Dougary Scott reveals experience of acting opposite his real-life wife on Crookhaven: "Claire is very powerful, so there's no nonsense on set!"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Burton and Taylor, Bogart and Bacall, Newman and Woodward, Pitt and Jolie – there is a rich history of married couples giving compelling performances as, er, married couples. Their real-life marital status endowing their roles with an added frisson. Now, real-life husband and wife Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani are adding to this list by playing another irresistible married couple in Crookhaven.

In this new eight-part children’s drama for BBC One, adapted by Justin Young (Death in Paradise, Sanditon) from JJ Arcanjo’s bestselling novels, Scott plays Caspian Lockett, the charismatic, yet strict headmaster of the eponymous crooks’ academy. Meanwhile, Forlani takes the role of his enigmatic wife, Carmen.

Scott is equally magnetic on and off-screen. Talking to Radio Times, the 60-year-old Scottish actor, who also appeared opposite Forlani in the 2011 comedy drama Love’s Kitchen, says that their 19-year marriage brings another dimension to their performances. “Claire is very powerful, so there’s no nonsense on set!” he laughs. “No, it was great fun to work with her. It’s a lovely bit of casting because it adds that extra element. There’s an energy there, for sure, because we’re together.”

Forlani, 54, says she found it just as enjoyable. “We actually had such a fun scene to do together. It was really me just shouting at him!”

The series turns the high-school genre upside down. Crookhaven is a clandestine academy for young crooks. Teenagers with special skills in crookery are secretly recruited and taught to utilise their talents to do good and restore justice to the world. They are trained in subjects such as criminastics (the acrobatic talents needed for theft), forgery, deception, cyber intrusion, lock picking and infiltration.

This most unusual establishment is a cross between Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in X-Men and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from Harry Potter. You can guarantee that soon every teenager in the country will want to go.

Scott captivates as Caspian. Sporting a three-piece tweed suit and a posh English accent, he carries echoes of the former prime minister David Cameron. But Scott insists that he didn’t base the character on the Old Etonian. “I’ve got a lot of friends who are Old Etonians – they always say they went to Slough Grammar! – but David Cameron isn’t one of them. And I definitely based Caspian on a few Old Etonians I know, especially the voice. They have a certain way of speaking and of presenting themselves. They’re usually very well-kept and beautifully attired.”

Scott, who went to Auchmuty School, a state comprehensive in Glenrothes, Fife, continues, “Caspian is a character who’s light on his feet. He’s always there at the right moment, and he’s just got that debonair air wherever he is.”

In a feat of method acting that Daniel Day-Lewis might envy, Scott remained in character throughout the shoot. “It’s easier to do it that way,” he explains “because going in and out of character just gets confusing for an actor. So, you just stay in it all the time.”

With a laugh, the actor who has three children of his own, adds there was another positive to his approach: “It also means no one bothers you, no one asks you questions about you. It’s convenient to keep people at bay by staying in character. And the young cast were all very well-behaved because they were terrified of Caspian!”

Scott has acting in his genes. As well as being a soldier in the Second World War, a blacksmith, a copy boy for the Daily Express, a footballer for Glasgow’s Queen’s Park FC and a travelling fridge salesman, his father Allan had also acted at the Glasgow Unity Theatre during the 1950s.

The actor says that he learnt about performing from watching his father sell fridges. “He said something to me once that has always stayed in my head. He told me, ‘Son, no one wants to buy a fridge from someone who’s depressed.’ That’s advice you could give to an actor.

“I used to see him prepare to go to work, and observed the way that he used his lively, charming, funny demeanour. Growing up, watching him was a great education in acting for me, and I’ll never forget that.”

However, Scott came from a background where acting seemed an impossible dream. “I was brought up on a council estate in Fife. I went to a school that was not privileged at all. It was challenging at times. Where I came from, very few people became actors. It wasn’t the norm. You were told to get an apprenticeship, work in the dockyard, become an electrician or a plumber, or join the Army. To achieve what I wanted to do was a fight.”

But Scott believes it helped shape his character. “I think that produces someone who’s quite tough. If you want to get on, you have to be resilient. You have to be incredibly determined, and I’ve taken that out into the world. I’m not someone who is defeated. I’m always pretty robust, and I have my background to thank for that.”

Scott made his stage debut in a school production of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer. He still recalls how it felt. “I thought, ‘Ah, this is it. This is what I want to do.’ It was terrifying, exhilarating, exciting and impossible to walk away from.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a particularly good production, but it gave me an opportunity to express something within me that wasn’t easy to express in normal life. And so, acting became an emotional outlet, but also an opportunity to explore other people’s lives. What I immediately loved about it was being able to play someone who was completely different to me. I just found that fascinating – and I still do.”

Scott studied at the Welsh College of Music and Drama and subsequently became a star of film and television, headlining in Mission: Impossible II, Irving Welsh’s Crime (for which he won an International Emmy award), Vigil, The Crow Girl and most recently The Hack, in which he delivered an outstanding performance as former prime minister Gordon Brown.

He remains as ambitious as ever. “Sometimes I think, ‘Maybe I’ll just retire to a cottage in the wilds of Scotland and read and walk and think.’ But I still love what I’m doing. So, no thoughts of retirement and no wild Scottish cottage yet.”

And, he’s now passed his passion for acting on to his son, Gabriel, who has already shone in such dramas as House of the Dragon, His Dark Materials and Lockerbie. He even played Scott’s son in last year’s Channel 4 psychological thriller, Summerwater. But despite his father’s successful career, Gabriel hasn’t turned to him for much guidance. “He’ll find his own way. He’s terrific,” Scott says, before joking, “I might now be the third best actor in my family!”

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Crookhaven is coming to BBC One and iPlayer at 3:05pm and 3:50pm on Sunday 22 March.

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