by Neil Daniels
Total Film said of Ali G’s big-screen adventure, ‘It isn’t going to redefine British comedy, it lacks the satirical bite of Ali G’s best work and there’s no chance of selling it to the Americans, but Cohen has just about pulled it off. In the lowest-brow way possible, of course.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DRAMATIC ACTOR
‘Some people like me, and you either have a thing that people want to follow or you don’t.’
FREEMAN SPEAKING TO ALICE WIGNALL IN THE GUARDIAN, 2009
With the success of The Office, people saw Freeman as a comedy actor. This was a notion he chose to squash as he began to shift his career towards more dramatic roles on TV.
From 18 April to 11 May 2002 Freeman returned to the theatre to star in Kosher Harry at London’s Royal Court. Directed by comedienne and actress Kathy Burke, written by Nick Grosso and co-starring Mark Benton, Claudie Blakley and June Watson, the play focuses on the racism that occurs in London life and how it has continued with each passing generation. It is set in a kosher café in St John’s Wood, where Russian waitresses are called ‘Gladiola’ because their names are considered unpronounceable by the locals, all the Jews are in show business, black people eat only banana fritters and the Spanish have a weak moral backbone. The play centres on the characters that frequent the café.
Philip Fisher wrote in the British Theatre Guide, ‘As might be expected from a play written by Nick Grosso and directed by Kathy Burke, there is a real hard edge to the comedy. Not one of the four characters is what he or she seems to be and the central figure, a young man played nonchalantly by the excellent Martin Freeman, might even be a servant of Beelzebub. The play is made up of a number of short scenes containing perfect-sounding dialogue that often has limited meaning. These scenes are split by one-second explosions rather like instant power cuts.’
The Independent’s Rhoda Koenig slammed the play, however: ‘Kosher Harry makes a point of locating its restaurant in St John’s Wood, a prosperous Jewish neighbourhood in London. There is only one such establishment there, and I wouldn’t like anyone to think there’s a connection, for its service and hygiene are far superior and its customers funnier than those shown here. Is Kosher Harry the worst play of 2002? I’d like to think so, but there’s only so much optimism I can summon up.’
Maddy Costa wrote in her three out of five-star review in The Guardian, ‘In Kathy Burke’s nifty production in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs, the play is intermittently hilarious, unnerving and trapped in Pinter’s shadow. The performances are excellent: Claudie Blakley struts winningly as the waitress, June Watson finds a singularity in the caricatured old woman, and Mark Benton is a wonderfully crude cabbie. Martin Freeman is particularly good as the man, his face moulding itself constantly to mirror the thoughts of his companions. Like Burke, the cast revel in the grotesque cockney banter; they bring a farcical tone to the evening, but never the intensity that the play needs to really resonate.’
Dominic Cavendish penned a review in the Daily Telegraph, saying, ‘Kathy Burke – who has been turning from acting to directing of late – elicits buoyant, attention-seeking performances from her cast but can’t disguise the play’s sagging credibility. A tottering catastrophe of smudged lipstick and pigtails, Claudie Blakley’s waitress is almost a duplicate version of Burke at her trashiest hilarious best, even doing those signature curtseying movements. And Mark Benton is a thoroughly convincing fat-gut, no-brained cabbie. As the young stranger, Martin Freeman, the terminally bored hero of the BBC sitcom The Office – fidgets at [his] table, eyebrows working overtime to convey polite interest in the natter. You can tell, though, that he’d rather be anywhere else. And who can blame him?’
Freeman later starred as DC Stone in three episodes of the British legal drama Helen West in 2002. Based on three books by acclaimed crime author Frances Fyfield, Helen West stars Amanda Burton as a crown prosecutor with a deep passion for the legal system and who is particularly interested in women’s issues.
