Policing drama series The Responder, set and filmed in Liverpool is to air on BBC One Monday 24 January.
The series, which stars Martin Freeman, is based on a script from first-time writer and former police officer Tony Schumacher.
Partially funded by the Liverpool Film Office, The Responder is about Chris, an urgent response police officer working in Liverpool – the first on call in an emergency.
Viewers of the series get to see Chris work five-night shifts in a row, with each night shift corresponds to an episode of the series.
Various scenes were filmed in and around student accommodation block St. Andrew’s Gardens.
Martin Freeman has adopted a Liverpudlian accent for the role, based in part on writer Tony Schumacher’s accent. Freeman has confessed he spoke to himself in a Liverpudlian accent for a year and a half in preparation for the drama series.
Freeman told Metro: ‘I walked around for a year and a half, occasionally just talking to myself in scouse. Even though you’re not always the best judge of your own thing, I do trust my ear.
‘If I say something, I know when it sounds off. I got very, very exact about that stuff. You have to be, because if I don’t do it well, it’s a terrible accent to get wrong.
There are some accents where you don’t want to be in that city among the inhabitants of that city making a balls up of it.’
He’s joined by Adelayo Adedayo playing Rachel, a rookie police officer who joins Chris on patrol. Adedayo has previously starred in comedies Timewasters and Some Girls, as well as BBC One drama The Capture.
The series is a fictionalised account of some of writer Tony Schumacher’s experiences as a police officer, indirectly inspired by it rather than specifically based on it.
The Responder starts on Monday 24th January on BBC One at 9.00pm. It will also be available on iPlayer.
