Actor Will Mellor on Channel 4 cop drama No Offence
PH 'I wasn’t surprised the first series won awards. I loved it'
As we’d expect of Paul Abbott’s blackly comic police drama No Offence, season two opens with a bang. It’s a literal one – at a funeral, the chapel of rest is rocked by a blast that kills several guests and sets the scene for what’s to come: a high-octane series full of action, suspense and banter. When it premiered on Channel 4 last year, No Offence was praised for reinventing the cop drama. Abbott’s rule-breaking, mistake-making coppers laughed at the wrong things and generally took a seat-of-the-pants approach to policing. His audacious urban world included nurses who snorted cocaine and prostitutes with Down’s Syndrome, and the first series featured a death-by-foam killing that set Twitter alight.
I wasn’t surprised the first series won awards. I loved it Will Mellor
Essentially, No Offence bore all the raucous hallmarks of Paul Abbott’s previous triumph, Shameless, and was rewarded with critical praise, a BAFTA nomination and last year’s Royal Television Society Award for Best Drama. But joining up for the first series was a bit of a gamble for the actors, confesses Will Mellor, 40, who plays the drama’s DC Spike Tanner. “We didn’t know what we were making until it was made, as it was a new genre,” he muses. “We were a bit bemused: was it a comedy, a drama, a hard-hitting comedy? I wasn’t surprised it won awards. I loved it.”
PH Paul Ritter
Now the cops are back at Friday Street police station to tackle another case in a new six-parter. The Thick of It’s Joanna Scanlan returns as chief copper and general force of nature DI Viv Deering, with Utopia’s Alexandra Roach as second-in-command DS Joy Freer and Elaine Cassidy as impulsive DC Dinah Kowalska. Will is back as Tanner, with Friday Night Dinner’s Paul Ritter as a forensics expert, Miller. Today we’re on set, at a run-down former youth club in Manchester, where the production team has recreated a large, bustling precinct swarming with cops – real retired and former officers play the extras, bringing authenticity to the piece. Today they’re filming scenes from the first episode. The cops are trying to bring down gang leader Nora Attah (Holby’s Rakie Ayola). All the cast are there, including Sarah Solemani as new DS Christine Lickberg, who replaces Colin Salmon’s Darren McLaren. Deering has just returned to work after time off following the death of her husband, Laurie (Risteárd Cooper).
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Of course, thereby hangs a tale: Deering and Kowalska share the secret of having been present at Laurie’s gruesome murder. In a terrible irony, he was discovered to be the rampant sex attacker the cops had been after, and both Deering and Kowalska were there when one of his victims killed him by injecting builders’ expanding foam down his throat. So, everyone thinks Deering’s a grieving widow, because the truth about who killed Laurie has been hushed up. But DC Tanner is still raking over the coals of Laurie’s unsolved murder. “Spike isn’t willing to let the case go,” adds Will. “He feels he owes it to Deering to find out who killed Laurie, so there could be a clash there.”