The State Within
Jason Isaacs plays Sir Mark Brydon
He is the British Ambassador to Washington, but what appealed to Jason Isaacs is that Mark is very far from a conventional career diplomat.
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The ambassador has to bend, if not break, the rules as he attempts to navigate his way through the clouds of conspiracy that are accumulating all around him.
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In the wake of a cataclysmic diplomatic incident, Mark finds his abilities tested to their very limits as he is driven into a web of tangled relationships and conflicting interests.
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He soon realises he has entered a realm where the stakes are very high indeed. In this universe - where the manipulation of information gives you ultimate power - one key question underlines everything: who can Mark trust?
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This forces the Ambassador to conduct himself in a way that is not laid out in the Foreign Office manual.
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According to Jason: "Mark is a real maverick and behaves in an un-ambassadorial way. He is not just the balm behind the scenes - he actually ruffles feathers."
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The 43-year-old, who hails from Merseyside and studied Law at Bristol University, continues that Mark is pivotal to the riveting action that motors The State Within at such a breathtaking pace.
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"The drama is a rollicking good watch. It is an exciting, sexy, fast, intelligent conspiracy thriller, set around the world of politics, big business and terrorism, and my character is at the heart of it."
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The beauty of Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival's script is that you never quite know where you stand. It possesses a compelling complexity.
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Jason, who has had experience of American political series playing Colin Ayres in The West Wing, smiles that: "I guess you could call Mark an innocent, but there again, I don't know about that…
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"Mark is trying to stop something awful happening. The great joy of this is trying to work out who's saying what, who's doing what, who means what they're saying, and who's got what on their agenda."
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Jason, who has a massive global following thanks to his memorable villain Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, performed many scenes in The State Within opposite Sharon Gless, the American actress who portrays the American Secretary of Defense, Lynne Warner - and he relished every minute of those sequences.
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"Mark has a lot to do with Warner. She is quite a feisty, stubborn and powerful woman, and it makes for some sparky encounters. They do a lot of serious sparring. I think there is a level of respect there because Mark operates quite high up in politics and does so extremely successfully, and she is virtually running the American Government.
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"The world of Washington survives on fear and lies, and the people who lie best are least afraid and do best. Although Sharon's character and mine are in this hot-bed, we are amongst the most straightforward people you are going to meet.
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"They don't always say what they mean, but they do carry through the things they say they'll do, and that at least binds them together.
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"Mark has a suspicion she is behind a conspiracy to invade a country for her own nefarious reasons, and the whole series is a race against time for him to stop an illegal war, and save his soul on the way."
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Jason, who also appeared with distinction in Black Hawk Down, The End of the Affair and Windtalkers, is equally enthusiastic about the fact that The State Within does not talk down to its viewers.
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"The only opportunity I have had to do this kind of thing before was when I did some episodes of The West Wing. I wasn't playing the British Ambassador then, so I had much less status, but what it gave me is a taste for not under-estimating the audience's intelligence.
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"You can speak and think quickly on camera, and if the ideas are expressed clearly enough, an audience will not just keep up with you, they'll be ahead of you."
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The actor - whose character in The State Within becomes romantically entangled with Jane Lavery (Eva Birthistle), a human rights lawyer who is trying to gain the release of an British ex-soldier who is currently on death row for murder - has made his name playing baddies in offerings such as Harry Potter, The Patriot and Peter Pan.
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He has recently sealed that reputation by starring as the scary Michael Caffee, the lead in the acclaimed American gangster series, Brotherhood.
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So Jason was delighted to have the chance finally to play the good guy in The State Within.
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"At first I found it tricky," admits the actor, who is soon to be seen in the equally tough Scars (C4).
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"I'm so used to shooting people and burning things down, but diplomats are people who try to disappear into the background. I was constantly wanting to kick down the doors of the White House, but that's not how diplomats do things!
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"For me, it was unusual to have to try and hide my emotions. Ambassadors aren't supposed to show that they're upset. Actors always want to scream and tear the scenery down _ but on this occasion I just had to watch Sharon do it!"
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Jason concludes with a wry grin that: "I've caused a lot of mayhem and murder in my time on screen. It's unusual for me to try to solve problems rather than create them, and to solve them with words and not weapons.
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"It's much more pleasant to have scenes with more dialogue than carnage. That is a relative rarity for me.
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"I have to say, it's much nicer to get the girl rather than drown the girl for a change!"
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