Unforgotten star Sanjeev Bhaskar has said he likes to watch his series without wife Meera Syal because he feels uncomfortable seeing his mistakes on screen.
The actor, who plays DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan in the ITV crime drama, said he tends to pick up on all of his errors so likes to run through his programmes alone first, before sitting down to take them in with Syal.
He said: “I tend to watch them, if I can, on my own first.
“I don’t like watching myself anyway because all I see is every mistake I made, I just think I could have done that better and I should have done that better.
“So I find the first viewing of it – because I’m in it – quite uncomfortable.”
Bhaskar, 54, said he also appreciates seeing the parts of the story he was not involved in.
He added: “And then I walk on screen and I’m going, ‘Oh God, that stupid walk I did, I should have led with my left foot, now the arms are going at the same time as the leg, oh the backpack’ – so that happens to me on the first viewing.
“After that I did watch some with her, yeah, which was fun.
“Also, if you watched yourself twice, with no-one else, you begin to feel that you’re going down a very dark, self-obsessive world!”
Bhaskar co-stars with actress Nicola Walker in the hit series, and she recently shared the screen with his wife Syal in BBC legal drama The Split.
Joking about whether he was worried that Syal would get on better with Walker than him, the actor quipped: “No, the advantage of collecting dirt on someone is that you can compel them to be your friend more than anyone else!”
“No, it was delightful,” he added. “I was really glad that they were working together, and Meera had a great time working with Nicola on it.”
The third series of Unforgotten starts on July 15.