Fitting The Bill 
The Daily Telegraph, 21st June 2001

by Eleanor Sprawson

Chris Ellison is back as DCI Burnside, but his time he's running his own show. 

Most of the time, Chris Ellison relishes the differences between himself - family man, sailor and amateur watercolourist - and the chilly-eyed, icy-hearted Detective Chief Inspector Frank Burnside he portrays on screen. 

Some of the time, however, he enjoys the similiarities. In partiuclar, he can occasionally find that sharing those pale-blue eyes that the public associate with television's most menacing glare can be rather useful. 

"It comes in pretty handy in crowds," laughs the actor. "Makes people back off in a bit of a hurry without me having to say a word." 

Ellison had had a strange relationship with the character he's been living with since joining the cast of The Bill in 1988. After five years, the former Royal Shakespeare Company actor had had all he could take of Burnside and the slag-infested streets of Sun Hill and left the series. Now, however, Burnside is back - in his very own series - and safely removed from his old nick. 

The six-part series called Burnside sees Sun Hill's old guv'nor appointed head of a crack investigative team at the National Crime Squad, the British version of the FBI. 

"It's such a good character it was worth doing it again," Ellison says. "Although when I left in 1993 it was because I'd had enough of him. 

"I just wanted to do something else for a while." 

That turned out to mean a strange string of jobs - he calls it his "bumbling around time" - including the voice of a talking Alsatian in the British series Conjugal Rites and as a hitman trying to kill one of the characters in Birds Of A Feather. 

"Then, after all that when I was sort of ready for something else again, they came back to me and said we want to bring you back to The Bill for a while," he says. 

"They made me a very good offer, so I said 'Yeah, all right' and I came back to do eight hours and then we did the spin-off from there. 

"It was fun - I'd missed those one-liners. He gets some great lines, Burnside does. 

"But I'd forgotten how frightening I could look as Frank and that took a bit of getting used to again. I scare myself, sometimes." 

Although the threatening, great-coated image of the character himself hasn't changed, the look of Burnside is very different from The Bill. 

"The character is the only similarity," says Ellison. "This is very different. Darker, and there's a lot of big soul-searching scenes, which are a lot more interesting than some of the stuff he's done in the past." 

This darker tone has also meant a cutback to Burnside's famous, throw-away one-liners. 

"There are a few of them in this, but they're not as thick and fast as they were in The Bill," he says. 

"I think they used to try to cram them into the episodes where he appeared, like, let's get the most Burnside in that we can. This series is more plot-driven than character-driven so there wasn't really space for too much of it." 

Longtime Bill director Ian White, who was in charge of the first two episodes of the new series, admits that having to cope with the audience's expectations of who Burnside is and how he behaves has been a challenge. 

"It is tricky because he's got this hugely loyal following and people do love his humour, but I mean these shows are dealing with very serious crimes and so the room for humour was limited," he says. 

White says the makers of The Bill came up with the idea for a Burnside spin-off several years ago, during the rethink of the whole show, which has included the controversial decision to show more of the private lives of the Sun Hill police. 

"The great thing for myself as a director is it's visually such a change from The Bill - it's a whole fresh new look and a visual revamp was long overdue," White says. 

"So there is a lot of change and it's very different from the other program, but people still have the character of Burnside, so I think the blend of new and old is a pretty attractive one." 

Meanwhile, Ellison is unsure about whether further episodes of Burnside will be made or whether he will have the chance to play his most famous role again. One thing, however, is sure: he will keep playing characters that exist on the dark side and is not the slightest bit tempted to play roles that are closer to his own personality. 

"You don't get any good lines as a nice dad," he says. 

"You're much better off playing the villains. Always play the gangster types, that's what I say. They're the ones that get all the meat." 
 

And where did Eleanor Sprawson go to research her subject? Why The Burnside Files of course. Did she credit her sources? Oh no, indeedy not. Study the evidence and judge for yourself. Which Web Fairy's favourite quote is included in this immortal bunch? Could anyone else on the planet remember this one on their lonesome? I think not. Regardez vous...

© 2001

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