MILES apart!

JAMES MCARDLE on the joy of playing a slippery character in TV's latest must-see

- STEVEN PERKINS

PLAYING NICE

LAST ONE SUN & MON, 9PM, ITV1 DRAMA

Scheming Miles Lambert from ITV1 thriller Playing Nice must be in contention for the most-detestable man on television right now. Thankfully, when James McArdle, who plays him, arrives for our exclusive interview with a beaming grin, it's instantly clear he couldn't be less like his character in real life!

'Miles is very manipulative, but he's also charming, and that really appealed to me,' he reveals during a break in filming the four-parter on location in Cornwall. 'You're never sure what he knows and what he doesn't, so he's a really fun character to play. There's a distinction between the public and the private, and that's what drew me to this project I find that stuff so satisfying!'

In this week's concluding episodes, the custody battle intensifies over Theo and David, the two children swapped at birth in a hospital mix-up, and Miles steps up his efforts to publicly discredit the other parents, Pete (played by James Norton) and Maddie (Niamh Algar), to ensure that he and his wife Lucy (Jessica Brown Findlay) get to keep both boys. But will Miles regret his actions when Pete decides to do some digging of his own?