THE THING IS,” says Timothy Spall, “when you try and explain where the character you’re playing comes from, you’re talking about something that is ineffable. If you’re not careful, you end up sounding like a prat.”
Nonetheless, the Bafta-winning actor’s latest role, which is actually two roles, needs some explaining. In comedy crime drama Death Valley Spall is a fictional television detective, Inspector Caesar, and also John Chapel, the actor who played Inspector Caesar on screen before his retirement to a picturebook Welsh village.
“Curmudgeonly, slightly childish but bright,” according to Spall, Chapel lives in a cottage in the fabulously verdant Vale of Glamorgan, where his solitary existence is disturbed by the arrival of DS Janie Mallowan (played by Gwyneth Keyworth), who is investigating the murder of Chapel’s neighbour.
Almost…
