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The Responder | Interview with Ian Hart (Carl Sweeney)

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How would you describe The Responder?

The Responder is watching these people who’ve got problems, who have obstacles to overcome, who have physical and emotional issues, interact with each other. Throughout you’re watching real human beings, like Karl, Marco and Casey, get on with their lives.

Take Casey; she’s in a dire situation but she’s not miserable. We look at the degradation, the sadness and the poverty of the situation and how she’s effectively a homeless person living in an alleyway and isn’t that tragic. Yes, while the situation is tragic, the individual who is living in that situation still goes and gets a pie and when she’s talking to the girl behind the counter, she doesn’t tell how miserable her life is. She’s not about injecting misery into the interaction. This is about real people who tend to want to see some positive in their day-to-day existence, even if that day-to-day existence is going to get your next bag of drugs.

What made you want to be a part of this series?

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This script was a page-turner that I couldn’t put down. It was like getting a really good novel from a writer that you’ve never heard of before, and with every page you wanted to find out more. Every character had a voice. Tony’s writing makes you laugh, feel sad and it makes you feel completely engaged with a need to know where the story is going.

Tony has a unique voice, and without sounding simplistic you get a real sense of who the characters are immediately, in the same way that children’s literature hooks you in so much better and quicker than adult literature. Straightaway you are attracted to all the characters, regardless of the behaviour and the darkness they are involved with. They are all appealing as human beings, which means they’re very real. It’s not a cops and robbers drama and it doesn’t make that demarcation between good and bad people. They’re all just people, trying to make their own way through life by whatever means they can.

The script is always the jumping off-point, and when I read Tony’s scripts everything was there on the page. I knew exactly who these characters were instantaneously. I wanted to find out what their journey was going to be. Tony writes in a way that you are in no doubt as to who a character is, and because none of us are playing stereotypes, or in my case the typical arch criminal. The characters are multi-dimensional; everyone is human, and it isn’t hard to play human. It’s actually one of the easiest qualities to pick up because you can ditch all the extraneous archetypes. It was a real pleasure to work on this show.

Who is Carl and how does he fit into the story?

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Carl is a small-time drug dealer and a grafter who’s just trying to get by. He’s not some huge criminal mastermind. He’s just a fella who buys and sells things, including drugs, and the odd car that someone else’s cousin used to own. He lives in a very modest environment and it’s just like everywhere else in the world – people know each other from school or college and go in different directions. With Carl and Chris – one has ended up a cop and the other is definitely not a cop but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a relationship of sorts. In an odd way they are friends, and they could argue about the morality of who has who in whose pocket, but that’s not what Tony does. We just address them as two individuals trying to make the best of the bad things that happen in life.

What is Carl’s relationship to Casey?

Casey is one of the most engaging characters in the script. I’ve not worked with Emily before but she’s absolutely fabulous and I adore her character. Casey comes along and fortuitously for her picks up a big bag full of drugs. She doesn’t know what to do with them because that amount of cocaine equals a lot of money, and very few people can handle that distribution. That’s where Carl comes in to play, because they are his drugs and obviously he owes money to somebody else. He drags Chris into it because he wants him to do his dirty work and pick up Casey for him and that’s a cop sort of thing to do. If he gets his drugs back, he will be able to pay off his debt and not get killed and everyone will be happy. Casey being Casey though doesn’t play ball, and none of what plays out is ever what you think might happen.

How does the character of Carl develop?

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I don’t think Carl is that bright, but let’s not underestimate how pressurised it must be to be a drug dealer. Can you imagine the tension of always having the possibility of going to prison or being killed or having your drugs stolen? That stress must be immense, and yet he’s still trying to run a business. Carl is a businessman, and while the product that he buys and sells is illegal, the dynamics of what he is doing is very similar to other businesses.

Can you tell us about Carl’s set up with Ian and Barry?

Everyone thinks they’ve got someone slightly lower down the totem pole. It’s again just ego. And, you know, the thing is he’s got someone above him and they’ve got someone above them. That’s always the power dynamic in any kind of any kind of relationship, and Carl thinks Ian and Barry are knob heads. Everyone needs to earn a living. They’re getting paid for what they do, and keep turning up for work, even though they’re disenchanted with their job and their boss, they still turn up on Monday morning. It’s what they do. These two fellas are probably thinking Carl is an absolute waste of space and he is useless at what he does and he’s lost everything, but still turn up on Monday. What we’re doing today then? Robbing cars, OK yeah, smashing, let’s rob cars. Substitute the function of a workplace environment for an alternate workplace environment and on any other given day, Casey would be the manager of Topshop or something.

