Characters - Philip Glenister

Series Two

"In this series of Ashes to Ashes Gene is still out there being a maverick, but what I always say about him is that while he bends the rules, he never breaks them. He merely manipulates and stretches them a bit! If anything he is a decent and honest copper and he’ll usually only collar unsavoury characters. I love the western connotation with Hunt; he is exactly like a Sheriff and sees himself very much in that guise.However, the problem is that he is out of his depth in the 80s metropolis of London and the bottom line is he is a 70s copper at heart.

"But there is a police corruption theme running throughout the series so it does feel darker than series one; the corruption breeds a lack of trust and coherence which is unbalancing for everybody. However, viewers can still expect moments of high campness and there are some great one liners!"

Super Mac

"Supermac is a highly respected Superintendent who has been in the police force for a long time. He trained at Hendon and has come up through the police ranks which gained him a lot of respect from his colleagues on the force. Supermac enters CID and basically says that the police needs to regroup and be accountable. I think Gene agrees with him up to a point but then certain events lead him to question Supermac’s motives."

Gene's relationship with Alex

"If you just had a show based on 'will they won't they' it wouldn’t be that interesting; hopefully their relationship is a bit more complex than that. It's the moment things spill over from a professional capacity to a personal one when complications set in and you start to question whether they would work as a couple. I think Gene is an enigma and I play him with ambiguity rather than having a preconceived idea of whether Gene fancies Alex or not. There are moments when he teases her and she teases him but Gene will never give anything away!"

Shooting the Series

"Shooting eight episodes took six months so it was a long shoot but a great bunch of people work on the show which is one of the joys of the job. There were so many funny incidents; we laughed a lot - particularly Keeley and Dean who are real gigglers. In fact they are the troublemakers! Dean's laugh is like an animal's and Keeley will just crack up out of nowhere. She's pretty amazing because she can also cry on cue for scenes; her range of emotion is incredibly impressive."