Adrian Dunbar

Since the 1980s, Northern Irish actor, producer and director Adrian Dunbar has worked in film, theater and television. Early in his career, he starred in the feature films My Left Foot and The Crying Game, followed by dozens of roles in stage productions and TV series. Most recently, he played a cop called in from retirement in Ridley, for which he is also an associate producer. While portraying detectives is familiar to him, Ridley is different and complex, as Dunbar explains, not only for his penchant for jazz. Dunbar talks about stepping into the role, the quality on display in today’s TV series and the ongoing popularity of detective shows.

TV DRAMA: What appealed to you about the project? It’s different from other things you’ve done, right?
DUNBAR: Yes, it certainly is. What appealed to me, first of all, was that I got some excellent scripts from Paul Matthew Thompson, whom I had known for years. I knew Paul was a really good writer, especially in this genre. And I was working with Jonathan Fisher again, who had been the producer on a series called Blood that I did for All3Media. Ridley was coming from a good place already. Then I started reading the scripts and thought the first episode was really good. I thought the denouement was great. The dynamic between the central characters was interesting. It’s not the normal [setup]. Here is a guy who’s retired and brought back in; therefore, he’s not operating under the same rules as everybody else. He’s a bit more off the wall. But he’s dealing with a lot of very serious stuff that happened in the past. He lost his wife and daughter in a horrible house fire. That is the theme that’s running through all four episodes. And it brilliantly comes together in episode four, where they tie everything up. Ridley was four 90-minute episodes—quite a lot. So, yes, it’s a big piece.

TV DRAMA: How did you step into the role, especially since you had previously played a cop, Superintendent Ted Hastings, in Line of Duty?
DUNBAR: I look at it sometimes from the outside in rather than the inside out. The inside-out stuff looks after itself because you’re saying to yourself, this is his past history. How will that affect his attitude, mood and feelings about the world? And how will he get dragged back into a world that the tragedy came out of? But from the outside in, it’s amazing what happens when you step out of uniform. I knew from just doing a few scenes in Line of Duty where I wasn’t in my cop uniform how transformative that was. I was confident that once I’d get into civvies, once I didn’t have to have a cop haircut, and I didn’t have to lean hard in my Northern Irish accent, as I did in Line of Duty, things would completely change quite rapidly. And that seems to be what has happened. The character is very distinctive, and he’s [outdoors]. My character in Line of Duty was an interior character. He was very rarely outside. I’m always on the hoof during this show, which is great. I thought all those elements would allow an audience to let me reinvent myself.

TV DRAMA: And you didn’t need to say, “catching bent coppers,” did you?
DUNBAR: No. [Laughs] He doesn’t do any of that stuff. He’s not a catchphrase guy, that’s for sure.

TV DRAMA: Ridley co-owns a jazz bar. You have musical skills. Did you bring those skills and your passion for music to the show?
DUNBAR: Absolutely. I started reading the scripts and having conversations initially, and I said, We will be filming this in Manchester in the north of England in the winter. It’s pretty bleak. So why don’t we invent a place and give him something to do? My idea was that his retirement would be running this jazz club. He’s a jazz head. So he would be running this jazz club with an old friend called Annie, played by Julie Graham. I do a bit of singing myself. Maybe he gets up and sings the old song. Then I said, I’d also like somewhere warm because everything else is so cold and bleak. Somewhere we can go where it’s a bit more colorful, there’s a bit more warmth and a bit of music. Then I started thinking, well, we’ll need a jazz band. Let me see if there are any people up north. I came across this incredible artist, Richard Hawley. I started listening to Richard’s work. A lot of it is located in that beautiful area of male grief. It’s got that thing about it. He has some amazing songs. At the end of each episode, we do one of Richard’s songs and cut in and out of the story. The songs are not specifically to do with the storyline, but emotionally they’re in the right area. It was a bit of a gamble. Suddenly, at the end of a cop show, the band kicks in, and we sing a song, and you see the denouement play out, but it’s working. People have warmed to it. It hasn’t been an issue. It’s like, oh, that’s what this show is like. That’s been a real triumph for me, in particular, to suggest it. And the guys were brave enough to run with it.

TV DRAMA: To what do you attribute the ongoing popularity of crime series and detectives?
DUNBAR: First and foremost, that’s the access point for all the big stories. Where do you go to find the real human interest? Where do all the moral dilemmas exist? Well, the first person to access them is usually the detective. He’s usually the one putting it all together and going, This happened, and that happened; these are the elements, and this is the person. What’s the motive? We’ve been clever in TV; we get vets or doctors and try to find other means of access. But ultimately, it’s the detective. And, it all started, way back, with Eliot Ness and Damon Runyon and all these guys who were initially given access. Journalists, especially in America, have been given access to the crime scene much quicker than [in the U.K.]. Of course, we also had Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes types, scientifically working things out.
I think we’re interested because we are interested in moral dilemmas. We all have moral dilemmas in our lives and wonder how we would respond to the situation [depicted in the TV show]. That’s what makes shows like Happy Valley, Vera and others in this genre good: the moral dilemma. What’s changed about them is that the leads have become female, and the dilemmas have become more specific. And you can explore [issues] or attitudes that are current. That’s what’s feeding into the storylines, which I think is really good.

TV DRAMA: You have worked in film, theater and television. What are the different creative challenges of each, and do you have a favorite?
DUNBAR: I don’t have a favorite. The challenges are different. TV is where it’s at, at the moment. People used to call it the “medium” of television because it was never rare or well done. But it’s changed since then. When I came to TV in the 1980s, it was pretty slow. It was like walking through molasses sometimes—the dialogue, the mise-en-scène, everything. Now, because you’re watching on big screens and you’ve got catch-up, the production values have gone through the roof. The quality is so much [greater]. Many major stars have crossed into TV, giving it a new standard. When we look back in 50 years at what television was doing, people may not be looking entirely at what was happening in the movies. I find a lot of the movies pretty light. I don’t think the same rigor is being applied to filmmaking as is being applied to television. You’d think it would be the opposite. But films are pretty light—Triangle of Sadness and The Banshees of Inisherin and so forth. They’re not throwing you about like television can. Now and again, some wonderful films come out, and I like independent films. I’d like to be doing a bit more with independent cinema. But at the moment, TV is where it’s at.
The theater is always going to be close to my heart. But theater is so expensive, and only a certain number of people can see it these days. It’s hard to know where you will go in the theater to make a difference to people. It’s great to see revivals like To Kill a Mockingbird and be reminded of the classics.
But the disciplines for an actor are completely different. You’re using your whole body in the theater, and that’s an entirely different language. TV, you’re bang up front. TV and film are much closer. At the moment, I think TV has the edge on everybody.

TV DRAMA: How have you seen Northern Ireland’s television storytelling evolve in the past two decades—since the end of the Troubles?
DUNBAR: There has been an evolution in the amount of work being done there, the quality of the work and the upskilling of the technicians and facilities we have. And the actors who have come out of there, of course. The BBC and [other] companies were trying to do things in Northern Ireland whereby they were explaining what was going on there to the rest of the world. Most of the storylines were based around somebody from the outside who came in and was trying to understand why everybody was killing one another. You can’t do that without being patronizing. We were being patronized for a long time in terms of our storylines until the local people started [taking] over for themselves. And then that’s difficult because sometimes they don’t want to allow local attitudes onto the screen as local attitudes can be polarizing. So, it was difficult, but there are many more interesting things politically coming out of there.