I did have to check that my character didn’t die...

SEAN BEAN doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to the fate of his characters on screen. From Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye, to Boromir in Lord Of The Rings and Ned Stark in Game Of Thrones , the Sheffield-born actor is famed for roles which end in an untimely death.

So, it’s understandable that for his latest show, World On Fire, he was keen to check with the writer – Bafta-winning Peter Bowker (The A Word) – that he would survive the first series.

“I think I did have a telephone conversation; ‘I don’t die, do I?’,” the 60-year-old recalls with a light chuckle. “And they said, ‘No, no, no, you’re all right!”’

In the seven-part BBC1 war drama, Sean plays working class man Douglas Bennett, who he says is unlike any character he’s played in the past.

Now a bus conductor living in Manchester with his two grown-up kids, Douglas witnessed a lot of horror and bloodshed during WWI.

As a result, when WWII begins, he is “a conscientious objector, a pacifist”.

He is also, Sean suggests, “a man who was suffering really psychologically from the past, trying to keep a hold on his life”.

“These flashbacks come upon him, these memories, these horrible nightmares that he just can’t get out of his head, and he’s trying to deal with it himself, on his own really, as many men did after the First World War,” he adds. “They didn’t get help from hospitals or societies or the government; they were very much seen as weaklings or men who were shirking or trying to dodge things.

“But they were actually men who were so shocked and so damaged that they weren’t pretending.”

The star adds: “Today it would be mental illness; it’s well documented and it’s addressed. But then, they just thought you were weak, you weren’t strong, you weren’t a man.

“He is a man, and he was a strong man, until he went through this and he’s kind of broken.”

The series looks at how the first year of the war affected several different ordinary people in Britain, Poland, France, Germany and the US.

Other intertwining stories we follow include that of Douglas’s children, Lois (played by Julia Brown) and Tom (Ewan Mitchell).

What research did he do for the part?

“Well, I read up about it and I watched documentaries. But I suppose I’ve always had an interest in it, the First and Second World War. I’ve played a lot of soldiers over the years and I’ve talked to a lot of people involved especially in the Falklands.

“In the series Sharpe (set during the Napoleonic Wars), I remember we had men from the Falklands who had lost legs and we used them for a scene we shot in the hospital in Greenwich, in the Peninsular War.

“There were experiences that had been told to me by those guys and so it was a matter of dredging those stories back up again, a bit of talking to the directors and writers and a bit of research.”

As for reprising the role of Douglas in the future, (the plan is to do a different series for each year of the war), it’s definitely something he’d be up for.

“It’s such a good series,” he says. “It’s something that’s just unfolding at the moment, and all doors are left open. There’s a lot more story to tell.”

■ World On Fire continues on BBC1, Sundays, 9pm.