Freeman tackles family, crime in two new shows
The Everyman Card has been nice to have in his back pocket; it afforded him entrée to a solid career. But British actor Martin Freeman has others to play, as two very different television projects show.
“I didn’t go to drama school just to be likable and funny,” he says over a Zoom chat from his London home. “I like having that facility; it’s very useful. But like most actors, I’m greedy. I want to do as much as I can do.”
The 48-year-old Freeman made his name as the nice young man in the original British The Office (think the John Krasinski role), the accidental cosmic tourist in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the sensitive porn stand-in in Love Actually. Since then, his hits have included the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring
Sherlock (as Watson), the trilogy of The Hobbit (as the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins), the FX series Fargo (as Lester Nygaard) and Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (he says Panther director Ryan Coogler has confirmed he’ll be in the sequel).
And this season, he has two television shows available in America: The warts-and-all parenting comedy Breeders, which hit FX in March, and the true-crime miniseries A Confession, available through the BritBox streaming service. He’s not exactly sweet or heroic in either.
“There are lots of comedies about parenting and family, obviously,” he says of Breeders, which he co-created. “But there weren’t any that I had seen that showed what happens when you lose your temper with your kids, when you actually do that.”
“I was interested in how far we could go down that line and for it to still be funny and for the characters to still be people you root for. They’re not abusive; they’re not horrible people. They love their kids and are ostensibly a pretty happy, functional family. But within that, we’re showing the underside … . I haven’t seen this tone in this context on television before.”
In its bones, Breeders is a comedy, but there’s serious drama in its marrow as well. Freeman cites some of those very dark turns as his favourite moments on the show, though to discuss them here would be telling. In the same vein, A Confession is not your father’s true-crime miniseries — especially if your father is American.
“That had occurred to me, the difference between the U.S. and the U.K. — it’s a very English telling of the story. There aren’t any big car chases or explosions; no one gets shot. The best American TV is the best in the world, but you guys like a car chase,” he says, smiling.
The series’ first act, if you will, is a nail-biting hunt after Freeman’s Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher learns of a young woman’s kidnapping. From there, it becomes an examination of the aftermath. The balance of the drama turns on a failure to observe the equivalent of a suspect’s Miranda rights, with severe consequences.