Lynley star Leo Suter clarifies how new series is "updated" and "fresh" – and not a remake of classic drama

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Leo Suter is at pains to point out that the BBC detective drama Lynley is not a remake of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. “These are new Lynley stories and the show we’re making is based on other books that weren’t adapted previously. It’s updated and it’s fresh.”

This choice of source material isn’t the only difference between the new Lynley and the turn-of-the-century adaptation that starred Nathaniel Parker as peer-of-the-realm police detective Thomas Lynley, with Sharon Small co-starring as his scruffy, tough, working-class sidekick Barbara Havers.

“Our series is contemporary, and in the 20 years or so that’s passed since the previous show was made, UK society looks very different,” says Suter. “Class – this mismatch between upper-class Lynley and working-class Havers – is such a central feature of our show and class is always complicated and difficult to define.

Even more so in a contemporary Britain and Norfolk [where Lynley is set] where the prisons are overcrowded and there’s drugs coming in from Europe onto the beaches. The social fabric of our Lynley is a very different one to Nat Parker’s 25 years ago and indeed to those original books that Elizabeth George wrote even before that.”

Suter, who is 32 and best known for his leading role in Netflix’s visceral and violent historical drama Vikings: Valhalla, as well as period dramas Victoria, Beecham House and Sanditon, was seven years old when The Inspector Lynley Mysteries was first broadcast and hadn’t seen the previous series or read the books.

In preparation for the role, he admits that he “did dip his toe into the first book” but his toe is as far as he got. While he acknowledges that an awareness of Lynley’s previous iteration is useful, he explains, “I respect it and am grateful for it, but there comes a point when you have to say, ‘We’re doing our own thing’ and plough on with your own interpretation.”

As Suter says, class can be difficult to define. I ask him to have a stab at defining his because, on paper, he’s posh. He went to St Paul’s, an independent boys’ school in London, and then New College, Oxford. While he’s not aristocracy like Thomas Lynley – his parents were “business people” – he certainly would qualify as a peer to peers, as it were. To what extent does he think his privilege has factored in his life and career?

“You’d be a fool to think that class, even though it looks different today, is not a pertinent feature in people’s lives, so I’m very grateful for the education I was lucky enough to receive and I’m aware of the fact that it’s afforded me privileges growing up,” he says, after some consideration. “One of the things I loved about going to university was that I met a whole diverse range of people who I had not met previously at school, and I really value that. Horizons were broadened.”

What does he, as a son of business people, think of Lynley of the landed gentry? “He’s quite arrogant, he’s quite flash – there are so many things that you could not like about him. But I do like that he’s kind and that he’s turned his back on the life of being an aristocrat and just inheriting the pile. Instead, he’s doing what he loves and what he believes in, and he’s working really hard and in many respects, sacrificing his family life to be a good police detective. I think that’s very noble.”

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Lynley will premiere on BBC One and iPlayer on Monday 5th January at 8:30pm.

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