It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night.

We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable.

It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night.

It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!

It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.

There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another.