I’m a typical 2016 TV viewer: I like short bursts of heavy watching. These days you can save up your favourite programmes to watch all in one go and it’s so fantastic because we all love to binge-watch, and that’s me all over.

When you finish watching something, I like the idea that you can hunt around and talk to people about what to watch, and then you’ll go somewhere else. We’re not just stuck with what ITV or the BBC have put on the set anymore. We make our own choices and I love that choice. I’m on the sofa in the TV room, cup of coffee with the fire going and I’m more than happy.

I think because I work in the industry, I don’t have favourites, I just get dragged into a bit of everything. My daughter Harley is with us at the moment because she’s in between houses and she’s been addicted to Nashville [available now on Sky Living], so I’ve been watching that and that’s quite relaxing.

Harley’s a songwriter as well and she just came back from Nashville in Tennessee, where she was working, so that’s why she started watching it. It’s also quite true to my experience of the music industry in a way. I like the fact it’s quite soapy and that you don’t have to watch all the episodes, you can kind of dip in and dip out. Poor quality acting makes me switch off. If I feel like I can see the script that they’re delivering in my head, then it will go straight off in my house. But whether it’s Nashville or Conviction or any of those dramas coming out of America, what you get is incredible acting, incredible scripts and quality.

Hayley Atwell as Hayes Morrison in Conviction

The thing that will drag you into Conviction is the idea. I love the thought of starting up a unit that looks into cold cases of people claiming innocence — how are we going to get this guy out of prison? Is he innocent? Or is he guilty? It’s a wonderful idea and I haven’t seen it before. I think Hayley Atwell [as Hayes Morrison, head of the Conviction Integrity Unit, above left] is great and she looks great as well. She’s out of Avengers, right?

What I’m looking forward to is finding out a little bit more about her and her relationship with her family, because she’s the ex-first daughter. I think that will be the interesting bit that keeps you coming back. She’s the maverick ‘detective’ going into a job she doesn’t want to go into, then getting in there and finding she really likes it. It’s a classic set up, almost Marlowe.

I like political things, I like legal stuff, I like having to work things out in my head, but I won’t try and spot the twists. Even if I know what’s going to happen, I don’t like to say it out loud and I don’t like to think about it — I try to enjoy the moment, otherwise you’re ruining the whole thing. I know from being on the other side of the camera the effort that goes into it and I love the emotion that TV gives you.

A scene from Conviction

If something makes me cry, I cry out loud. If something makes me laugh, I laugh out loud, because that’s what it’s made to do. People who fight against the idea — ‘Oh no, I’m not really crying!’ — they don’t get it at all. That’s what you’re watching the show for! To take your emotions up and down, to be excited, to be sad, to cry, to be happy. That’s what they’re trying to do when they make a show, so sit back and enjoy it. You’ve got to go with it. I never try to guess the ending.

I think we all subconsciously take inspiration from TV. When I went into EastEnders, I’d just come out of a really dark point in my life where I was going through that whole brain tumor stuff. It was the first thing I did after that, so Steve Owen, in a way, saved my life. He gave me back the confidence I’d lost over a four-year period and I think I will always be grateful to him. Even today if I walk into a room and I feel kind of intimidated, I find a little bit of him inside and that gives me confidence.”

Martin Kemp's Screen Grabs

My TV snack “Cheese and onion crisps. For a long time it was chocolate, but I’m completely off sugar. Sugar is evil at the moment.”

My most annoying TV habit “Maybe falling asleep when everyone else is watching and enjoying something? Then they turn round and I’m fast asleep.”

TV habit I find most annoying in others “Talking — that’s why there’s a big part of me that loves watching TV on my own, because you have no distractions.”

First TV crush “I remember watching Cilla Black with my mum and dad — I must have been about six years old — and getting off the chair, going over to the TV screen and kissing her. I was sitting with Cilla once and I told her that and she laughed.”

Current TV crush “I can’t tell you that. That would get me in trouble. I would never be able to watch it again.”

I never sit down to watch without… “The fire going. Even if it’s boiling hot, I like the fire going and the lights down. I can’t have the lights on bright — I’m concentrating!”

My TV soulmate “My wife Shirley, although, if I’m watching on my own then it will be far grittier. Shirley doesn’t even watch the news before she goes to bed, because it gives her dreams.”

My TV hero “Ian McShane in Deadwood. I thought it was one of the best pieces of acting I’ve ever seen. I’ve told lots of young actors, ‘That’s the way you do it.”