'Acting is an affliction'
Timothy Spall is a retired thesp in his new series, but he won’t be stepping out of the spotlight any time soon
BBC / BBC Studios / Simon Ridgway
- Michael Hodges
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The thing is,” says Timothy Spall, “when you try and explain where the character you’re playing comes from, you’re talking about something that is ineffable. If you’re not careful, you end up sounding like a prat.”
Nonetheless, the Bafta-winning actor’s latest role, which is actually two roles, needs some explaining. In comedy crime drama Death Valley Spall is a fictional television detective, Inspector Caesar, and also John Chapel, the actor who played Inspector Caesar on screen before his retirement to a picture-book Welsh village.
Timothy Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth in Death Valley. BBC / BBC Studios / Jay Brooks
“Curmudgeonly, slightly childish but bright,” according to Spall, Chapel lives in a cottage in the fabulously verdant Vale of Glamorgan, where his solitary existence is disturbed by the arrival of DS Janie Mallowan (played by Gwyneth Keyworth), who is investigating the murder of Chapel’s neighbour.
Almost the first thing Mallowan notices is Chapel’s framed Inspector Caesar Radio Times cover. That same cover is visible in Spall’s real-life London home today, along with two genuine RT covers for his previous turns as Porthos in The Three Musketeers in 1994 and Fagin in 2007’s Oliver Twist. “Radio Times is an iconic thing, isn’t it? It’s wonderful,” Spall says, before pointing out just how good Keyworth is: “It’s a wonderful performance as this eccentric, slightly disarming, but also slightly shocking, copper.”
Spall’s Inspector Caesar is based on the “1950s type” television detectives he watched as a boy in south London. “There was nothing dreadful going on around our way,” he says. “A bit of house-breaking and so on.” His Chapel, a recluse who none-too-secretly yearns to be in the spotlight again, is an amalgam of the more “thespian” thespians Spall has encountered since leaving Rada in 1978. “I wouldn’t name any names,” he teases, “because there are aspects to Chapel’s character that people might not want to associate themselves with.”
Timothy Spall and Sian Gibson star in Death Valley BBC / BBC Studios / Simon Ridgway
We’re meeting just before Spall addresses the nation on VE Day in the guise of Winston Churchill. He first played Churchill in 2010’s The King’s Speech, part of a wide-ranging resumé that, as well as world leaders, features Brummie elect-
rician Barry from Auf Wiedersehen Pet and the painter JMW Turner in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner. Spall is sitting in front of a painting he created for the role and beneath it sits his 2024 Bafta for The Sixth Commandment. “I always wanted one of these,” he says, still beaming. “It’s lovely to have it.”
Now 68, the Battersea comprehensive boy, son of a Post Office worker and hairdresser, has had a sparkling run of late especially, as he puts it, as “posh characters”: as well as murder victim Peter Farquhar in The Sixth Commandment there was his ogre-like Duke of Norfolk in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. By comparison, Death Valley is light stuff, but Spall likes it very much, particularly the relationship between Chapel and Mallowan who, after initially sparring, settle down to solve murders together. “They recognise each other instantly in their souls,” says Spall. “They cut straight through any generational difference, any bizarre sexual difference or anything like that.”
Timothy Spall plays John Chapel in Death Valley BBC / BBC Studios / Simon Ridgway
For once in this kind of odd-couple drama there is no will they, won’t they. This, says Spall, is more “uncle and niece”. Which is possibly a relief, as Spall is exactly twice the age of 34-year-old Keyworth. “Later on in the series, we find out that there is quite a lot of sexual attraction, but it’s not between them,” says Spall, of a series that also stars Gavin & Stacey’s Melanie Walters and Steffan Rhodri.
Did Spall wonder if they would be attracted to each other? “Obviously, it was a question I asked. They’re both humans, for God’s sake. He’s an older guy. I’m an older guy, and you know, it doesn’t stop.”
In which case, what about taking on more romantic roles in the future – are there enough for older actors? “I don’t yearn for it,” he says. “I’ve played many roles where I’ve had love interests, so I’m not sitting there thinking, ‘Oh, now I’m in my late 60s I hope I’m going to become some old codger romantic.’ But it’s good there’s more writing about older people who have love lives or unusual love lives. It’s easy to write people off when they get to a certain age, but people are living longer, and writers are living longer, and the audience is living longer, and they want things about them that are accurate and truthful, not written by people who are making assumptions about their generation.”
Timothy Spall as John Chapel and Gwyneth Keyworth as Janie Mallowan in Death Valley BBC
But how would he find the time? Everyone wants a slice of Timothy Spall. There’s the request to write an autobiography – “I’ve had some ups and downs, so there’s a story to tell,” he says. “My vanity is always pricked by that, but then I think, ‘Actually, bloody hell, how would I go about it?’” – and there’s the painting to catch up with. “The gallery keeps on at me, but it’s just finding the time now. The day job keeps getting in the way.”
That day job, as Spall admits, isn’t really a job at all. “It’s a vocation,” he says, “something that you have to do rather than something you choose to do. I call it an ‘affliction’. I sometimes think, ‘What’s the matter with me?’ It’s a weird combination of, if I’ve got to work on a part, if I’ve got it on my mind, it haunts me and drives me nuts and then you go through the worry of, ‘Did I get it right?’ But if I haven’t got a part on my mind, or it isn’t one that is a bit of a challenge, then I feel a bit lost.”
Gwyneth Keyworth
...plays DS Jane Mallowan
Tell us about your character in Death Valley
I play DS Janie Mallowan. On a murder case she meets John Chapel, her all-time hero from her favourite TV show. What first seems like the best thing ever to have happened, sort of turns when she realises she can’t get rid of him…
To start with, Janie hero-worships Chapel — does that reflect your own experience working with the great Timothy Spall?
Not far off. It’s Timothy Spall! There was a bit of hero worship when we started. But I’d worked with his son Rafe before on stage [in Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird adaptation] — he was so nice, so I thought his dad would probably be nice as well. And I was not disappointed!
Are you hoping that continues — could this become one of those long-running detective partnerships, like Morse and Lewis?
I really hope so. I haven’t been told anything yet. But I’d be desperate to do it. Getting to hang out with Tim again would be an absolute treat.
Death Valley is full of murder mysteries — but it’s also a very Welsh story. Was that part of the appeal for you?
Definitely. It shows off Wales in all its scope and diversity. But also, I think Wales has a really good sense of humour about itself. We all watched the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special! And as a Welsh speaker, it’s nice to be able to speak some Welsh in the show.
Do you ever worry about it being stereotypical, or tokenistic?
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There’s a definite worry. I’ve gone up for things before set in Wales that have clearly been written by people who are not from Wales. Suddenly everyone’s in a choir, no one has a degree and we’re all down a mine. And it’s disheartening, because you know that there is so much vibrancy and so much diversity within Wales. That’s what’s great about this — we’re showing a vibrant, modern version of Wales on primetime. HUW FULLERTON
Authors
Michael Hodges
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