I saw the script for the first two episodes and I was attracted by the world they suggested, a sort of dystopian Europe where the Eurozone seemed to be in trouble and these dark forces were emerging. I was attracted by the politics implicit in that; the suggestion of what we owe each other in terms of a society. And the kind of background of Karl’s father being an old Communist. I didn’t know where that was going to go but I talked to the writer about it to see whether that was going to play out. And not least the humour of it, the opportunity to play a light-hearted cop, and the relationship with Clémence (Poésy).

Also the fact that this had the feel of a European project around it. It was a French project really – the First Director was French and the cameraman was French – so it was an opportunity to engage with the French way of film-making, which is interesting to me. I’ve always been a fan of French cinema so that was an opportunity to engage with that.

Is there a great difference in the way the French approach making drama then to us Brits then?

I’m not sure about drama generally, because the French will say that their television, by and large, is not very good quality. But their films – or the films that we see, and maybe we only get to see the best of them – are very good, I always enjoy the aspirations of the films, the way they tell stories and they way they engage. And I think there is a difference, yeah, in the aesthetic and the ambition I think they’re trying to do something different to what most British films are doing. Not all, but most.

Your character Karl comes across as a good man who keeps succumbing to the same mistakes (ie: sleeping with other people’s wives) – is that how you viewed the character?