Burnside's Hot on his Own 
The Age Green Guide, 21 June 2001 

by Gordon Farrer

YOU COULDN'T sum up Detective Chief Inspector Frank Burnside better than this description found on the official website of his self-titled new series: "DCI Frank Burnside built his reputation on good detective work combined with his unique approach of putting suspects' heads down the toilet and making their lives hell." 

In The Bill, Burnside was one out of the box, a copper with bottle who strayed from the straight and narrow as required. Never corrupt but often suspected of being so. Always hard, often past the point of abusing his authority, playing outside the rules of the game, and blessed with a deliciously sardonic turn of phrase, the character was an instant hit. 

Christopher Ellison first appeared in The Bill as Tommy Burnside, a Detective Sergeant from another nick, whom he now describes as "a right nasty bastard". That was in 1984. At the end of his brief stint there, Ellison went off and forgot about the increasingly popular Bill until 1988, when the producers came knocking again, looking to re-cast him as the new DI at Sun Hill - and to re-christen him Frank. 

From the day he started the job, Burnside made a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way and of arousing suspicion. The flawed and ultimately pathetic Ted Roach (Tony Scannell), who had been acting DI before Burnside arrived, was resentful that he didn't get the gig permanently; the avuncular and straightup-and-down Sergeant Bob Cryer (Eric Richard) always thought he was up to something sinister; and Inspector Christine Frazer (Barbara Thorn) suspected him of being tied into the widespread corruption in the Met during the 1970s. No one had a good word for him. 

As broad, deep and well-wrought as The Bill is, Frank Burnside was always too big to be contained by it. 

In his heavy winter coat with collar turned up against a bleeding-heart world, Ellison gave his character an authority and presence that demanded the better part of every scene he was in, employing a steely, blue-eyed intensity that allowed no rebuff. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that Burnside would spin out into his own series. But for Ellison, it didn't happen soon enough. 

"They should have done it years before, really. They ummed and aahed about it and they farted about, the way they do, these TV companies, and then they eventually decided to do it. It was talked about years before, to do a spin-off, but nobody's got the bottle to do anything. But I always think with these things if you're going to think about it, then do it." 

They should have struck while the character was hot? 

"Yeah. I think we should have done it four years before, but there you have it." 

Chatting one-on-one, Ellison has little of the Burnside gruffness or impatience. And while he insists he is unlike his dramatic alter ego -"Burnside is very single-minded, ruthless, and will do anything to get a result, whereas I'm not. I'm much more laid back. Much lazier, as well" - Ellison says he found him an easy character to play: "He always fited me like a glove, really. I've played an awful lot of gangsters and stuff like that. I've done that for 30 years, I've played villains and dodgy people and stuff (so) to play a suspect cop was quite a nice, easy thing for me to do." 

Fitting for a character too big for the pond he was born into, Burnside is the natural progression for Ellison's character. The Detective Inspector steps up a division to become a Detective Chief Inspector heading a squad in the National Crime Squad, the "British FBI". Here he lines up against a nastier, more ruthless style of villain - a fairer fight, you might argue. And he still rubs his colleagues the wrong way. 

Compared to The Bill, the world of Burnside is a darker, moodier, higher stakes place in which drugs, guns and murder are common currency. To fit the new mood, director Ian White - who has also helmed many of The Bill's bigger episodes, including one recently shot in Sydney, before tackling the first two episodes of the six-part Burnside series - has gone for a look very different from The Bill's usual style. 

Having created a more atmospheric, film-like feel, White freely admits the aim was to appeal to an audience other than the traditional Bill viewer. "We were experimenting to make it more accessible to a younger audience who like those modern Hollywood detective films," he says. "So the look of it was very different (to The Bill); 'dark' is not the word, it's bleak, almost, at times." 

Burnside went down well with the critics and fared reasonably well during the difficult summer television season in Britain last year, but Ellison holds little hope of a chance to reprise the character: "Everyone seems to still like the Burnside character, he's very popular, but I don't know whether we'll ever see him again. 

I loved Burnside, he was great and obviously a success for me over a few years. People seem to think I played him for years, but I didn't. I only played him for five years. But I'm quite philosophical about the business. One character is just one job." 

Burnside: Back with a Vengeance, Part one screens tomorrow on the ABC at 8.30pm. 

© 2001

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