Are Chris and Carl friends?

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We understand that Chris and Carl go way back. I don’t know what happened to most of the people I went to school with, but I imagine they all went in very different ways. It’s the same for Chris and Carl. If you don’t judge or ask certain questions then you won’t ever know what your friends do. Tony has a way of writing each character in a manner that they aren’t judged by what they do. It’s quite believable for two people who are on either side of that sort of divide to still be friends – what Tony has done is undermine that divide.

Policemen are human too and the things they see and have to do must have a negative impact on them emotionally and psychologically. It’s wrong to assume that by going to police training college for 16 weeks that you are guaranteed a work-life free of pain and suffering because that’s just not true to life. Carl doesn’t take Chris’s mental state into account and he neither intellectualizes it nor emotionally connects with it. He thinks Chris is just having a wobbly. It’s just not high on Carl’s agenda. His way of dealing with bad days is to say, “have a pint or a line lad” which is why things probably catch up with you, because you don’t deal with the long-term implications of your actions. For Chris there are a lot of implications to his actions. Things that have happened in his family; things that have happened in his work and they’re catching up with him – whereas Carl avoids that.

How was it working with Martin Freeman?

I haven’t worked with Martin before but he’s a lovely fella. Most of our scenes are on the phone or shouting through a car window and the likes, but he’s been professional, kind, courteous and lovely.

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How is Martin’s Scouse accent?

God he’s great at it! He’s played an American, a Scotsman so why would this be any different? People think that somehow it’s impenetrable, like you got to start learning Taiwanese but it’s not that hard. It’s just like singing you just have to learn the melody and then the tune.

What was it like working with director Tim Mielants?

I’d worked with Tim before so I knew his style, which is to do things his own way, which is a very good thing. He’s hilarious, and what Tim’s more interested in is engaging the audience in something they may not have seen before or they’re not used to seeing. Tim has incredible ideas and doesn’t want to tread the same path as other directors.

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What was it like filming in Liverpool and what does it bring to the show?

Liverpool is an interesting city. I haven’t lived here for quite some time and in fact I’ve lived in London longer than I lived in Liverpool. It’s changed in those years I’ve been away and it was hard to work there during Covid because you can’t get the same sense of the city that you would do pre-pandemic. Liverpool’s got its own flavour and while you could have set this drama anywhere, it would not be the same because of the uniqueness of Liverpool.

How is that reflected in the dialogue and the dialect?

Tony has a real ear for writing dialogue that feels fresh and almost like it’s another language. It almost feels like it’s a subsection of the English, in that the Liverpool dialect has its own rhythm and punctuation that is a lot of swearing. Where you place an expletive in a sentence changes the dynamic of the sentence. If you remove it because someone might be offended by it the result is a change in the structure of the sentence and how it’s intended to be received by the audience.

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What Tony has done is keep the language alive with its unique rhythmic patterns and it’s in every line of the script. It has unique idiomatic speech patterns and if you don’t invest in that then you’re only getting a percentage of the story. A ‘baghead’ – heroin addict – is an expression that probably doesn’t translate or doesn’t travel very far but, if you said a heroin addict it becomes utilitarianism as a descriptive term. It undermines what you’re trying to do. It has to be a ‘baghead’ because ‘baghead’ means something that a heroin addict doesn’t. It’s those kinds of observations that make the script unique and not just a cop drama.

Why is it important to include Chris’ time in therapy in this drama?

The police need the services that they’re offered, because the job they do can be horrific. They get called out and may have to break down a door and there’s a dead body or get called to a horrific road traffic accident or they might have watched some brutal individual mutilate and kill people. It’s a horrific position to put oneself in and the expectation to be constantly strong is an unrealistic one. Of course, that has to have consequences and repercussions for their mental health and that needs to be taken care of. It’s traumatic and trauma has a way of biting back if you don’t deal with it.

How do you think The Responder will be perceived internationally?

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I think it will do well outside of the UK because there’s no prejudice. What Tony is doing is not apologizing for these characters and their reality. International audiences will be open to receiving the story without any pre-conceived ideas about Liverpool.


Alastair James is the editor in chief for Memorable TV. He has been involved in media since his university days. Alastair is passionate about television, and some of his favourite shows include Line of Duty, Luther and Traitors. He is always on the lookout for hot new shows, and is always keen to share his knowledge with others.

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