It's Not Easy To Take A Sit-com

[maigret Sets A Trap] Was Always Going To Be The First Film, And It Seemed To Be Quite A Nice Story. But Of Course It Meant That Here I Was Playing This New Character For The First Time, In A Place Where He Had Been A Relative Failure, As All These People Had Been Murdered And The Pressure Was On. Rather Than Starting Optimistically With His Pipe In Front Of The Fireplace, He Was In Quite A Difficult Place.

The First Couple Of Weeks Of Filming Were Quite Tricky For Me To Find My Feet With The Character [maigret], Which Wasn't Helped By The Story That We Were Telling.

The One Thing I Would Never Wish It To Be Thought Is That You Play Serious Roles In Order To Achieve Some Sort Of Respectability Which You Can't If You're Playing Comedic Roles.

I Think I Have An Inner Confidence That My Tastes Are Pretty Simple, That What I Find Funny Finds A Wide Audience. I'm Not Particularly Intellectual Or Clever Or Minority-focused In My Creative Instincts. And I'm Certainly Not Aware Of Suppressing More Sophisticated Ambitions.

Although The Great Frustration About This [role] Is The Fact That There's One Thing Maigret Never Does, And That's Drive. He's Always Driven, Or He Takes The Train, Or He Gets The Bus. I Was Saying 'well, Why Don't We Ring The Changes For The 21st Century, And Stick Him In The Car?'. [executive Producer And Son Of The Author, John Simenon] Said, 'well, You Can If You Want, But There'll Be Lots Of People Who Won't Like It'. So He's A Non-driver ... But No, Top Gear Was Never A Consideration For Me; And Neither Was I Asked