ITV piloted Helen West as a one-off episode in 1999 starring Juliet Stevensen but the actress didn’t want to commit herself to an ongoing series and declined to return. ITV subsequently hired Silent Witness actress Amanda Burton for the drama, which cost a staggering £3 million to make. The channel was looking for a crime series to replace Kavanagh QC, which starred the late Inspector Morse actor John Thaw. Alan Wright, the chief executive of the series’s producers, Arrowhead, spoke to BBC News Online about Helen West: ‘It’s a character we hope will find favour with the audience. As with all these things, its future will be determined by ratings… But it has been consciously designed as a returning series.’
Freeman first appeared in the episode ‘Deep Sleep’, which aired on 6 May 2002. He then appeared in ‘Shadow Play’, which was broadcast on 13 May, and ‘A Clear Conscience’, which aired on 20 May.
He also played the character of Matt in an episode in series two of Linda Green entitled ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’, which aired on 10 December 2002. Linda Green ran for two series between 2001 and 2002 and was originally broadcast on BBC1. The series focuses on its namesake (played by Lisa Tarbuck), a thirty-something woman whose day job is that of a car sales woman who works as a club singer at night. The series follows the issues of love, relationships and friends and features appearances from Christopher Eccleston, David Morrissey, Simon Pegg, Pam Ferris, Anne Reid, Jamie Theakston, Peter Kay and Meera Syal in addition to Martin Freeman. Ratings slipped, however, and a third series was not commissioned.
The series received very mixed reviews. Gareth McLean of The Guardian was unenthused: ‘I really wanted to like Linda Green… And yet, it was ill-conceived, dramatically unsatisfying and a huge disappointment… When your standards are high, your reputation formidable and your output 10 times better than anything your peers are producing, it is much easier to disappoint your audience.’
Robert Hanks of The Independent wrote, ‘The combination of Abbott’s needling, believable dialogue and Tarbuck’s sharply timed delivery is appealing… but, despite the hype, Linda Green isn’t breaking any new ground… Her sassy, witty person isn’t a million miles from the character Lesley Sharp played in Abbott’s Clocking Off.’
The Daily Mirror’s Tony Purnell said, ‘Linda Green should be the perfect combination for a comedy drama but it turns out to be a very uneasy mix… It was much cruder and far less funny than Cold Feet or Coupling.’
Paul Connolly wrote in The Times, ‘Very quickly, the serrated script, perspicacious observations and well-drawn cast of characters draw you in.’
Following his appearance in Linda Green, Freeman was cast as Terry Ross in the TV film The Debt, about a former robber who agrees, albeit reluctantly, to do one more robbery to protect his family. Freeman’s character is the less-than-useful son-in-law of retired safe-breaker Geoff Dresner, played by seasoned TV actor Warren Clarke. Released on 21 August 2003, The Debt also stars Hugo Speer and Freeman’s partner Amanda Abbington. Much of the film’s story is told in flashbacks and offers a somewhat muddled chronology of events.
‘The Debt is a story about a criminal, a detective and a lawyer and how their lives collide with each other,’ explained writer Richard McBrien to BBC News. ‘The idea is that all three men owe debts to their children in some way which affects the way they do their job.
‘I can sympathise with all three characters,’ continues McBrien. ‘I wanted to show that in their own world, criminals, detectives and lawyers are all good people, not real villains. The there [sic] men are trying to lead a good life but become compromised by events.’
Freeman continued his ventures into more dramatic roles when he played D.S. Stringer in the 2003 TV film Margery And Gladys, which was broadcast on 21 September of that year. It also stars Penelope Keith, June Brown and Roger Lloyd-Pack. The story concerns the recently widowed Margery Heywood (Keith) and her cleaning lady Gladys Gladwell (Brown), who interrupt a man breaking into Margery’s home in Kent. She attacks the man with a heavy gl
ass vase, which knocks him unconscious. She suspects he is dead, panics and departs the house with Gladys but leaves behind her handbag. The two women decide to drive to Margery’s son, Graham, who lives in Milton Keynes, hoping for money and shelter. The trip turns into a comedy of errors as they are forced to break into a chemist to get some insulin for Gladys’s diabetes. The story follows them as they try to evade police attention and CCTV cameras while Margery discovers a twenty-year affair between her late husband and Gladys, which her son was aware of. The film ends on a night out in Blackpool, where the two women board a boat to the Caribbean. It was directed by Geoffrey Sax, who later made his cinematic debut with the 2005 horror flick White Noise. It is fun, harmless TV-film fodder aimed at older audiences.
