Meet Amara Karan, an actress as vibrant as her outfit,

Lucky Man Kerry Potter

She stars in Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Sky 1’s police drama from the Marvel Comics legend, but if Amara Karan herself was a comic character she would, without doubt, be Gung Ho Girl. We meet for breakfast one grim winter morning in an East London café, a 90-minute schlep from Amara’s Hertfordshire home – and she bounces in, full of the joys of spring (it’s two degrees outside) and insanely enthusiastic about everything. She loves the café, she loves the porridge, she loves her boyfriend Jamie de Courcey, a theatre actor who has had roles in Downton Abbey and The Crown, and who is lurking by the counter. (I only realise he’s there when I clock her stroking the sleeve of a bearded man next to us in the queue. ‘Oh, this is my boyfriend Jamie. I’m not just being extremely friendly!’ she laughs.) And what with Lucky Man returning to our screens this month and last year’s acclaimed US crime drama The Night Of – in which Amara plays a rookie lawyer – bagging three Golden Globe nominations, Amara really, really loves being an actress. ‘It is the perfect job,’ she exclaims. What would Gung Ho Girl’s catchphrase be? That’s easy: ‘Hell, yeah!’ She says it – nay, bellows it – eight times during our conversation, in her cut-glass RP tones.

In Lucky Man, the 34-year-old plays DS Suri Chohan, strait-laced, analytical partner to James Nesbitt’s maverick detective Harry Clayton. Hard-drinking gambler Harry is the owner of a mysterious bracelet that imbues him with great luck, although Suri doesn’t know this. The duo pinball around London crashing various vehicles, fighting with underworld baddies and solving cases. It’s a little bit silly and a lot of fun. I note that poor Suri went through the wringer in series one: while Harry was being all twinkly, Irish and charming, his sidekick suffered injury upon