Everyone knows Bergerac, or so you'd think. "I didn't", says Damien Molony. "I knew of the series, but it was only after I got the job that it dawned on me how big it was. I was at a wedding and people said to me, 'Damien, the car, the leather jacket, Jersey.'" Not least, John Nettles who, over the course of ten years, made the original archetypal "maverick cop" so iconic. The series ran successfully from 1981 until the early 1990s.
Since Toby Whithouse's reboot of Bergerac in 2025, Molony has made the character of Jim Bergerac his very own. Season two launched in April this year, and although this re-imagined version of the unconventional detective feels different in many ways, there's still a connection between the two that is defined by a clash with authority, deeply rooted personal flaws, and some trouble with alcohol.
However, Bergerac - a broken man who is reeling from the death of his wife - is not the only troubled screen character Molony has portrayed this year. In Catherine Shepherd's satirical drama Two Weeks in August, that launched on BBC iPlayer at the end of May, the Irish actor plays young husband Dan, who's married to Zoe (Jessica Raine), the central protagonist of this eight-part tragedy set on a Greek island. The couple is joined by a group of friends who reunite for a summer holiday, hoping for sun and a fresh start. But the mood quickly shifts when secrets surface and tensions grow.
For Molony himself things could not be going better at the moment. The Brassic star also recently returned to the stage for the first time in nine years (after playing alongside Ian McKellen in King Lear) in Michael Longhurst's production of Michael Frayn's Copenhagen at the Hampstead Theatre. Sitting down to talk about these different projects, he reflects on his characters as much as on his own personal career.
PAMELA JAHN: Starting off with Bergerac, how good would you be as a detective in real life?
DAMIEN MOLONY: I probably don't have the same instincts Jim Bergerac does. I'm more of a thinker than a doer. But I do love solving things, I come from a family of medics, which requires detective skills of a different kind. Like, someone comes into your surgery, and you've got five minutes to work out what's wrong with them. I'd love to play a doctor for that reason; I like those kinds of impulsive, instinctive characters because that's not who I am.
Do you also see parallels between detective work and acting, in that you are searching for a certain truth in the characters you play?
Absolutely. You're also searching for what the character wants or how the character is potentially going to hide what they feel. This sort of playing a mask is very present in Two Weeks in August, in the sense of pretending that everything's fine, I'm going to be fine, we're fine. When really, at the core of this marriage between Zoe and Dan, it's quite the opposite. I always remember Matthew Macfadyen in the first episode of Succession. I was like, What? Who is this Tom Wambsgans? And why is he acting like this? And then, over the course of the four seasons, it becomes so deliciously apparent how awful he is as a person.
How did you prepare for your character in Two Weeks in August?
I loved reading Stephen Fry's Greek Myths books because there's so much mythology in the show. I wanted to get a sense of that because the writer, Catherine Shepherd, fuelled the whole screenplay with these ancient stories. When we were shooting, each episode was named after a different god or goddess.
Would you call it a modern Greek tragedy of sorts?
I've never heard someone describe it like that, but that's possibly exactly what it is. These people are coming to Greece with so much hope and so much excitement. And at the crux of it, they realise that their relationships are going to change forever because of this holiday. That's certainly the definition of drama. Whether it's the definition of tragedy, I don't know.
At the same time, it's a black comedy.
It's interesting you say that, because at first, I didn't see the humour in it. In the three scenes that I was given for the audition, I only bonded with this deeply haunted man who feels utterly worthless and trapped in this deeply tragic relationship. What struck me more than anything was the sadness, and only when I got to read the whole script, I started to realise that there is also something incredibly hilarious about their misguided hope that this holiday is going to solve all their problems.
Is there an island that you would like to be trapped on?
I was born in Ireland, so that's a special place for me. And we mainly shot the series on Malta, which was incredibly beautiful, isolated and full of history. It was kind of magical. But now that you ask, Bergerac was primarily shot on location in Jersey, so I shot almost exclusively on islands last year.
You've recently returned to the stage in Copenhagen at Hampstead Theatre as well, Michael Frayn’s very timely drama about a dangerous hard-right politician who threatens to wipe out an entire civilisation. Did you know much about the real story behind it when you took on the role?
I had heard of Werner Heisenberg, the character I play, but this was a world that I can safely say I knew nothing about. At the same time, I was so thrilled to be a part of it. I hadn't been on stage for nine years and was waiting for the right thing to come along. This kind of landed in my lap in a very serendipitous way, and it was like diving into the deep end. I never thought physics would be as exciting; it's a complicated, very dense piece. On the first day of rehearsals, we worked out that if we learned three pages a day for five weeks, we would be line perfect by the first preview. And that's essentially what it took.
Did you feel any stage fright coming back to theatre after such a long break?
No, it wasn't about that. The last play I did was King Lear in Chichester when I had a nine-month-old son. And back then, I suddenly realised that it was very difficult to suddenly disappear every night and not do bedtimes. That was one of the reasons I wanted to take a little step back.
Coming back to Bergerac, did you have trepidations taking on the role in the first instance, given John Nettles made that character so big in the 1980s?
You can look at it in different ways. And maybe if I was a younger actor, less experienced and possibly less confident, I would have very much got lost in that pressure, that anxiety and expectation. But what kind of softened it for me, was that I had worked closely with the show's creator Toby Whithouse before, and I knew the work of our director Colin McCarthy as well. When I spoke to them about the role, it became apparent very quickly that it was a new take on the original series.
What made this different for you?
I very much saw this as a story about a grieving dad who's trying to reconnect with his daughter. And in a way, he just happens to be a detective, who has a very complicated and exciting case to investigate at the same time. But there's also something else. Different actors play Hamlet every night of the year in countries all over the world, or King Lear, and everyone has a different version of it. Their legacy continues because of how exciting and complicated they are in nature. And to me, Jim is a thrilling role in much the same way that those Shakespearean characters are, and I feel there is still a lot more to explore.
- All episodes of Two Weeks in August are available on BBC iPlayer
- All episodes of Bergerac season 2 are available at U&Drama and the Channel 4 hub
- More TV reviews on theartsdesk
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