SPOOKS star Rupert Penry-Jones was reminded how exciting filming can be while on location for Persuasion for ITV's Jane Austen season. He was shooting scenes as romantic Captain Frederick Wentworth on The Cobb at Lyme Regis, a harbour seen in films like The French Lieutenant's Woman. Cast and crew were drenched as waves crashed over the sea wall in high winds.

"When you're filming it gets a little bit tedious but when you do something like The Cobb it reminds you how exciting it can all be," he says. "It was terrifying, we had to stop after three takes because we started at the end of The Cobb and as we were walking back towards the camera a wave came over the top. If we'd have been standing there, we'd have been washed out to sea.

"The stunt man said, 'that's it, you've got to stop". We only got three takes of that whole scene because it was too dangerous, very windy and very wet."

Equally dangerous, in that it might upset Austen purists, is a kiss he shares with leading lady Sally Hawkins, playing Anne Ellliot. The two eventually lock lips after a will-they-won't-they lingering build-up.

"In the book, they're not supposed to kiss obviously because you just didn't kiss in public then, especially if you're not married. What we thought we'd do is take as long as possible over a kiss," he says.

He decided against watching previous adaptations of Persuasion, although he will watch them now. He read the script first, accepted the job and then read the book. "I prefer the script," he says, with a laugh.

"I do like a lot of those things, Hardy and Dickens, but I've found with Austen that it's about women wanting to find a husband and, as a man, it wasn't something that interested me.

"When I saw the modern love story of these two characters, everyone's been in a situation where there's somebody they love and think they don't love them. I had it at drama school, someone you fancy but they don't fancy you.

"That's something everyone can relate to and that's basically what this is about. Two people who love each other but think the other one doesn't and they're forced to be together a lot. It's how they deal with that."

He loved Wentworth's costumes, notably the specially-made boots. "I'm very fussy about my boots because I've got quite big feet and it's difficult to get boots that fit," he explains.

Having all the women swoon over him as the leading romantic character wasn't unpleasant. "That's fantastic, why I took the job really," says Penry-Jones. "If you read the script, there's 30 pages of people saying how great Wentworth is, how good-looking he is, how clever he is, how funny he is."

He's confident that Persuasion conveys the period without getting bogged down in it. "It flows, it's fast, it has no fat that needs to be trimmed," he says. "A lot of these novels when they're put on screen can end up with a lot of stuff that slows the momentum down. What's good about Persuasion is that the two characters are already in love before the story starts, so it hits the ground running instead of them having to meet and go through all the formalities of the period.

"In terms of the language, I tried to keep it as modern as possible. I'm quite posh anyway, so it wasn't too difficult. I'm probably not speaking in the way they spoke in those days, I like to bring it to life and give the language a modern feel."

If the romance came easy, the dancing didn't. "You feel a bit of a plonker. It's very hard to look sexy and skip about at the same time," he says.

Penry-Jones went from Jane Austen to filming Stephen Poliakoff's new BBC drama. Coupled with seven months shooting Spooks, he rates it a perfect year work-wise.

He and actress partner Dervla Kirwan have two young children, Florence, three in May, and Peter, one next month. "The children have changed my life dramatically, but they've done it without me noticing really," he says.

"I thought it would be a real shock, but actually if you're not sleeping much at night, then you don't want to stay up late. Suddenly you don't stay up beyond half past nine in the evening. I do miss going out on the town and having a laugh. I was very much a sort of Soho House boy. I still do it once or twice a year."