At various times, they've talked about doing it again
you know, coming back as a... as a special,
which is what I'd...
...when I considered doing it, and maybe I'd like to.
Who knows? I'm probably still wearing the same jacket,
still driving the same old Toyota pick-up truck,
going around somewhere.
He's a creature of habit and a good guy.
I don't think he's got ambitions.
That's... that's his great strength
and probably one of his great failings -
that his ambitions are very... they're drawn in lines of,
"I like to live life first. Ambition comes afterwards.
"And if a good antique comes along in the meantime, God bless it."
And he doesn't want to own antiques, Lovejoy.
Lovejoy never wanted to own anything.
A thing of beauty stood for itself.
Like antiques or women.
He was fond of women, he was fond of antiques.
Not antique women - don't let's get those confused.
He was very much partial to the fairer sex.
And he did like a drink
and he liked the good things in life.
But he liked to be free - he liked to be his own man.
And, you know, he wasn't, uh...
...he wasn't an angel all the time but he was on the side of the angels.
And I like to believe that he had a...
...he had a sense of integrity and character,
and that's what appealed to me to play him every year,
in various guises, wherever he was living, however...
If he'd lost his manor the year before, he'd set himself up the next.
And he was committed and he was a very enthusiastic character.
Lovejoy didn't get down on things.
He represented optimism and life,
which I think was part of the appeal of the programme.
Yeah, and it was exemplified by the other people.
It was a bit like The Simpsons. They never got older.
You know, I think Lovejoy would still be celebrating his 41 st birthday
somewhere in the world.
My wife's American - Gwen -
and we lived here and I was...
This is it - I was going back and
I'd gone back and forth between here and, um...
Here being Los Angeles, as we sit now, and London, for many years,
and combined a sort of successful career on both sides of the Atlantic.
Lovejoy really did take me away, for a time, from LA.
And then... because I used to take a break at the end of the year.
We'd start in May and go right through till December.
Then I'd take a holiday - I'd come here, back to LA.
We kept a home here at the time,
and then I'd do maybe a movie or a...
But it was more difficult then.
But at the end of Lovejoy, when Lovejoy finished,
I think the crunch comes if you realise...
I didn't... I took myself away from television.
I did another series after that, which I produced and did,
Madson, about a lawyer, a six-parter.
And then I did a couple of specials
with Soul Survivors, which I produced,
about a guy who goes searching for his favourite rock band,
which was great fun to do.
We had Isaac Hayes in it and some American...
For... for his favourite American soul band, I should say,
called Soul Survivors.
And that was shown here on Showtime Television.
But you really...
Cos television burns you up a little bit
and I decided not to, you know,
to stay away from it after that.
So, um, after '96, I sort of took myself out of television.
I said, "No more television for a while."
I did some plays and a movie.
Then, in '99, I did Sexy Beast,
uh, which became a cult film, in a funny way,
especially here, in the USA.
And... which led to doing Deadwood,
which is another television series which I'm about to do now for HBO.
It's about to open. So who knows? That could be another six years.
I was sitting in England and, uh... last year.
When was it? No, 2002.
I'd just finished Trust - a series with Robson Green I did for the BBC
about corporate lawyers.
And, um, my agent said,
"Do you want to do a screen test for?"
I said, "What?" Getting rather uppity.
I said, "I don't do screen tests."
He said, "Well, it's a script by David Milch.
"It's being directed by Walter Hill."
I said, "Well, where do we go? Where do we talk about this?"
And I read the script, which was extraordinary.
And I did the screen test and they flew me out here -
met with Walter and David and HBO,
and three weeks later, we were filming Deadwood, the pilot.
They picked it up in January 2003
and we filmed it all of 2003, finished in February 2004,
and it opens at the end of March,
and it's, uh, quite a show.
It follows The Sopranos and it's... it's, uh, it...
Gunsmoke, it ain't. Put it that way.
It's a revisionist Western, in a way,
about what life was like, what life could have been like,
in 1876 in a gold-strike town like Deadwood, which is...
Not a town, I beg your pardon.
It was a camp on Indian territory,
which means they're really all there illegally
but they're forming a society where there's not been anyone before.
And for every guy who's there for legitimate reasons,
be it a miner or be it a businessman,
there's ten hustlers waiting to take his money from him.
And at the height, there was 5,000 people living there.
My character, Swearengen,
who runs the... runs the dope and the whores and the booze -
as he says, "I've been a booze pharaoh and pussy man
"my entire career," that's what he does -
was taking in $5,000 a day in 1876.
And so there was money to be made in them there hills, as they say.
And it's been great, and we should start series two in the summer.
I've been very lucky in many different kinds of...
Light comedy - Lovejoy.
Drama - Deadwood, which... it also has its light moments.
I mean, it's not... Cos it's David Milch.
It's the guy who created NYPD Blue.
So it's a... it goes through the spectrum of human behaviour,
which... as any good show should.
Lovejoy wasn't lightness all the time.
Um, I mean, I think it was...
To go back to Lovejoy, I mean, I loved it
when we brought Phyllis back,
when he was about to get married for all the wrong reasons,
and she comes back in his life,
not to marry him but for advice.
There was some good...
Talking about the show, now I've been sitting here,
I've got such great memories of it and doing it.
It was... it was a terrific show, Lovejoy.
The last time we were in Lavenham,
uh, l-l-I loved and hated
because it was the last show and because it had Phyllis -
we brought back Phyllis for it -
but also it was, um... it was bittersweet
because Lavenham is such a snobby...
All respect, Lavenham, I love you
but you're the snobbiest town in the world.
It was very funny.
I'll never forget, because I'd been staying in the hotel.
And we used to move around locations, as I said,
and I was in The Swan, the great hotel in Lavenham.
I'd been staying in the hotel for, like...
...three, four months,
and they said, "Oh, Mr McShane,
"next week, we've got a, um...
"...we have a wedding coming in
"and the suite's been booked for four months,
"so we'll have to ask you to move."
I said, "That's OK. I'll move for the night."
Well, he said, "No, we have no room in the hotel."
I said, "Excuse me?"
"No, you'll have to move."
I said, "You're not offering me?
"I've been in this hotel for four months.
"You're asking me to leave?"
"Yes, we don't have anywhere else."
I said, "Fine, well, I'll leave now, then."
So I left then. I mean, I couldn't... That's very English, don't you find?
Sort of a strange side.
So I love you Lavenham and I... love you.
It's never the end. I mean, I think the last line was,
"Lovejoy doesn't live here any more," wasn't it?
I seem to remember.
Last Tango In Lavenham.
We filmed it in Lavenham,
which has got the most beautiful streets in the world.
Um, it's got all the great Anglo-Saxon churches outside.
It's the hub, it's the sort of social centre
down there in Suffolk.
Lady Jane came for tea,
we had Phyllis's character came back, Phyllis came back for the show.
It's where I dump Charlotte at the altar,
take off in a helicopter
and leave and have the great line,
and then come back in the car and I think I said to camera,
"Look, you know, Lovejoy doesn't live here any more."
It's... Has Lovejoy grown up? Is he leaving? Is he de?
It was a strange end. I haven't watched it for so long.
Is it bittersweet? That's what we tried to make it.
Bittersweet.
Happy days.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed the shows.
I've enjoyed making them.
Doing these interviews
has brought a lot of the fun and a lot of the pleasure back
that I had at the original time when we did them.
And, um, I hope you've had as much pleasure watching them
as I did making them. Thank you.