Occupation (tonight, Wednesday and Thursday, BBC1, 9pm)

COLD Feet and Murphy’s Law star James Nesbitt admits his latest role as a military veteran proved a daunting prospect. “It’s quite a different character for me – there’s nothing necessarily charming about him,” says Nesbitt, 44, of his character Sgt Mike Swift in the new BBC drama Occupation.

“But I told the director, ‘I’m worried about being believable’. I just couldn’t picture myself. So I kept telling him to keep an eye on my military bearing and my authority.”

Occupation is a powerful three-part drama following the lives of three soldiers from the occupation of Iraq in 2003 through to their return home and their reasons for then heading back to the wartorn country.

As the first TV drama to cover the Iraq occupation and its aftermath, Occupation threw up concerns as to how to cover the conflict on the small screen. ‘‘We talked about how we could make a drama about Iraq when the news covers it so well,’’ he explains.

‘‘But I think we made the right decision in pressing the pause button on the news and finding out the human stories, the impact not only on the soldiers themselves but of the lives around them.’’ The drama begins in the thick of the action, in a tank in the middle of battle, where we see the suppressed fear on Mike and his fellow soldiers’ faces before the tank door opens.

“I love that,” Nesbitt says of the series opening. “It’s very interesting, because we don’t really know what that’s like. We only know from films, so I think right from the off you’re brought into a world which is alien in many ways. But then we’ve all smelt fear, right from birth. I like that there’s nothing necessarily heroic about that. There’s always fear.”

Taking his own profession as an example, he says, “If you do theatre as an actor, there’s fear. I’m terrified every time I do a job because I’m lucky enough to have an agent who picks good scripts, and if you’re in a lucky enough position to take on good writing, then that’s a privilege.’’ TO prepare for his latest role, Nesbitt and his two co-stars, Stephen Graham and Warren Brown, attended a military boot camp before shooting began, and a soldier who’d served in Basra was despatched to the set to keep them in check.

Inextricably linked through serving together and the events that unfurl in the shocking series opening, the three protagonists return to the UK, where we witness how they each adapt to life on civvy street.

After the action in Iraq, there’s the sense of quiet, even a feeling of anti-climax, which Nesbitt says “must be a bloody nightmare” for returning soldiers.

Mike’s story follows his deteriorating relationship with his wife and his burgeoning relationship with one of the doctors he meets in Iraq and which eventually lures him back there.

Filmed in Morocco and Belfast, the series gave Nesbitt the chance to return home.

“Belfast’s fast becoming not quite the Hollywood of Europe, but it’s offering such extraordinary opportunities to film there. It has fantastic crews and wonderful facilities and you have raw and wonderful energy there,” he says.

“I’ve been given an enormous privilege in that I’ve been able to go back to Belfast and work. I felt a responsibility to go back and work there.”

Born in 1965, he grew up in Belfast through the years of conflict. ‘‘I was certainly not a stranger to the imagery of soldiers,’’ he says.

‘‘They provided a backdrop to my life that wasn’t frightening because I was fairly distanced from the trouble. As much as I’d love to say ‘yes, that certainly helped growing up in Ireland’, it didn’t really provide anything because I was a kid, it didn’t impact on my life.”

A particularly poignant moment in Occupation’s first episode sees Nesbitt’s character walking through the streets of his estate dressed immaculately in his uniform. “They’re proud,” he says of the returning soldiers he met in researching the role.

“They’re not ashamed of what they do and nor should they be. They feel misunderstood, because who understands their stories other than other soldiers? I think they’re quite anxious to have their story told.”