I have to say that I've always believed perfectionism is more of a disease than a quality. I do try to go with the flow but I can't let go.

Certainly in the second film [Maigret's Dead Man], which is quite a more unpleasant and darker story, it's quite different in tone and feel.

Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing.

To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.

[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.

One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.

The character [Maigret] is bound to change and develop, and I wouldn't like to claim that we are perfectly formed straight out of the box. I think it's what I'd call an 'optimistic start'. As you know, for me, no glass is anything other than half empty, so I apologise for my reticence in terms of promoting this programme.