The Guilty, set visit - Telegraph Although the pair allow themselves a chuckle during our chat, when Kelly nabs the bedroom's only armchair and Boyd, who is 6"4," is forced to perch on a pink plastic seat meant for a child, the gaiety is fleeting. For the most part they look as if they've been through the emotional wringer. What made them sign up? "I did two series of a procedural drama [Case Sensitive]," says Boyd, and I was part of the procedural element. My character [DC Simon Waterhouse] was incredibly removed, so I thought the chance to play the other side of it, the emotional journey, would be interesting. I'm also always looking for things that stamp on any assumptions of what I may do next. Boyd says that he was drawn to The Guilty's complex psychological issues. "I think it's a study of what it is to be responsible for another human being, to try to possibly fail to create an environment that is safe," he tells me earnestly. What do you have to find in yourself to get it right and what happens when you don't? For Kelly, the hook was Debbie O'Malley's "irresistible script." As she put it: "There are no goodies and baddies [in it], it's just people trying to do the best they can. It has a sort of Scandinavian feel; you get to know what happened but it's in a non-preaching, non-commenting way and it doesn't really change anything. Every time I describe it, it sounds like something we've seen before, but to me it feels very new and fresh. Darren Boyd (as Daniel Reid) and Katherine Kelly (Claire Reid) star in a new three-part ITV drama The Guilty. Indeed, a gritty Scandi-style procedural drama that shatters a small community's idyll certainly does sound familiar (Broadchurch? Southcliffe?). But for Greig, these TV forerunners only made her more keen to be involved. "You could just say "there's loads of these dramas out there" but I think we are really good at them," she tells me, tucking into a banana on the sofa of her trailer. Broadchurch was brilliant, I loved it. I feel like ITV are really on a roll, supporting a lot of great writers, unpicking prejudices. [Procedural dramas] are a sort of fingers up to the whole age of immediacy. Everything in our lives is saying "go faster, be funnier, be more instant... get a quick soundbite that you can understand" but these dramas say no, we want to go really deep." Greig's casting may come as a surprise; to many she will always be the single-minded Debbie Aldridge in Radio 4"s The Archers. On TV, her most memorable roles (Green Wing, Black Books, Episodes, Friday Night Dinner) have established her in the public's imagination as an adept comic actress, at once oddball and acerbic. But in person she is soft and serious - her words are chosen carefully and delivered quietly - and when I ask how it feels to be going straight, a shadow of frustration crosses her face. "I'm always very bemused by being described as a comedic actress because I've also done a lot of straight stuff," she says. My approach to all work is about trying to find the truth of the character. With Green Wing, I met doctors and visited hospitals. To play Maggie, I met female DCIs. I do the same thing with a contained and inexpressive character [like Maggie] as I would with, you know, somebody who falls over. Unsurprisingly then, it was the show's complexities that held the biggest attraction for her. "I was really drawn to this story because it's not just about the disappearance of a child," she says. It's beautifully interwoven with Maggie's own story - the fact that the child went missing when she was pregnant and that the case re-emerges when her child is the same age as Callum was, and how do you then do your job? How do you separate the two? Her own child is also going from nursery to school and is starting to have problems. But because Maggie's not there so much, she hasn't learned to deal with them in the same way that her husband has. That makes the title of the show then very interesting. Jamie Sives, Tommy Potten (centre) and Tamsin Greig in The Guilty. Cameron believes that Grieg's performance alone could bring about the recommissioning of the show (much as Olivia Colman's acting did with Broadchurch). "She could be an incredibly iconic detective," she tells me over tea in the catering van. She's just got something that you've never seen before. Back on set I watch Kelly and Boyd stand side by side at their bedroom window, silhouetted as they stare down at the garden where Callum was buried and the neighbours who could be to blame. It may be becoming a familiar image on our TV screens, but I'm not inclined to quibble. If The Guilty can deliver another stylish drama to add to our catalogue of triumphs, then I for one can't wait to watch.