The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or all those other things that people tend to attach to many fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job, in a very interesting time.
Rowan AtkinsonCertainly 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.
Rowan AtkinsonI would never wish to say that I've finally waved goodbye to any character, it's just that the emphasis tends to shift.
Rowan AtkinsonWe still have a tradition certainly in English television; it's faded a bit in the last five years, but we still have a tradition where the important thing is the quality and the challenging nature of the programming.
Rowan AtkinsonI think I have an inner confidence that my tastes are pretty simple, that what I find funny finds a wide audience. I'm not particularly intellectual or clever or minority-focused in my creative instincts. And I'm certainly not aware of suppressing more sophisticated ambitions.
Rowan AtkinsonOne 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.
Rowan AtkinsonThis is sort of inflection-free acting [playing Maigret], and I really wasn't sure if I could do it - you make your mind up on whether I've succeeded or not. But yes, I found it difficult when we were shooting; it was a couple of weeks before I settled into not worrying - to finding a way of delivering those lines - so my worries of many months before I think had been justified. I found it a difficult way of being.
Rowan Atkinson