In With The Flynns (BBC1, 8.30pm)

WITH his broad frame, heavy-set features and gruff, gravelly voice, Warren Clarke tends to get cast in projects portraying the darker side of life. From A Clockwork Orange through Dalziel And Pascoe and Bleak House to the trilogy Red Riding, he’s not done much to make us laugh.

Now he’s lightening up starring in a new sitcom for BBC1, In With The Flynns.

It’s billed as a family comedy where the young parents (Two Pints Of Lager’s Will Mellor and Shameless’ Niky Wardley) are as keen to run riot as their teenage kids.

“I’m granddad and I tie up the loose ends here and there, and create loose ends,” says Lancashire-born Clarke. “The Flynns are ordinary working-class folk in the North of England and they’re just doing what everybody in this country is trying to do, so the humour comes out of everyday situations.”

Harking back to sitcoms of old, the sixpart series was filmed in front of a live audience.

“It’s a bit like being on stage,”

says Clark.

“The shows were done in front of an audience, so it didn’t really hold any fears for me. You’re conscious of the audience, so you find the moments when you think there could be a laugh, but it’s unlike doing stand-up or a farce on stage where you fire a line and wait [for a reaction].”

He says there’s nothing nasty or derogatory in the show, but the episodes touch on interesting subjects.

“There’s one where Chloe [the eldest of the three Flynn children] is perceived to be taking drugs and an episode where we all look at her PC because we think there’s some dodgy stuff on there. There are risque areas, but it’s just about dealing with life really,” he says.

And as the father of a 12-year-old daughter, he can relate to the family’s situation.

“I worry to death about what she could get into and especially today with the internet,” he says.

ONE of the pleasures on set was working with the three youngsters who play his grandchildren.

“Their confidence grew massively and they were incredible to work with,” he says. In fact, the entire cast was like one big family. “It was very weird, we very quickly became a family. It was almost instantaneous.”

That’s not to say it was laugh a minute during filming. “You’re actually more serious about comedy [than drama] because it’s really hard to make comedy, to make it real,” says Clarke. “Often when you’re doing drama, doing very emotional stuff, they say, ‘Cut’ and you go into mad, hysterical laughter just to get away from what you were doing.”

He uses Red Riding, a tale of child abductions in Yorkshire, as an example. “It was probably one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever been involved with and we had to do horrible, horrible things and at the end of the take we’d go into crazy fun mode.

“But with comedy you can’t, the concentration levels are very strong, you’ve got to keep in the zone.”

Clarke’s first television appearance was in 1965, in the first of three appearances as three different characters in Coronation Street. “Nigel Havers called me last year and said, ‘Darling, I’m doing Coronation Street, it would be lovely if you could do it with me’,” recalls Clarke.

“I said, ‘no way darling. I did that 40 years ago in the good old days when it was twice a week and in black and white.’”

One of his best-known TV roles is oldschool Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel in Dalziel And Pascoe. The series ran for 11 years before ending in 2007 – and he’s appeared in three detective dramas since.

“I did Red Riding where I was a seriously nasty policeman; an episode of Lewis where I played a complete prat, and then an episode of Inspector George Gently where I was a sad murderer.”

And any day now he’s off to film Midsomer Murders, but he won’t divulge whether he’s to play the good guy or the bad guy. “No, it’s a big secret,” he smiles.