ON THE SMALL SCREEN
MAIGRET – MAN OF MYSTERY
What was a major turning point in your career? WHEN I was starting out I did a half hour pilot for ITV, for London Weekend Television, which was me playing three different characters. It was what you might call The Rowan Atkinson Show. I had just done that when I was offered a part in the sketch show Not The Nine O’Clock News that was happening at the BBC.
What was then referred to as “the other side”. I remember having to make a decision – whether to do my own show at the very tender age of 24 or whether to go in with a team of people, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones and everyone at the BBC.
I spoke to John Howard Davies, the head of comedy for the BBC at the time, who became a good friend and actually produced the first six Mr Bean episodes when we eventually did them for ITV. ‘Follow your instinct’ was his only advice. And my instinct was to play safe and go with the team of people. How do you relax away from acting? CARS have always been my thing. Motor cars and motor racing are my hobbies and interest and they remain so to this day. I’m glad I’ve always had that as an interest because it is pleasingly distracting and quite different to the business we call show.
It is quite a different mental and physical activity. And of, course, quite often I’ve been able to incorporate the interest in shows. Mr Bean’s car antics and what have you and the Johnny English car antics. What was the reaction to the first Maigret films? I TEND not to read reviews. You get a vibe from what people say to you in shops and things, or what people don’t say to you, and the vibe seemed to be generally positive. So that’s good. Do you learn more about Maigret all the time? YES, you do and you can’t really put your finger on what you’re learning. You’re just settling into it.
The old cliché is finding your feet, finding the road, rather than meandering off into the undergrowth. It’s almost the muddiness of the character which brings the clarity. You don’t want a character who is just the same all the time. It’s a matter of exploring how he is in this kind of situation, how he is in that kind of situation? How is he when he’s angry? When he’s interested. When he’s intrigued?
You’re trying to find the 360 degrees of a character. You can come up with a caricature in a relatively short space of time but, if you want a character, that takes longer. Have you encountered the same thing in the past? I’M very aware even now of how, say, the Blackadder character developed over a period of years. I think by the end he was more interesting. Although, of course, he went through many different periods, but, nevertheless, it was a better focused thing after the fourth series than it was in the first series.
Even Mr Bean – we’re doing these animated cartoon versions of Mr Bean that I do the voice and the noises for – and I’m so aware actually how much more developed the character is now than when we first started doing him on television 25 years ago.
All characters for me are a voyage of discovery. What’s different for Maigret this time around? THE story of Night At The Crossroads is richer. Like Poirot and many detective stories like it, you rely very much on the strength of the supporting cast and the guest cast. That was certainly what we enjoyed hugely in the previous films with David Dawson, Fiona Shaw and people like that. And then, in this one with Kevin McNally as Inspector Louis Grandjean, Danish actress Mia Jexen as Else and German actor Tom Wlaschiha, who plays Carl Andersen, they were all excellent. All these things help and it doesn’t half improve your own performance when you’re acting with a very good performance from somebody else. Are you keen to make more Maigret films? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. All I would ask is that people watch them and make their own mind up. I think they’ve got a lot of appealing qualities and I like the world we’ve depicted. Virtually every shot in every location has an atmosphere which I think is unique. It’s enabled us to present a world that I hope people want to be a part of and people want to see.
Maigret’s Night At The Crossroads, ITV, Easter Sunday, 8pm