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February 25 March 2, 2020 Your 7-Day Listings Guide Visit mags4gifts.co.nz/sunday-star-times Or call 0800 SUNDAY (786 329)
After years of playing second fiddle to Sherlock Holmes, Martin Freeman has his own case to solve in the fact-based UK drama A Confession.
The series follows the real-life investigation conducted by Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher (Freeman) into the disappearance – and, ultimately, murder – of 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, who went missing in the early hours of March 19, 2011, in Swindon, Wiltshire.
Fulcher believed that O’Callaghan had been kidnapped by her taxi driver, Christopher Halliwell (Doc Martin’s Joe Absolom), and did everything in his power to try to find her alive. His actions – including obtaining a confession from Halliwell without following police protocol – cost him his career.
It didn’t take much to persuade Freeman, who is best known for television series Sherlock, Fargo, The Office and The Hobbit movies, to take on the role.
‘‘I saw footage of Steve Fulcher and just the bit that I heard about what he had done to obtain these confessions seemed to me to be totally common sense,’’ Freeman says.
‘‘The question that he asks that immediately made me ask myself was, ‘What would I want a police officer to do on behalf of my children?’ ’’
Like Fulcher, Freeman has two daughters (with his former partner, actress Amanda Abbington) and he says while you don’t need to be a parent to be horrified when a young person is murdered, it certainly makes an impact.
‘‘Once you’re a parent, that kind of s... really hits home because it becomes unimaginable. You’re looking at your daughters or your sons and that line is very, very tangible,’’ he says.
Freeman has played a real person before but this is the first time he has met his character.
‘‘I think you always feel a responsibility to the character you’re playing. That, of course, is magnified when the character you’re playing is in fine fettle and is going to be watching this,’’ Freeman says. ‘‘The real people I’ve played before are either dead or unobtainable whereas [Fulcher] has come on to set and I’ve met him a couple of times and I’ve been able to ask him about specific things. I couldn’t do that when I played Rembrandt [in Nightwatching].’’
Halliwell confessed and was later convicted of Callaghan’s murder, plus that of another young woman, but it was not enough to save Fulcher. He was found guilty of gross misconduct and ignoring police orders.
‘‘As far as I can tell from all sources, he had a very good reputation and a very good nose. He was a good detective,’’ Freeman says.
‘‘He didn’t suffer fools gladly, wasn’t always the best person at making friends because he had high standards. He seems like a decent but wounded man – and who wouldn’t be?’’
Freeman says while neither he nor, he believes, Fulcher advocates breaking the law willy-nilly, sometimes there is no other way.
‘‘I’ve spoken to a couple of other police in the run-up to doing this and during this and I think people do feel he was very, very ill-treated. I’m absolutely 100 per cent on his side,’’ Freeman says.
‘‘I would defy anybody to look at what he did and go, ‘That is a really bad thing he did there.’ It may not have been the wisest thing to do but, in hindsight, he always said, ‘I would do exactly the same thing again.’ And looking at his actions, it would be hard to argue with that. I think we, as the public, know the police have to be accountable.’’
So you kind of think well, a slap on the wrist maybe? You know, an admonishment.
‘‘But what happened to him was way beyond that and we’ve lost a really good copper at a time when we need every single one we can get.
‘‘Not a single person watching this would think, ‘I hope if my daughter ever goes missing that this won’t happen.’ ’’
– TV Guide
A Confession, UKTV, Mondays, 9.30pm