Craig Parkinson, best known to fans of Line of Duty for playing bent copper Matthew ‘Dot’ Cottan, is set to play secretive teacher George in Channel 5’s upcoming drama The House Across the Street.
The character is far from Dot, and that’s precisely why he accepted the job.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Parkinson opened up about turning down roles too similar to the Line of Duty’s corrupt DI. “There’s quite a bit more to me than the bent copper. I’ve turned so many dodgy detectives down over the years, I’ve had to step away from that,” he said.
“You’re inundated with scripts and when you’re known for doing a certain type of role, you just get an inbox full of roles that are slightly inferior to what you’ve already played. And you just have to go, ‘Well, I can’t really do that because I’ve kind of done it to the best of my ability. And certainly the best of the script writer’s ability.’ So to retread in that way is redundant for everybody.”
In The House Across the Street, Shirley Henderson plays Claudia, a lonely single mum who gets involved in the case of a missing local girl. “She’s just hooked into something that starts to wake her up a bit, allow her to start feeling things she hasn’t felt for a long time and bubble inside, good and bad,” Henderson said of her character.
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Parkinson continued: “When George fell into my lap, his innocence on the face of it [appealed to me]. He’s a lost soul, and George and Claudia come together as kindred spirits in a way. They meet each other, they find each other because they’re both quite lost in very different ways.
“I was drawn to human characters that are quite lost and broken. That’s not to say that this sort of sadness porn is not about that. It’s about people’s journey, and it’s about life.
“And we all we all stumble along the way. And it’s about how we pick ourselves up and meet other people. And maybe those other people that we meet along the way. And we have a connection. We can help each other. But it’s a difficult road that we have to walk.”
Parkinson also called the new series “not your run of the mill drama”.
“We asked for a character arc on how it would pan out and everything seemed to fit with this. It just seemed to be, and it is, something that little bit more intriguing, a little bit darker and not your run of the mill drama.”
Henderson echoed the sentiment, adding: “I didn’t really know what direction [the drama] was going to go with all of this. But that was enough for me to feel there’s something interesting here.”
Additional reporting by Abby Robinson.
The House Across the Street premieres on Channel 5 at 9pm on Monday 17th October 2022. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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