Ben Miller thinks there's a Sherlock Holmes-like quality to his 'Professor T' character.
Ben Miller
The 55-year-old actor plays Jasper Tempest, a criminology professor with severe OCD, in the ITV drama, and Ben admits there's a strong parallel between his character and the fictional private detective.
He reflected: "Heart of gold, absolutely brilliant, but terrible with people. There's a lot of Sherlock Holmes, isn't there? I think the thing that Sherlock Holmes nails is that idea of the genius detective, the almost supernaturally gifted detective, and the professor is one of those.
"That’s not particularly in vogue, you know, what is in vogue right now is bright, hard-working detectives struggling with difficult family lives. And I think I love it for that reason as well. It's slightly stepping outside the realm of what's expected. But it does feel classic with its own unique twist."
The show has previously received Belgian, German and French adaptations, and Ben did his research before the cameras started rolling on the ITV drama.
He told HELLO! magazine: "I watched the show, and I loved it.
"I absolutely loved and Koen De Bouw, who played Professor T in the original, I just thought he was absolutely brilliant. I'm glad I'd seen the original show, because I didn't want to do anything in my version of Professor T that I'd seen in his version of the character. So it was really, really useful, I was so glad that I had seen it.
"We very much started with the original premise, but we approached it as if we were making our own version of those scripts, without reference to the existing show.
"We shot it in a very different way, lit it in a very different way, performed it in a very, different way. And I think it stands side by side with the original."
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