The Guardian’s Nancy Banks-Smith observed, ‘They [Margery and Gladys] are pursued by police and press: the deafening Martin Freeman (‘OK! Listen up! Big breakthrough!’), a characterisation, I feel, based on the glorious DCI Grim in The Thin Blue Line; the laconic Lloyd-Pack; and the salivating “Scoop” Morley.’
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Robin Oliver wrote of the film, ‘Some nice cameos here – Peter Vaughan as Gladys’s husband, Troy, and Roger Lloyd-Pack (The Vicar Of Dibley) as Detective Inspector Woolley. Margery & Gladys doesn’t hold a candle to The Norman Conquests, but it provides pleasing Saturday night fare.’
Despite his switch to more serious roles in that year, Freeman still found time for comedy. On 14 March 2003 Comic Relief 2003: The Big Hair Do was screened. It featured the finest of British comedy talent, including Lenny Henry, Jonathan Ross, Harry Enfield and Rowan Atkinson. Martin Freeman starred as Johnny Rotten in a Blankety Blank sketch.
Freeman was continuing to balance his acting talents with both comedy and dramatic parts. However, many of his film roles were little more than cameos. He starred as John in Richard Curtis’s successful 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually: a film set in London at Christmas time that follows ten separate stories, each showing the many different aspects of love. As the film progresses, the stories become interlinked. The film is played out in a weekly countdown five weeks before Christmas and concludes with an epilogue one month later. Released on 21 November 2003, Love Actually was an enormous financial success worldwide and received positive reviews from critics. The ensemble cast includes such revered British actors as Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy and Rowan Atkinson.
Freeman plays John, a professional body double. He meets his partner Judy (Joanna Page), also a body double, on the set of a hardcore porn film. They appear to be very natural in front of the camera performing penetrative sex but off-screen they are very coy around each other. They endeavour to pursue a relationship together and attend the Christmas pageant at the local school with John’s brother. The ten stories interweave and draw a final conclusion.
On appearing nude, Freeman told the Washington Post’s Alona Wartofsky, ‘It’s hard to be naked in front of 150 people. It’s not in any way pleasant. As a man it gives you a kind of window of what quite a lot of jobs are like for quite a lot of women.’
Love Actually was nominated for Best Cast at the Phoenix Film Critics Society awards as well as Best Acting Ensemble at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. The team bagged the award for Best Ensemble Cast at the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards.
Peter Bradshaw was unenthusiastic about the film, giving it two out of five stars in his review in The Guardian but he praised the cast: ‘Hugh Grant is always good value, and Martin Freeman and Joanna Page do very well as a couple who fall in love while working as stand-ins for what is apparently an expensively produced hardcore porn film.’
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Sukhdev Sandhu said, ‘It’s the newer faces, many imported from television, that offer the greatest pleasures. Gregor Fisher as the doting manager of Bill Nighy, a foul-mouthed has-been rocker who is trying to revive his career. Martin Freeman, from The Office, as a mild-mannered porn actor who falls for his equally sweet co-star; Andrew Lincoln, from This Life and Teachers, gives a performance that at times recalls John Cusack.’
Freeman also portrayed Lord Shaftesbury in the acclaimed BBC2 TV mini-series Charles II: The Power and The Passion, which was filmed in Prague in the Czech Republic and broadcast in November 2003.
‘It wasn’t just about the wigs and the tights, as if that legitimises you as an actor,’ Freeman said to The Guardian’s Stephanie Merritt. ‘I try very hard not to be flattered or bamboozled by money into doing anything, I turned stuff down when I was signing on if I didn’t think it was something I’d be proud of. But if it’s a good script and a good story, then by Christ, bring on the wigs!’
