Coltrane’s side of the story
As Robbie Coltrane stars in new three-part thriller Murderland, he tells Andy Welch how he feels returning to TV from blockbuster films
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ASMALL group of people are sitting in a cramped trailer making polite conversation. Suddenly, a big face with crazy eyes, appears at the window. As everyone jumps, Robbie Coltrane bellows: “I got you, didn’t I?” and laughs.
Clearly pleased with himself, the famous actor walks around and joins us.
We’re on the set of Murderland, an exciting crime drama which begins on ITV1 on Monday. Actually, we’re not quite on the set (that’s just up the road) but in one of the trailers for cast, crew and catering, parked in the grounds of a primary school in north London.
“For God’s sake, they can’t find out I’m here,” he says, “they’ll go wild and they’ll be rocking the caravan.”
At first, it sounds like an odd statement – how many primary school kids do you know who’ve seen Cracker?
But then you remember Coltrane’s now known to millions of pre-teens – and countless bigger kids, too – as Hagrid from Harry Potter and the statement makes complete sense.
The thought of the gamekeeper for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft parked next door would surely distract most children from their maths and English.
Murderland is a story told over three episodes, set partly in 1994 and partly in the present day. Coltrane plays Detective Inspector Douglas Hain.
“Before you ask, yes, they have to make me look older for the scenes shot in the present day,” he says, preening his hair jokingly.
“And it’s filmed in hi-def,” he adds. “It looks amazing, but it’s a nightmare for actors like me, you know, who are approaching 40 . . .
“Hain is a time-served cop, not a career cop, and not the sort those around him are about to latch on to. He’s not the sort that plays golf with the right people, or is in the Masons, or any of that. He’s just interested in catching bad people.
“As we see him in the present day, he’s winding down for retirement.”
The first episode of the three is set almost entirely in 1994, when Sally, played by Lucy Cohu, is murdered at home. Her teenage daughter, Carrie (Bel Powley), returns home that night to see the murderer, albeit only a shadow in a dark room.
After her mother’s death, she meets Hain for the first time as he investigates the crime.
During flash-forwards, and in the second and third parts of the drama, we meet Carrie, or Carol as she calls herself as a grown-up, going back to Hain to re-examine the evidence around the murder.
“Carol actually does most of the investigation,” says Robbie, 59. “She’s slightly crazed about the whole thing, and it’s been eating away at her over her whole life. So she goes back to the evidence and finds out more about Hain, and discovers there’s something dodgy about him,” he says.
“He may well have been involved in the murder, she thinks, but we don’t know if that’s true or her madness talking. She gets told to ‘Shut up and leave it alone’ a lot, so there is some sense of conspiracy to it all. She tracks Hain down and drags him in, and he get re-energised by the whole thing, and tries to help her. Or possibly not.”
Robbie ends a lot of sentences with that phrase – or “Or is she?”, which he says numerous times, raising an eyebrow.
He’s enjoying hamming it up, and obviously doesn’t want to give too much away, but there’s also the fact that a lot of Murderland is down to viewer interpretation.
“It’s all shot from three different perspectives, you see: from Hain’s perspective, from Carrie’s perspective, and from Carol’s perspective,” he says.
While shooting each scene three times for different episodes and for use in flashbacks was laborious, it means that what the viewer might take as fact one moment is flipped on its head the next, when a telling glance or tone in the voice, missing from previous versions of the story, changes everything.
“The emphasis of a scene alters all the time,” says Robbie. “You’ll see something for a second time and think: ‘That’s what really happened.’ But is it? Who’s to say one version of what you’re seeing is more accurate than the other depiction?
“Just as you’re trying to work out that, the third point of view comes in. Then about 10 minutes before the end, the truth comes out and it’s nothing to do with anything. It’s absolutely brilliant.”
The seeds of Murderland were planted three or four years ago when Robbie was talking to writer Dave Pirie and suggested he write something complex, adult and intelligent.
“I asked him why no one writes totally engaging, amazing drama any more. You know, where everyone isn’t 25, gorgeous and talks rubbish. CSI and things? Can you watch that stuff? I can’t,” he says, getting more and more animated.
“People have to watch Murderland. It’s not something you can let wash over you; it’s not Sunday night stuff, but it is amazing, and totally engaging.”
Murderland is all the things Robbie wanted it to be. But then it would have to be. Why else would an actor of his calibre, with a successful career in blockbuster films, return to television?
He made his name on the small screen and by the time the multi-award-winning Cracker came along in 1993, he was among the finest actors we had, a position cemented by the four consecutive Best Actor Baftas he won for his portrayal of criminal psychologist Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald.
“I’ve actually tried to avoid talking about Cracker at all in the run-up to this, really,” he says. “This is much more a cop show, and Cracker wasn’t so much, but there is a criminal psychologist in this, who Hain hates, which is very funny for me to play.
“Doing TV is very different from films,” he continues. We’re knocking out seven pages of script a day on this, and on Harry Potter we do one-and-a-half if we’re lucky. I’d do more TV, if it was right, but it’s all a question of logistics; I just have to look for things I can fit in.
“I’ve loved doing this. It’s a great story and I’m working with three very talented and gorgeous girls. Lucy Cohu, who got an Emmy recently, is amazing; there’s Amanda Hale, who plays Carol, and wee Bel, who plays Carrie.
“She had to interrupt rehearsals because she was doing her A-levels. She came in and said: ‘It was like, oh-my-god, uhh, awful.’ Learning lines and doing her A-levels? Amazing.”
Murderland begins on ITV1 on Monday, October 19.
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