Leading Lynley
Vikings: Valhalla actor Leo Suter suits up to star in Lynley, a new adaptation of Elizabeth George’s mystery crime novels. He tells DQ about playing the title role, partnering with co-star Sofia Barclay and how his path to acting is reflected in his character’s own journey.
After graduating from Oxford, Leo Suter opted not to follow the “well-trodden” path taken by some of his friends into banking, management and law.
Instead, he chose to pursue an acting career that has so far seen him star in series including Victoria, Clique, The Girlfriend and Vikings: Valhalla. And now the combination of his background and the decision he made to follow his instincts into his chosen profession means he is well qualified for his latest role – as the title character in mystery crime drama Lynley.
Commissioned by BritBox in the US and Canada and acquired by the BBC for the UK, where it debuted this week, the series is a fresh take on the novels by Elizabeth George, which were first adapted by the BBC in 2001 with Nathaniel Parker in the lead. That series, called The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, ran for six seasons until 2008.
Suter suits up as DI Tommy Lynley, a brilliant police detective but an outsider in the force simply by virtue of his aristocratic upbringing. When he is paired up with DS Barbara Havers (Sofia Barclay), a sergeant with a maverick attitude and from a working-class background, they seemingly have nothing in common. But against all odds, the mismatched duo become a formidable team, bonded by their desire to see justice done.
Suter believes the discussion of class in Lynley – produced by Playground and distributed internationally by BBC Studios – makes it stand out from the crowd of other detective shows vying for audience attention.
“The main USP of Lynley is he’s this aristocrat, he’s the eighth Earl of Asherton,” the actor tells DQ. “It’s then interesting that he decides not to follow the path that’s laid out for him as an aristocrat, but to go into the police force. He’s privately educated, and went to Oxbridge, and that makes him a bit of an outsider in the Norfolk Police Force.
“When I read the part, I thought, ‘Ah, there’s a fair bit of crossover here between Leo and Lynley.’ I went to Oxford and, on the surface, that’s just a nice sort of parallel. But having gone to Oxford, the well-trodden path ahead of you is going into investment banking, management consultancy, the law. But I decided early on in my time there that wasn’t what I wanted to do, that actually I wanted to be an actor, and that’s a much riskier profession, much less stable. It was, in a sense, a strange route to go down. I thought was going to be the interesting thing I could bring to this Lynley version.”
Class is a recurring source of antagonism between “posh cop” Lynley and his partner Havers. But after reading the scripts for the series, Suter also recognised that perceptions of class in the UK have changed dramatically since George first wrote the Lynley novels and the original series aired.
“Class now looks very different in the UK,” he says. “Lynley in the books and the previous show was able, very entertainingly, to wear that privilege on his sleeve and be open with it. Whereas I think these days, it’s so uncool to be posh. People desperately try to hide their poshness and their blue-bloodedness, and that was something that was going to be interesting to bring to this dynamic and to make it really contemporary.”
Daniel Mays, Niamh Walsh, Michael Workéyè and Joshua Sher also star in the show, which marks Suter’s first leading role in a major series. “There’s something really nice about taking on the mantle of being the leading man in a show, being the detective,” he says. “And it’s a genre – a gritty crime drama – that’s a good thing to have on your CV. It’s really satisfying to watch. And fortunately for us, there’s already a loyal fan base for this IP, the books and the previous show. So you know you’re doing something that’s beloved and works.”
Suter is adamant, however, that under the stewardship of writer Steve Thompson (Sherlock, Vienna Blood) and lead director Ed Bazalgette (Marie Antoinette), “we’re doing our own thing.” He continues: “But there’s something really nice leading the show, being the main guy who holds the hand of the audience through a crime drama, and around whom a lot of things revolve. So that is very satisfying. It’s definitely a step up from things where you’re more on the periphery, but it’s really satisfying as well, and that means when it comes out, there’ll be a great sense of pride in four months of hard work coming to the screen.”
The role of Lynley also proved to be quite a physical one for Suter, who was called upon to chase suspects across fields and through rivers in episode one alone. But it was all in a day’s work for an actor who has previously filmed bare-knuckle fights, wrestling matches and battles while working on Vikings: Valhalla.
Notably, both shows were filmed in Ireland, and Suter found himself playing Lynley in front of many of the same crew who previously knew him as the long-haired, bearded Harald Sigurdsson. “So they just giggled that I was [now] running through the mud in suits,” he says.
He was also able to spend the four-month shoot working alongside Barclay, “a gem of a person” who is also “kind, compassionate and warm.”
“I did find it funny that when we arrived on set, I went, ‘Oh Christ, I know everyone here really well. I hope Sofia doesn’t feel that I know everyone’s name here and that it might take her a while to ingratiate herself because she wasn’t a Viking.’ By the end of the day, she knew everyone’s name. She was just a brilliant person to have around on set. So I really am grateful for a good partner.”
Like the mismatched characters they play on screen, Suter and Barclay spent the early part of filming figuring each other out. But by the end, they were “thick as thieves.” Without much time to rehearse or prep, their chemistry was based on the work they did together on set, which adds an authentic dynamic to their growing bond.
However, it took several takes for them to figure out how Lynley and Havers should meet on screen for the first time, with the final version filmed right at the end of the shoot. “It’s a hard thing to get right,” Suter says. “It’s such a key moment. In an earlier version, we had a fight where Lynley came in and did a very elegant arrest of a brawling drunk, but that was a bit jarring. It didn’t really flow with the suaveness of the Lynley reveal.
“We were able to sneak in another version, and there’s a witty quip from Lynley that seemed to work well with the slick elegance that you have in the montage of him arriving in his suit and his tweed coat. A verbal quip seemed a better fit.”
Like Inspector Morse and his Jaguar, Bergerac’s Triumph or Gene Hunt and his Audi Quattro from Life on Mars, Lynley also drives “a very nice car” – a Jensen Interceptor. In fact, it was so nice that only Suter and one other person on the crew were insured to drive it, meaning the actor spent a lot of time behind the wheel during shooting.
“It was so much fun,” he says, “but it was difficult to film in because it doesn’t have good anti-fog technology. So we had to have a leaf blower hidden under the seat to de-mist it for the takes, which was very unglamorous, and it’s quite loud as well. Most of the scenes we had to [add] ADR, because it’s so loud.
“But those scenes in the car were actually some of my favourite scenes, because it’s just Lynley and Havers. It’s their little thinking space. Because of the noise, it’s often when we’re parked up that we’re there putting the pieces of the puzzle together in a really cool old car, which was a character in itself.”
Suter has been ‘number one on the call sheet’ before, in his first “real job” after university, when he played an opera singer in a film in Poland. “I was young and fresh-faced and, I don’t mind saying, very green to things,” he says. Now, however, the actor knows how he wants to work and feels more assured with his status in a leading role.
“I knew the crew and liked the crew, so it’s really satisfying to lead the thing and have that responsibility on your shoulders. I really enjoyed it, really relished it,” he says.
“It’s also worth saying that everyone who was involved up and down the call sheet, we had wonderful actors come in. That’s one of the nice things of a show like this. You get these nice little moments where new characters come in for a couple of weeks, do their bit and then they’re off, and they bring a new lease of life to every episode. So that was always really satisfying. Then [it was] sad to see them go, and then the next bunch of murderers or suspects all arrive and you get to know each other again. It was a happy job.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
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Miss Scarlet & the Duke: In Victorian London, a determined gentlewoman defies social rules to run her late father’s detective agency, sparring and collaborating with a tough Scotland Yard inspector.
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tagged in: BBC, BBC Studios, Britbox, Leo Suter, Lynley, Playground, Vikings Valhalla