It's the demand in many ways of modern television drama - it's very low key and naturalistic, and, generally speaking, the characters that I've played have not been low key and naturalistic.

I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.

[Maigret] is terribly self-contained, not that I would ever wish him to be any more comic, particularly, but in the second film we've made you see he's a little more ironic from time to time. But as I say, that's just work in progress.

My personal problem is that I take the business of film-making so seriously that I find it very difficult to relax.

You're about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse kicking contest.

[Maigret Sets a Trap] was always going to be the first film, and it seemed to be quite a nice story. But of course it meant that here I was playing this new character for the first time, in a place where he had been a relative failure, as all these people had been murdered and the pressure was on. Rather than starting optimistically with his pipe in front of the fireplace, he was in quite a difficult place.

When I was doing Bean more than I’ve done him in the last few years, I did strange things - like appearing on chat shows in character as Mr. Bean.