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How would you describe Tony, and how has he ended up being charged with murder?

He's just a working-class guy. He's a mechanic by day and is just an ordinary guy really. He meets the love of his life, Saskia, and when she develops bone cancer, she comes to him saying that she doesn't want to go through it all and put everyone through the pain and the degeneration of her body. She puts the idea to him that maybe she could help herself through to the other side, and he gets involved in that due to his love of her.

So throughout the five episodes, we don't know what the answer is. He's been charged with murder, but he claims it was assisted suicide. It keeps the audience on their toes doesn't it?

Absolutely, that's how it's got to be. If we knew at the beginning we wouldn't have a series! Yeah it's nice to get different sides of the story from the characters and their perspective on it. With the flashback sequences we gain a little more of the story with each episode and as an actor I played it for the truth.

You say you played it for the truth – what do you mean by that?

I asked not to know the outcome, because I wanted to play the truth that was on the page at that moment, which is obviously what the viewers are seeing at that time. The words that were put on the page for my character had to be as truthful as I could make them. If I'd have known the end of the story, then that might have influenced me, but I just played it for the truth the whole way through and found out right at the very last moment what had happened.

You're probably best known recently for Ashes To Ashes and Life On Mars and you're on the other side of the fence in this drama as the "accused". What's that been like for you?

Tony's a different kind of character; he's quite a nice fella and really loves Saskia. He's different to Ray Carling in Life On Mars who was a bit of a hard man and didn't have an awful lot of feelings until it came to the end of the series. This guy's probably a little bit more like I am – I'm nothing like Ray so yeah, it's nice to play. I did Marchlands before this and I played a nice guy in that. It's quite nice to play nice.

Have you enjoyed filming in Liverpool and Manchester?

Yes, it's always good to be up here in the North, it's kind of where I belong. I always feel a little out of place in London. I'm a Northern boy and it's fab that they're bringing some good stuff up here and getting some good actors in. Keep it up here for as long as you like, for me!