TV Scoop interview: Jamie Bamber, Law & Order: UK

Along with The Wire's Dominic West, Jamie Bamber formed part of the new wave of British actors doing well in the US. His part as Apollo Adama in landmark sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica earned him plaudits galore. Now he's back playing cop Matt Devlin in ITV1's brand new Law & Order: UK (Monday 23 February, 9pm). I managed to meet him a while back and he was a very nice, eloquent young man. Read what he says about the show, as well as some interesting stuff about US telly, after the jump.

 

TV Scoop: We all know you get these big, US franchise series, like CSI and Law & Order. I've been campaigning for a long time now we should be getting CSI: Ipswich, Law & Order: Totnes. So why do you think it has taken so long for a show like this to come to Britain?

Jamie Bamber: I think they're a few reasons really. You've got to look at the differences between British TV and American TV. American TV, when they start putting the idea together and making a pilot, they are aiming for something that will be made for 24 episodes per series over multiple years. That's the model. They're looking for a franchise straight away, and they want to something to market to the rest of the world and to syndicate around the rest of the US. That's always the goal over there, but over here the goal is to make six good episodes that the public will like, and then make six more the next year. And, if they can afford it, make six more the year after before the actors get bored or want to do something else. It really is a completely different endeavour. With regards to making something like a franchise over here, I think Lynda LaPlant is the nearest we come to it, because of her name more than anything. But this is the first time I know something like this has been on British TV - straight off the bat, 16 hours of TV, made from American model with multiple writers and directors and shooting tight schedules. It's the first time I know of that a British channel is making an American show, rather than the other way around. It's a watershed moment.

 

TVS: You've had first-hand experience, of course, thanks to Battlestar Galactica...
JB: Yeah, I feel a bit of an old hand now. I've been doing this in America for Americans for five years now. I can bring that experience with me to a show like this.

 

TVS: What are the main differences between US and British TV?
JB: Definitely the auditioning process. For every lead character in a TV show in America, you have to do this thing called 'testing for network'. In England you meet the director, casting director and producer. You might them twice, you might go on tape and then they'll go upstairs and say, "We've got this guy who we think will work" to the head of ITV Drama and they will say yes or no. In America, you actually go into the room with the whole of the equivalent of ITV Drama. So I went to NBC Universal and I was down to the last six for the character of Apollo and it was like being in survivor or something. We were voted off one by one until there was just two of us. You then have to do the scene in front of 30 or 40 executives who come down especially to see you. They then decide when you leave the room. I found out later in the evening. But right from the get-go as they say in America, you are aware that you're working for a huge corporation, and that you're the face of a product they want to sell and make money from. That translates to the crews, who are much bigger, the trailers, which are much bigger, the food comes non-stop, made-to-order, whatever you want. There's just a lot more money involved, basically. But, when it comes to shooting, the nuts and bolts of acting don't change.

 

TVS: Are you pleased to be working back in the UK?
JB: Very. It wasn't planned. I finished Battlestar and I rang my agent in London, and I was expecting her to say that there was a good two-parter or a costume drama or do a little job in London and go back to America. The last thing I expected was an American series that was shooting in London. I wasn't anticipating coming back home for this amount of time, so I'm really enjoying being back. We're renting a house in Richmond, which is the area where I grew up, and I've got young kids who are going to the primary school I went to. And I'm enjoying not having a car and going on the Tube and doing all the things Londoners hate and take for granted.

 

TVS: So onto the show itself. Tell us about your character...
JB: He's a young guy called Matt Devlin, late twenties, idealistic. He loves being a policeman and loves working with the guy he works with, Bradley's character Ronnie Brooks.

 

TVS: There does seem to be, in all good cop shows, a partnership between two different people - a more cerebral one and a grizzled, experienced cop. How do you and Bradley's characters exist within that dynamic?
JB: It's not quite as simplistic as that. You're dead right - I'm a middle-class London boy, where as Bradley is more salt-of-the-earth who never saw the insides of a university. He played football for Brentford, was an engineer for Rolls Royce and discovered he had a talent for making people laugh, and did the pubs and clubs. He's become this light entertainment golden boy thanks to a lot of ducking and diving. I've just waltzed into television and gone to America, and I've never tried to make a room full of drunken people laugh. And I never would try that! So we're different, and our characters are different. My guy is still working class - he's from an Irish immigrant family from Kilburn, that's all back story you don't really get to see. They're all colours I'm trying to bring to the part. Matt is definitely more impetuous, black and white. When he comes across a case he's quick to decide who he thinks is good and who he thinks is bad. Bradley's guy is a take on the dysfunctional cop. He's a reformed alcoholic, he's ruined two marriages, has been the Sweeney 1970s character and now he's grown up. As a result he's quite an avuncular, empathetic man, and understands that people can make mistakes. He's less hasty to categorise. Matt is different to me - he's more attack dog, Tory-voting, wears his heart on his sleeve.

 

TVS: So you definitely rock the odd couple dynamic...
JB: They can't be the same, otherwise it doesn't work. You've got to have chemistry, and chemistry comes from opposites. The producers and directors said from the very start that this buddy chemistry has to happen, that love story between these two guys. That has to be the core of the first half of every show. I have to say it comes very naturally with Brad; I adore him. He is so different to me, I wish I could be more like Bradley. That clown who can always make people laugh, and that common touch. I wish I could do all those things!

 

TVS: This has been going for ages in the US. What's the thing that has made it endure?
JB: It's got a style that is very, very precise. You think of a lot of television shows, especially cop shows, where it's a mixture of the domestic and the cop life. There are two lives and they can't reconcile them. Law & Order is brutally clean, and it's all about the work. It's more than that - it's about one case every week. We take things up from the crime scene after it has been committed to the verdict in a law court. That kind of unity of the plot is the anchor for each episode. It's very defined and finite - you never go home with the cops, you never go home with the barristers. They're relationships and their characters traits are all discerned within the story. It's all subtext and the scenes are very punchy. There's a rhythmic discipline to it all. Once you get into Law & Order, that's why you love it. Every episode is a morality tale, how society is putting back the pieces of something that has fallen apart.

 

TVS: You take CSI for example, and each spin-off has a very different personality, mainly due to the city it is being shot in. Is that what we can expect from Law & Order: UK... a living, breathing London at the heart of it all?
JB: CSI has definitely inherited something Law & Order, but CSI is different. Our show is much more austere, and is a more realistic portrayal of what it's like to be a policeman. The city is definitely the key ingredient. We've taken Law & Order from new York and stuck it in London. Not only policing different - we wear wigs in court, they carry guns - but there is a British sensibility to it all. I think our show is less earnest, has a bit more gallows humour than the American show. There are distinct differences in tone. But ostensibly, were taking a tried and tested format and making it our own.

 

TVS: I'd be in idiot if I didn't ask you about Battlestar. Can you give away any secrets of the ending?
JB: Secrets? I think I'd be shot if I gave anything away! All I'll say is that it concludes in style and that it really is a proper ending. I think the ending is the best story that we ever did. It was very emotional finishing that. It was such a big part of all our lives, and I was very proud to have been involved in it. I can barely believe I was involved in it, it seems strangely distant now.

 

Posted by paulhirons on February 23, 2009 in http://www.tvscoop.tv/2009/02/tv_scoop_interv_21.html