Robert Bathurst faces marriage in Downton Abbey and a medical minefield in the play Blue/Orange

ROBERT BATHURST isn’t about to tell me if Lady Edith finds a husband in the new series of Downton Abbey.

“I can’t reveal anything about it at all,” he replies, when I ask.

But she’s certainly determined not to be left out. Sisters Mary (on-off relationship with Matthew) and Sybil (ran off with the chauffeur) have plenty of romantic intrigue. Now, like a mountie, Lady Edith is determined to get her man.

She has Bathurst’s Sir Anthony Strallan in her sights and, despite the age difference and her parents’ worries, she sets about winning his heart. “She’s powering ahead with plans for Sir Anthony, whether he likes it or not. She’s determined, she’s no wallflower,” says Laura Carmichael, who plays Edith.

Sir Anthony is, as Cold Feet and Wild At Heart star Bathurst puts it, “a benign creature” – quite unlike the character he plays in a new touring production of Joe Penhall’s multi award-winning play Blue/Orange, which comes to York Grand Opera House next month.

Those of us who saw the play at York Theatre Royal know how good it is but it’s not an easy sell. “It’s a serious play and is really good theatre.

It’s really a proper play. It’s not some reheated telly script, which so many things are. In that sense, it’s a proper drama,” says the actor.

“What’s important to get across is it’s not an issue play. It deals unflinchingly with mental health and subjects that in real life we bend over backwards to avoid. It’s a character-based play and very funny.”

He plays a senior consultant psychiatrist who clashes with a junior doctor over the treatment of a patient. It’s much more gripping and funnier than it sounds. As Bathurst points out, the audience will be left gasping at some of the verbal interplay between the two medical men, who press ahead with their treatment regardless of the patient.

Your sympathies constantly switch between the two doctors. “Sometimes you know where you are and who you are backing and then you go, ‘Hang on a minute’ and think something else.

It’s brilliantly done,” he says.

Playwright Penhall has been around at rehearsals, which Bathurst has found useful. He always likes it when authors are allowed into the rehearsal room.

“It’s great because you hear their intention. A theatre ticket is a contract between the audience and author, and it’s our job to make it better for the audience to watch than read. Our job is to get the play across,” he says.

His last two stage appearances have been in Noel Coward comedies, Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter, in consecutive years. It was the first time he’d done Coward, a master of words like Penhall. “I love the language in Blue/Orange, you can really chew on it. Coward is great like that, and so is Joe. It’s shocking and provocative, but also leaves you thinking, ‘Did he really say that?’.”

Cold Feet, of course, remains the TV series with which he’s most associated. “I look back with enjoyment because you can only enjoy anything on film after it’s happened. On telly you don’t know until the end whether it’s going to work,” he says.

Apart from Downton, his recent TV work includes playing John Le Mesurier in the BBC biopic Hattie and a series of ITV’s Wild At Heart, which entailed five months filming in South Africa.

Touring the UK in Blue/Orange did have one advantage over African safaris. “There’s less chance of being eaten by a lion,” he says.

  •  Blue/Orange: York Grand Opera House, Oct 9-13. Box  office: 0844-8713024 and  atgtickets.com/blues range