I couldn't interrogate anyone... I'd let them go

TIMOTHY SPALL TALKS TO ELLA WALKER ABOUT STARRING IN NEW BBC COMEDY-MURDER MYSTERY SERIES DEATH VALLEY

- 

AS an audience, we'd be forgiven for thinking that acting in serious dramas and tragedies would be harder than having a laugh in a comedic piece. According to veteran actor Timothy Spall, however, the opposite is the case.

He says tragedy is easy, “because you don’t have any expectation”.

“If people look miserable [after watching it], you think, ‘Oh, we’ve succeeded.’ If they leave a comedy miserable, you think, ‘Oh no...” says Timothy, who is arguably one of Britain’s national acting treasures.

The 68-year-old Londoner, known for his multiple films with Mike Leigh including Mr Turner, as well as for playing Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films, is combining the two in the new BBC1 comedy drama series, Death Valley.

Bafta-nominated writer Paul Doolan, who's behind the show, says he wrote a script that imagined the kind of series he wished was on TV. The mind behind Bloods and Trollied, Paul loves a crime drama and cosy crime caper, but is also a comedy buff.

“Whenever people try to do them together, it never quite works for me in a satisfying way,” he notes.

“A lot of modern murder shows, they're just relentlessly grim. I know murder isn’t the funniest thing in the world, but you have these detectives with a horrible home life and everything is dour and grey, you just want a bit of comedy.”

Death Valley is quite the opposite to dour. Set in Wales, it sees Timothy as John Chapel, a retired actor and former protagonist of a fictional hit detective TV show called Caesar.

He teams up with Welsh detective sergeant Janie Mallowan, played by Aberystwyth-born Gwyneth Keyworth, 34, and together, in their own unconventional way, they start going about solving murders.