Sharon D Clarke Talks Being "Entrusted" with the Titular Character in 'Inspector Ellis'

Acorn TV’s new three-part crime drama Inspector Ellis is in the classic mold of engrossing, emotionally nuanced series such as Morse and Dalgleish, with the welcome and long-overdue update of being led by a Black woman. Veteran stage and screen actress Sharon D Clarke (Doctor Who) brings a compelling mix of tenacity and tenderness to her performance as DCI Ellis, qualities the brilliant detective must rely on to succeed in disentangling the knotty, messy violence and tragedies she’s parachuted in to solve in each episode.

This is another notable aspect of Inspector Ellis – series creators Paul Logue and Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre chose not to establish their protagonist as an entrenched member of a single community, but to make her an itinerant detective sent to help overmatched police departments solve confounding murders. In terms of doggedness and compassion, Ellis is comparable to DS Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) in Happy Valley, but the specter of a dead child doesn’t haunt her. Instead, Ellis is working to end her estrangement from her daughter, Grace, and becoming a beloved mentor to her new partner, the eager-to-learn DS Harper, played by Andrew Gower (Miss Scarlet).

Ahead of the premiere of Inspector Ellis on November 4, Clarke sat down with Telly Visions to talk about her first, very welcome, experience of being offered a role tailor-made for her, what she believes is at the heart of Ellis’s relationship with her daughter, and the serendipitous magic of casting precisely the right actor to play Harper.