Sherlock alum Martin Freeman will play the lead role in The Responder, an upcoming BBC crime drama about police officers working the night shift.
Martin Freeman portrayed a classic crime-solver in Sherlock, and now he’ll star in a modern-day TV crime drama as the BBC has hooked him to lead The Responder.
The series is centered on Chris (played by Freeman), a night shift police officer in Liverpool, whose marriage is on the rocks while he works the beat with his partner Rachel.
It’s written by Tony Schumacher, a former police officer turned screenwriter; this will be his first TV production. But that wasn’t an issue for Freeman, who raved about the script after his casting was announced on Monday.
“Tony Schumacher’s script for The Responder resonated with me immediately,” he said in the BBC’s press release, per Deadline. “It felt like nothing that I’d read or seen.”
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There is no premiere date yet for the new series, but will bring Martin Freeman back to the TV crime drama genre that he’s become very familiar with. Though he’s best known for playing Dr. John Watson in Sherlock, he also portrayed Lester Nygaard in the first season of FX’s quirky crime series Fargo, and then starred as Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher in the British crime drama A Confession.
He is currently making the rounds promoting his new FX comedy Breeders, which Freeman created with Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell. He stars in the sitcom as Paul, a beleaguered father of two who struggles through parenthood with his wife (played by Daisy Haggard from Episodes).
For TV crime drama fans, the question will be how The Responder is going to set itself apart. The genre is already highly competitive, but we’ve seen the “cop whose personal life falls to pieces as they struggle with the job” show a lot of times before. Freeman is a talented actor, but the show will be only as good as its writing, and will need something different than just the issues of being a police officer.
The show is the second crime drama by a new writer to be picked up in the last week. ITV had previously announced Trigger Point, starring Line of Duty‘s Vicky McClure and written by Daniel Brierly. Line of Duty‘s Jed Mercurio is producing.
Are you interested in watching Martin Freeman in The Responder? Let us know your thoughts about this new show in the comments.