No mystery to his appeal

Robson Green has a name that evokes something found in a Crayola 64 box and eyes that, his name notwithstanding, are piercingly blue enough to evoke comparisons to Paul Newman.

But Green is much more than just “GGTW” -- God’s gift to women -- he’s one of the busiest actors in British TV today. And if his isn’t yet a household name over here, several of his series and TV movies have captured the attention of Anglophiles on PBS and BBC America.

In the “Masterpiece Theatre” miniseries “Reckless,” he played a sexy doctor who fell in love with an older, married woman. And in the sequel, “Reckless: The Sequel,” the couple tied the knot. And for three seasons, fans of PBS’ “Mystery!” series were glued to his gritty “Touching Evil,” in which he played a police detective just back on the force after a near-fatal gunshot wound to his head.

His detective show “Wire in the Blood” is the highest-rated mystery series to have aired on BBC America. The first season premiered in December 2002; Episode 2 of the second season, which consists of three two-hour shows, airs at 9 and midnight today. On Feb. 28, BBC America will premiere yet another Green series, “Trust,” about a high-powered law firm.

“We very much like being his home,” says BBC America’s chief executive, Paul Lee. “He is a leading man, and whatever he is in, our audiences love him. He has got that thing that great TV stars have.”

In person, Green loves to entertain, even if he has an audience of only one. Sitting on the patio at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood on a recent morning, the actor breaks into dead-on impressions of Peter Sellers in “The Party” and Ricky Gervais from the BBC dramedy series “The Office.”

Green, 39, is in town for some media appearances and to meet with producers about coming to Los Angeles to do some work. Because he has a thriving career back home in Britain, he’s not as tempted to uproot his life as many other British actors have been. “I am meeting some people and they are offering me bits of work and it’s up to me whether I take it or not,” Green says. “I think that’s the best place to be emotionally. If the script is right and the part is right, absolutely. But I am not going to come over here just for the money.”

He still lives in his Northern England hometown of Newcastle, where he shoots most of his series. “My business partner and I think investment in the area is needed,” Green explains. “The talent is there.”

And so is his family -- his second wife, Vanya, and their 4-year-old son, Tyler. He doesn’t want to disrupt their lives needlessly, unless the Hollywood project is right. “My family life is very important,” he says. “I like watching ‘Toy Story’ 1,000 times and ‘Shrek’ 500 times.”

These days, Green is lamenting the state of British television. It, like its American counterpart, has found its schedule filled with reality shows. “Audiences now flock to people aspiring to be famous. We have shows now like ‘When Pets Revolt.’ ”

A British television actor’s biggest nightmare, Green says, is having to do a commercial for cornflakes to make ends meet. “A lot of good actors have been in those ads,” he says. “You have to go [he breaks into song], ‘They’re tasty, tasty, very, very tasty.’ You get a lot of money for it, but it is where one sees oneself because of the arc of television now.”

He says he’s guided by the belief that the quality of the writing is the main reason to accept a part and “not the actual possibilities of what would come your way in terms of recognition.”

“I have always stuck by it and it has held me in good stead for the last 20 years,” he adds. “But you know, I waited for the likes of ‘Wire in the Blood,’ the likes of ‘Reckless’ and the likes of ‘Touching Evil.’ I am in a very fortunate position to play hard to get, and if you play hard to get in any walk of life, something good may come of it. I can only say that because I have economic stability now, which I never used to have.”

But Green has never had to wait very long for a role since he was “discovered” in 1989. “I worked in a shipyard [in Newcastle],” he says. “In the evening time, I would do amateur dramatics and do local plays by local writers. This one night [in the theater], a casting agent just happened to be there and she was casting a thing called ‘Casualty,’ which was our attempt at ‘ER’ [although “Casualty” launched eight years before “ER”] and I landed a regular part. I was in that for three years and I never stopped from there.”

Green recently got the green light to do another three episodes of “Wire in the Blood,” which will air on BBC America. Based on the characters from Val McDermid’s bestselling novels, the dark, often brutal drama casts Green as the emotionally naive and clumsy clinical psychologist Tony Hill, who works as a university lecturer as well as helping convicted serial killers. He also works for the police in tracking down serial killers.

“He is this eccentric loner,” BBC America’s Lee says of the Hill character. “He is pretty introverted. He is almost more comfortable dealing with the dark impulses of killers.”

In “Trust,” Green plays a vastly more secure character -- Stephen Bradley, an ambitious and charismatic senior partner in a legal firm who is trying to patch things up with his estranged wife and two young sons.

“It was a critical hit,” says the actor. “It is the best reviews I ever had, but in terms of the cost, the BBC couldn’t afford to make a second season. They had no money left to promote it.”