Comedian/actor Ben Miller reveals he has a lot of sympathy for his deadly doctor Edmund Bickleigh, who can't stop killing after bumping off his wife to be with another woman. Steve Pratt reports.

A FEAR of injections gave actor Ben Miller a few tricky moments while playing a doctor in ITV1's period thriller Malice Aforethought. He plays a murderous medic who kills his wife with a fatal injection. "I hate injections," he says.

"I had a phobic thing about them for years. When I was 11, I fell over the garden and cut my hand on a rusty nail. I was chased around the doctor's surgery because I just wouldn't have this injection. Eventually, the doctor somehow caught me, sat on me and gave me a tetanus injection. I haven't got any better since.

"Funnily enough, when we were filming that scene, I found I had no problem with giving someone an injection, my problem is the fear of receiving one."

He received advice from the drama's medical consultant on how to give an injection. Miller must have been a good at it because a member of the production crew fainted when she saw him give the injection to his screen wife.

"It turned out Barbara, the first assistant director, was also phobic about injections. She was so convinced by the way I did it that she passed out during the shooting. She fell into a half-swoon and we had to have a break so she could sit down and people could bring her round again.

"Of course, I didn't really inject anyone. We had a false arm because they wanted close-ups of the needle going in. It did look very realistic." Miller's Dr Edmund Bickleigh kills his wife so he can be with another woman. His murderous way continues to silence the gossiping about his philandering.

Easier to perform than the medical scenes were romps with his female co-stars, including an oral sex session in the summer house. He confesses there were times he felt like he was making one of those Confessions films.

"It's that funny thing where you are sitting there, Lucy Brown's head is bobbing up and down in your lap, you're simulating what the tabloids would call a sex act and in between shots you're discussing her latest run in Chekhov in the theatre," he says.

This early scene alerts you to the fact that this isn't the usual costume detective story. "The story is really about sex. The reason Dr Bickleigh

starts to commit crimes is because he's what you would call a sex addict," he says. He's having sex with as many people in the village as he can manage. He's so obsessed that if they get in the way he'll try to get rid of them."

He didn't read the book before embarking on the project, but was aware there have been several previous adaptations, including a TV series starring Hywel Bennett. "I was keen to do my own version and you have to deal with what's in the script not what's in the book or some other previous version of it," he explains.

The idea of a doctor who kills might remind some of the Dr Harold Shipman affair, but Miller thinks the two are very different. "Dr Bickleigh is not someone who enjoys killing. He helps people on their way. The way in which he does it is slightly roundabout, like giving people poisoned sandwiches," he says.

I don't know why, but he's a very sympathetic character because he's so childish and there's very little malice involved. It has more in common with Kind Hearts and Coronets than Seven. We are at the Ealing Studios end of serial killing.

"My take is that no matter what somebody does, they're still human. You're interested in playing the human being rather than the criminal. It's too easy to dismiss things that people do as evil. There must be good things too about people who've committed terrible things. I'm more concerned to make him a rounded person."

Miller, who first came to fame as one half of a comedy duo with Alexander Armstrong, moves easily between comedy and drama. He's next off to Australia to play a dance teacher in a movie called Razzle Dazzle.

He's an admirer of Australian comedy, in films like The Dish and The Castle, but is a little worried about the dancing on which he'll be working with the same choreographer responsible for Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. "I don't start work with him until I get to Australia so I'm having to have dance lessons in England," he says.

"I have a couple of dance routines but no idea what they're like. I think it's contemporary. I'm always slightly scared when I'm doing something new. You're always worried if they've got the right person."

He's also set to make a second series of BBC1's The Worse Week, the comedy in which his hapless hero suffered many of crisis in the seven days leading to his wedding. The sequel follows the chaotic week before to the birth of his first child.

There's talk of a follow-up to Johnny English, the spy comedy film in which he co-starred with Rowan Atkinson. He and Armstrong, who stars in ITV1's Life Begins, are hoping to reunite although they've yet to find a suitable project.

Miller's also finishing a script for a feature film, with casting getting under way in the next few months. "Being a feature film, you need one of those bankable actors to do your film and you're away. I've spent three years writing the script, now the project will die in the next eight weeks or will be a goer."

* Malice Aforethought: ITV1, Sunday and Monday, 9pm.

Published: 07/04/2005