Sunderland's Melanie Hill feels she's destined to play screen mothers, possibly because her working life revolves around looking after her two daughters. She tells Steve Pratt she has every faith in a children's show linked to Bad Girls.

ACTRESS Melanie Hill had no worries identifying with the character she plays in the new ITV1 children's drama The Fugitive. For Glenda Banks is a single, working mother of two daughters - which is the situation in which the Sunderland-raised actress finds herself off-screen.

"I spend most of the time in the series worried about my daughters, which is like me in real life," she says.

Hill has two girls, Lorna, nearly 18, and Molly, 14, from her marriage to Sharpe and The Lord Of The Rings actor Sean Bean, whom she met while studying at Rada (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). They are now divorced.

The Fugitive is the first children's drama from Shed Productions, creators of adult series Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives. Hill is a fan of Shed's work and isn't ashamed to admit it. "Their stuff is excellent," she says. "I love Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives, especially Footballers' Wives. It's a series that everyone says they never watch but still talk about it the next day."

The story of The Fugitives follows two youngsters, Jay and Mel, who go on the run after discovering cloning experiments are being carried out by a genetics company.

Hill, who was born in Brighton but grew up in the North-East, plays Mel's mother. She's used to being maternal in front of the cameras. "It's that thing of a mother worrying about her kids when they go out the door," she says. "No more juvenile leads for me but I do a good mum."

She's excited about The Fugitives because she feels it's not like a typical children's series. "It's quite cutting edge and realistic. It doesn't gloss over things like other series," she says.

"It's quite gripping. With the first two or three episodes, I read them within 24 hours because they gripped me so much. The story is mostly centred on the two kids with flashbacks to what the parents are doing.

"My daughter goes off with the boy and they have this amazing adventure. It's a shame it's not being shown a bit later, there's an older audience for it."

Hill is still best known as Aveline in the BBC's comedy series Bread, although her other TV roles include women's football team drama Playing The Game and crime drama NCS Manhunt with David Suchet.

More recently, she's played a recurring character on ITV1's The Bill. That was another mother, Marie, whose daughter had been murdered. She went on to marry PC Jim Carver, became an alcoholic, saw Jim marry someone else, and ended up drinking herself to death.

"I was a bit of a psycho in that," says Hill. "That was really good to do because it's always fun to play someone who's a bit mad. I was in it on and off for just over a year. It started with 12 episodes, then they added another few, and it got better and better." Marie's demise was unexpected as far as the actress was concerned. The character was found dead on a piece of waste ground, but the corpse wasn't played by Hill. "I didn't know anything about her death until my mum phoned and said, 'turn on ITV quick, you've died'," she recalls.

That was the third time she'd appeared in the long-running police series, playing a different character each time. With two teenage daughters, she tailors her work around them. "I usually get character parts. The Bill was a mum but she had this other dark side," she says. "I suppose it's my age, I'm in my 40s. I'm very much kid-orientated and I think that shows through. I love playing those parts."

She takes each role as it comes along, weighing up how it fits in with family life. "I've been quite lucky with things because they've been centred around London. I don't know what'll happen if I get offered something Northern. It gets harder if it takes me away from home."

Both her daughters are interested in performing. Lorna, who has just left school, is studying contemporary music at a London college. "She's gone the singing way. She's very much into singing in a band and doing her own songs," she says.

Molly, who's studying for her GCSEs, is a member of stage group Chicken Shed Theatre. Their mum says she doesn't mind what they decide to do as long as they're happy. She's always happy to return home to the North-East, saying she's spent the last three weekends in Sunderland. "My mum and sisters are there, and a few real friends," she says. "I've worked up there with Jimmy Nail a couple of times and it was nice having an excuse to stay longer than a few days."

Her current project is theatrical. She's doing workshops with a stage director on devising a play. "He's got six actors he likes working with and going through some ideas. I haven't done any stage for a while," says Hill.

* The Fugitives begins today on ITV1 at 4.25pm.

Published: 14/04/2005