the Miners’ Strike, which began in 1984.
David’s character is under intolerable pressure from all sides. But despite the gruelling nature of the shoot, he has ways of dealing with being emotionally spent at the end of each day.
“[I’m] like a bus driver on a bad day when everybody has shouted at him,” he laughs. “It’s part and parcel of what I do...
“The most antsy I get is when I’m at home and the phone isn’t ringing and no one’s employing me. If I’m on set doing something I’m usually very, very happy.”
What’s happening to our country now is that sense of identity is being eroded DAVID MORRISSEY ON HIS FEELING THE NATION IS IN A STATE OF FLUX
It seems he has barely been off our screens since the 1980s, with roles in the likes of Holding On, Basic Instinct 2, The Walking Dead, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Britannia.
He was “massively interested” in Sherwood before he even saw the script because he knew it had been written by James Graham (Brexit: The Uncivil War) and would be directed by Lewis Arnold (Des, and Time).
David adds: “I read the first three episodes and really loved it in the sense that it felt very new, unexpected. There were twists and turns I wasn’t expecting.
“I went for a walk with James and we talked about it, and there were lots of things I responded to.”
James, 39, is from the area where Sherwood is set. One of the 2004 murders that inspired the series is that of 62-yearold ex-miner Keith Frogson, who had joined the strike. He was shot with a crossbow in Annesley Woodhouse by neighbour Robert Boyer, then 42, who had crossed the picket line.
Police dismissed the connection to the strike, but James knows resentments are never far from the surface in the area.
The actions attributed to the police bussed in from London have not been forgotten either. It made it all the more intriguing for strike supporter David.
The father-of-three was born in Kensington, Liverpool. His mum worked for Littlewoods and his dad was a cobbler.
David, who separated from novelist wife Esther Freud, 59, (daughter of painter Lucian Freud) in 2020, is a lifelong Labour supporter.
It made the political backdrop of the series all the more poignant. He says: “I grew up in Liverpool during the Miners’ Strike, so there was only one side to be on – that of the National Union of Mineworkers [and the strikers]. “And I was very happy to be on that side and still am but I was surrounded by people who were on the same side as me
and there wasn’t a debate about it. Looking at it from a Nottinghamshire point of view, it was a much more complex place to live.
“One of the things that James Graham, growing up in that place, presents is all the sides of the issue.”
There was, the series suggests, a different set of rules for a covert department in the Met police.
This unit has been accused of using undercover officers to infiltrate the community and form relationships with people to gather intelligence against the strikers. David says: “This is something that’s very alive because [the behaviour of this department] is going through our courts right now.
“We’ve seen in dramas like Line of Duty undercover operations within criminal and terrorist organisations.
“But the idea there were undercover officers inside legal organisations that were eavesdropping on conversations, feeding back information and sometimes having relationships with people without telling them who they really were is outrageous.
“It’s something we need to really look at, right here, right now.” And while the show is inspired by events almost 20 years ago and influenced by events from 20 years before that, it is also of the moment because it concerns Red Wall towns where the Government, bolstered by electoral success in Labour heartlands, is making noise about “levelling-up”.
David says: “Those Red Wall towns like the one in Sherwood that Labour [could] rely on for decades, and can’t any more... how did that happen?
“When did this idea that they were being forgotten about by Labour start to happen? What’s happening to our country now is that sense of identity is being eroded.
“You can have lots of arguments about that being a good thing or a bad thing, but it is in flux – and inside that flux, there’s lots of opportunity for exploitation... for people being pushed to different places.
“The idea of compromise, or a centrist position, is the hardest thing to do at the moment, I think.”
The drama is not afraid to ask difficult questions. David, who appears in the series alongside Joanne Froggatt and Lindsay Duncan, says: “There are elements we should all consider such as ‘How do we open up the wounds of the past, have a debate, listen to everyone’s side, and not forget, but how do we find forgiveness and go forward?’.”
If he ever tires of acting and filmmaking, there is probably a career in politics to be had – if he doesn’t get snapped up by a real police force first.
Sherwood is on Mondays and Tuesdays, BBC1 at 9pm. The first episode is due to air tonight and will also be available on BBC iPlayer.