Professional, Judge, Inspector: the versatile actor on his TV favourites
Unmissable show?
I routinely watch the news because I don't like newspapers very much. My broadcast news network of choice is Sky. As far as drama is concerned, I'm loving the Scandinavian dramas. I think they're absolutely brilliant. And also good American dramas. I watch them with a mixture of appreciation and envy. I wish we were given as much freedom. I do have a weak spot for The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and Dancing On Ice. I, like everybody, have the teary Susan Boyle moment.
Bring back?
As far as a show that I've been involved in, emphatically I think that Apparitions deserved a lot more. It was a victim of that debacle with Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. The BBC got paranoid and very frightened of defending anybody, so it was cancelled. Deadwood. That was a shame, though it wasn't nearly so good once Wild Bill Hickock had been killed. But I can see why it was cancelled. Once or twice it made me wince, because I thought it was gratuitously dirty. That wasn't from a moral sense, it was just like, "Come on, that's not necessary. Don't overdo it."
TV turn-off?
I don't like the kind of dramas that relentlessly explain everything to you. And, the kind of British habit of not really meaning it, of being tongue-in-cheek. And a desperate need not to offend. I think it would be unkind for me to name names, though I'll certainly name names when it comes to reality television. I think it's high time that Big Brother was consigned to the scrapheap. And I hate Come Dine With Me. That cheap stuff where people are chosen because they're unpleasant or gratuitously eccentric.
Pitch us a TV show...
My dream TV show would be written by the same team that did The Wire, and it would involve justice. It would involve me being either a barrister or some ex-secret service man, who puts things to rights. And flies an aeroplane!
Inspector George Gently returns to BBC 1 in Autumn