The BBC certainly had a hit on their hands when it came to Dalziel and Pascoe, which aired for over ten years. It featured A Clockwork Orange star Warren Clarke and helped to launch the career of Colin Buchanan, who previously only had credits with A Touch of Frost. However, after the show ended in 2007, Colin essentially vanished from the acting world with the actor only appearing in a further five shows since then. In previous interviews, the star admitted that he was “exhausted” over his starring role, but where is he now? Read on to find out…
After Dalziel and Pascoe came to an end, Colin decided to take a sabbatical from acting. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail in 2014, he said: “When Dalziel and Pascoe finished, I was offered a few things straight away but I turned them down because I was exhausted, frankly. In the later years we were expected to do more and more with less and less money and time. In the end it became impossible to keep up the quality. We felt we were just filling screen time rather than doing something worthwhile.”
Colin continued: “I took time off to recharge the batteries and went on a lot of holidays. But to honest I’m still on my sabbatical. I’m just mucking about.” Speaking about some of roles after his breakout performance, the actor told the publication: “I just do bits and pieces that I fancy. They asked me to do an episode of Casualty in 2012, which was absurd to be honest.
“I was a very nasty character, cheating on a disabled wife who was in a wheelchair. He was having an affair with a Japanese woman married to an Indian. It was so politically correct. In the end I got blown up. I spent a couple of hours in make-up every morning producing all my injuries, then I hung around all day and wasn’t used.”
Colin added: “Then just after Casualty I got a call to be in an episode of The Murdoch Mysteries, filmed in Canada. They said I’d be playing a mad professor who says he’s invented a time machine. I said, ‘I’m on the plane’. I also shot a film in Canada called Diverted, with David Suchet and Joanne Whalley about 9/11 and I’ve kept my hand in doing audio books and short films. I did quite well financially out of Dalziel and Pascoe and I didn’t blow it.”
Family
Even though Dalziel and Pascoe was set in Yorkshire, much of the series was filmed in Birmingham, and Colin and his family moved to the nearby borough of Bearwood during filming of the third series, which was released in 1998. Colin was married to long-time girlfriend Kim with the pair marrying 20 years after dating, however, after just three years of marriage they split. The couple share two daughters, Kira and Maya.
Speaking in the same interview about his family, Colin revealed that his split with Kim was “amicable” and that he hoped his daughters wouldn’t follow him into the world of showbusiness. “I wouldn’t encourage them to go into acting now, as it’s a very different business from when I started,” he confessed. “There are too many people trying to do it now. It disturbs me.
“When I started out, there were only 10 drama schools in the country, they each sent about 25 people out into the business every year and most people found work. But now there are 50 drama schools, each sending out 50 people every year, so there are thousands of new graduates. It’s very hard now for people to make a living at it.”
What was Dalziel and Pascoe?
Airing between 1996 and 2007, Dalziel and Pascoe was a BBC adaptation of the crime books of the same name by Reginald Hill. The series focused on Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel, who was played by Warren Clarke and his deputy, DI Peter Pascoe, played by Colin. The characters were complete opposites of each other, with Andy seen as politically incorrect and insensitive, while Peter was university educated and well-mannered.
© Alamy Stock PhotoThe series was so successful that they started deviating from Reginald’s book series. The first four series were all adaptations of his novels, while subsequent episodes became original ideas. As a result of this, the book and television series have a clashing canon, with characters written out of the TV show still appearing in the book series.
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