The Stage

Crossing the police line - Ian Puleston-Davies

Published Thursday 28 October 2004 at 16:50 by Rob Driscoll

Starring in gritty detective drama Conviction and toting guns in a new Guy Ritchie film, Ian Puleston-Davies is no stranger to crime roles. But, as the passionate Welshman explains to Rob Driscoll, crossing the floor into scriptwriting has been fuelled by more personal subjects, including his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and rural community roots

Writing television dramas and acting in them are clearly two very distinct disciplines, but Ian Puleston-Davies is that rare breed who combines both talents with a more than a modicum of success.

His last script to air on screen was the acclaimed ITV1 comedy drama Dirty Filthy Love, based on his own history of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which starred fellow Welshman Michael Sheen in the role of a man torn apart by his own physical paranoias. And he’s currently completing the final drafts of Farmer Brothers, another one-off drama, set in the North Wales mining community, which the BBC will start filming next year.

In the meantime, Puleston-Davies returns this week to performing in front of the cameras as the most dysfunctional detective you’ll have seen in a long while, in BBC3’s much-anticipated new drama series Conviction.

He’s the first to admit that the prospect of yet another British cop show initially filled him with a sense of ennui. Then he realised that there was no hint of traditional find the killer, case-orientated stories in the very adult scripts by Bill Gallagher of Clocking Off and Out of the Blue fame, but instead a bold and thought-provoking perspective on life in the modern day police force.

More than that, it was a welcome change from playing the bad guy - even if his character Joe does end up killing somebody in the first episode.

“I’ve tended to corner the market in playing paedophiles and heroin addicts,” says Puleston-Davies, who was born in Flint, Clwyd. “I’ve always been on the wrong side of the law, so I guess playing a boy in blue was part of the attraction.

“But Joe, my character in Conviction, is far from formulaic. He’s an old-school CID officer who’s seen far too many episodes of The Sweeney. He’s of the ‘bang ‘em up and ask questions later’ discipline, and he clashes directly with the new age, thinking man’s copper in the show, played by Reece Dinsdale. But while there’s no evil or badness in Joe, he does become distracted, goes off the rails, and does something really terrible. He just loses it, he has this temper and unfortunately the prime suspect in a murder case gets in the way.”

Conviction probably offers 46-year-old Puleston-Davies his most high-profile television role to date, yet it could have all ended up so differently. He grew up in a big farming community, and like all of his cousins was expected to become a farmer.

“I did all the traditional pursuits of young farmers, like stock judging, but I knew in my heart I was never cut out for it,” he recalls. “I had a wonderful escape by joining the local school drama club, and found that was my destiny.”

At the well-respected Clwyd Youth Theatre - which also witnessed some early board-treading by Rhys Ifans and Mark Lewis Jones - Puleston-Davies furthered his love of all things stage. “Fortunately my parents were kind enough to let me leave my wellingtons at the back door and disappear to London,” he laughs.

He’s been there ever since, writing and acting over the years. He trained at the Guildhall School of Drama, “a lot of ex-Clwyd Youth Theatre members went there, like Rhys Ifans,” he says.

Today, home for Puleston-Davies is Belsize Park, north London, where he lives with his partner of two years, Sue, duty manager of Hampstead’s Everyman Cinema. But his Welsh roots are never far behind.

“I go back home a lot - just the other day I went to an event held by the Flintshire Ploughing Society, of which my dad is chairman,” he says proudly. “It was actually a hedge-cutting match, and I felt I should lend some support.”¬¨‚Ć

The plight of small farmers, especially in his native North Wales, is a topic about which Puleston-Davies can get quite passionate, hence his new screenplay, Farmer Brothers, which he’s been writing for several years.

“I’ve always wanted to write something with the backdrop of the plight of farming in Wales, as I don’t think small farmers get the same sympathy that miners had in the eighties, and it’s something I really wanted to redress.”

The resultant drama won’t be a preachy sermon, however, more a comedy drama that intriguingly mixes farming with flamenco. Humour, he insists, is vital as a method of point-making, hence the vital comedic tone of Dirty Filthy Love, co-written by Jeff Pope, which addressed the very serious topic of OCD, something from which Puleston-Davies has suffered for most of his life.

“I am indebted to my old mate Michael Sheen’s performance, because so many of my friends said he rang so true,” he says. “We also had a fantastic response from sufferers themselves, and that to me is the icing on the cake.”

Pulseton-Davies himself still suffers from OCD, and although he is a lot better these day, he doesn’t believe there will ever be a cure. “The word is control,” he says. “The story you saw in Dirty Filthy Love is based on me eight years ago, and I’ve come through the worst, through therapy and medication. I’ve still a long way to go, but my determination is not to go to my grave carrying my wet wipes!”

Meanwhile, the dual working life of Ian Puleston-Davies means he is now back in front of the cameras, filming no less than Guy Ritchie’s new movie, Revolver, in London and the Isle of Man.

“Former Flying Picket Brian Hibbard and I play a couple of Irish gangsters,” he reveals. “Guy’s going back to what he does best, a good knockabout gangster flick, and the cast is amazing, including Jason Statham and Ray Liotta. Only last week we filmed a massive shoot-out in true Guy Ritchie tradition. All I’m waiting for now is to meet Madonna.”

• Conviction begins on BBC3 on Sunday November 7th at 9pm.