Bertie Carvel used Dalgliesh to process loss of his mother: "It's therapeutic"

Outside, I can see trees and, because I live at the highest point in London, on a clear day I can see Windsor Castle. The room is arranged differently to how it was when I grew up here with my mother. Now it’s my wife and my son and me. So, the view is of many layers, of time and memories, but essentially it’s of another sofa and a big set of windows.

Can TV compete with the view?

I don’t watch telly on the telly very often. I forever seem to be watching on a laptop or iPad, which isn’t ideal. We spend so much time with screens, don’t we?

Do you ever watch TV as a family?

We just finished Colin from Accounts, I’m watching Industry, which is great, and I loved Shōgun. But one of the difficult things about television is the way we watch it. It's so atomised with streaming that you can watch something divorced from other people’s watching.

This may serve your individual tastes, but it takes away from one of the critical reasons we watch telly: to know other people are watching and might be moved by the same things. That’s where we find our common humanity, in that collective gathering to see our experiences reflected back at us… Is that too esoteric?

Not at all. So do you think viewers enjoy watching tortured souls like Detective Adam Dalgliesh?

If we get all classical about it, tragedy is about catharsis. As far as I understand it, by witnessing a story of a tragedy, we, through our empathy and connection with the protagonist, are shriven and eased of our own fear and anxiety.

Do you believe that?

I never used to. But as I get older, I realise that looking at another’s pain can be a source of comfort. Not in a malicious, taking-pleasure-in-it way, but witnessing it can be healing. It’s also a reminder that, however you’re feeling, you’re not alone.

In Dalgliesh, we see a man carrying a lot of grief – he’s a man in pain…

When I first read Helen Edmundson’s scripts and first encountered Dalgliesh – I hadn’t read the books or seen other adaptations – it said "DALGLIESH" in capitals and then in brackets, "40s, inscrutable". And I thought that was a wonderful invitation to an actor. Because you don’t want inscrutable to mean opaque. You want it to mean, "You can’t get in, you can’t work him out… yet". You’re inviting the audience to look closer, to be patient and to discover more about this character in time.

Did you enjoy playing him?

Just before we shot Dalgliesh, my mother died and I definitely derived something therapeutic from accessing that. I’ve often thought whether or not that was a selfish thing to do. Did it serve the thing or was it using "It" for my own ends? If you’re making a story about somebody in pain and you’re processing your pain as part of that, and if it can be helpful for the audience to witness that authentic pain and recognise it, and their own, then it’s not self-indulgent, it’s therapeutic.

What do you make of our fondness for murder mysteries?

PD James said it was because detectives bring order out of chaos, and with the world descending into chaos, there’s comfort in someone solving things.

You’ve played divisive characters Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch. How did you find their humanity?

Well, they are human beings. When you’re playing them, you play them from their point of view. Not everyone likes themselves, but everyone is at the centre of their own story and, I imagine, tries to see things in a way that, if not absolves them of fault, places them dynamically in that story.

If you editorialise them at the same time as playing them, that leads to a different kind of performance and that’s not really what I do. I like being fair and balanced, which is why characters I’ve played hopefully end up being satisfying portraits, with light and shade.

The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.

Dalgliesh season 3 starts Thursday 5th December at 9pm on Channel 5. Watch episode 2 on Friday 6th December at 9pm.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.