It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

I have a problem with Porsches. They're wonderful cars, but I know I could never live with one. Somehow, the typical Porsche people-and I wish them no ill-are not, I feel, my kind of people. I don't go around saying that Porsches are a pile of dung, but I do know that psychologically I couldn't handle owning one.

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

Your services might be as useful as a barbershop on the steps of a guillotine.

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.

It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear, where you flash back and flash forward in ways that certainly keeps you on your toes as the audience. There's not much of that courage with the storytelling in our Maigret film.