I've been watching 'Game of Thrones,' and I can't wait for 'Bored to Death' to come back, it's one of my faves.

In this age of vampires, what I love about 'True Blood' the most is that it's a post-modern take on it. 'Sookie Stackhouse' series author Charlaine Harris and 'True Blood' creator Alan Ball turned that whole mythology upside-down... It's not just about vampires. It's about a lot of different things.

That's what I think is smart about 'Durham County.' It's not derivative of anything American. It's more in the vein of the BBC miniseries I grew up with.

I did a show called 'Wonderland' a few years back, and I was fortunate enough to spend a full-on two weeks - I'm talking 13-15 hours a day - with the doctors and patients at Bellevue in New York. That served me well for 'Durham County.

At one point I had a stretch where it was working on 'In Treatment,' then 'True Blood,' then 'Durham County,' then 'True Blood,' then 'In Treatment' again. If I didn't have that little dose of 'True Blood' in the middle, I might have lost my mind.

I had so many offers after 'True Blood' for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball's vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I've always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I've never really had the chance to do that.

If you look at some shows that have an ugly feel to them, or a nihilistic sort of feel to them, you'll usually find a group of cynical, unhappy, miserable people behind the production. If you see a show that's rather boring, or a cookie-cutter factory show, you'll usually find some pretty uninteresting, boring people behind it.