The film stars Rufus Sewell, Martin Turner and Ian McDiarmid and was written by award-winner Adrian Hodges. The creative team aimed to make the story, which tells of Charles II’s tenure on the throne, his decade long exile from England during the reign of Oliver Cromwell and his triumphant return to England, as historically accurate as possible.
Writer Adrian Hodges told BBC News, ‘I found a character in Charles himself who struck me as immensely modern, someone who could speak to us now about the ageless issues of personal and public morality, love, sex, hate, fear, anger and death.’
A heavily edited version was aired in the US under the title The Last King: The Power And The Passion Of King Charles II. Both versions were produced by the BBC in association with the American A&E Network.
‘I think the key to him is that he was constantly shifting and his sole belief was to keep the crown as it was the one thing he promised to his father,’ Rufus Sewell explained to BBC News of King Charles II. ‘So he was capable of being compassionate but also cold and calculating.’
Freeman’s role in the film appeared to go unnoticed but it received some positive reviews when it was released on DVD. The Guardian’s Rupert Smith wrote of the original broadcast, ‘This really was history as drama, with all that implies; it was also one of the very few dramas this year that I wanted to watch without being paid to do so. If Charles II can be topped, I’ll eat my full-bottomed wig.’
DVD Verdict’s Amanda DeWees wrote of the US edit, ‘Structured in two parts, the film is dogged by an episodic structure, which may have been worsened by edits: The British version of the film clocks in at about four hours, which means that almost an hour of footage was cut from this release. These cuts would go some way toward explaining why the first half of the film sometimes seems like a choppy succession of similar scenes: politicians in shouting matches, lovers in wrestling matches, and various characters bursting into rooms to throw hissy fits. The second half of the film recovers to some extent from the episodic beginning and gains some unity of story through the unfolding of the Popish Plot. Likewise, this part seems to find the heart of the story and the characters, where the first half was more concerned with their political lives.’
Freeman took on varying roles to challenge himself as an actor and, in part, to challenge the public’s perception, however misguided, of him as some sort of everyday chap. He is proud to appear in art-house films and less commercial features because they reflect his personal tastes.
‘I’m not purely benign, yeah,’ Freeman admitted to Esquire’s Michael Holden in 2012. ‘I mean – I know I’m not, no one fucking is, but people want to just say… you know, I can name other actors who – I won’t – but you could think of a thousand other actors who people wouldn’t feel, “Oh, would you say hello to my mum?” because people would be a bit scared to do that. But with me I’ve played the parts where people think, “He’s just a good bloke”.’
Freeman had been acting for well over a decade but there were only a couple of things he was best known for at this particular juncture.
‘So what people mean when they say I’m likable is this and The Office, or Love Actually,’ he said to the BBC’s Alana Lee. ‘Again, you can’t answer it without sounding defensive or chippy, but I’ve virtually not had any time out
in a decade. My first forays into telly were as sort of drug-taking rent boys who didn’t know whether to fuck you or kill you. They were all these kind of people and it was, like, “Oh, he’s got an edge, this guy Martin.” Now the cycle turns, and it’s, “Oh, he’s so lovely.”’
Despite Freeman’s wish not to be typecast as Tim Canterbury from The Office, he does accept that he’s been fairly lucky in moving away from the character through more recent roles. ‘I think people now know that I’m not just Tim from The Office. The only place that image persists is with a few lazy journalists. You’ll sometimes see a picture of me in something like Charles II with the caption “Tim from The Office in a funny wig”. I’d like you to apologise for that on behalf of the NUJ,’ he told The Independent’s James Rampton in 2007.
Freeman was glad to have moved on to other projects. There was so much that he wanted to do as an actor and he refused to be limited to The Office and comedy in general.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Richard Bacon in an interview in 2014, ‘I’m very proud of The Office. If it’s on, I still watch it and will laugh. But one of the best things Ricky and Steve did was ending it and making it finite and making it something people look back [on] and go, “I wish there was more of that,” as opposed to doing loads and people saying, “I wish there was less of this.”’
He added, ‘I’m glad not to be doing The Office anymore, not for any career reason or any selfish reason but as a punter, just as a viewer. I’m glad we’re not ruining it.’