‘The Responder’: Martin Freeman & Tony Schumacher on Chris ‘Falling Through Life’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Responder Season 2 Episodes 1 and 2.]

Chris (Martin Freeman) is trying a lot in The Responder Season 2. He wants to be a good officer. He wants to be a good father. He wants to get off night shift and have a day job. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for him.

Over the first two episodes, now streaming on BritBox, Chris learns that he has zero chance of scoring a day job unless he does a job for Debs (Amaka Okafor), but then that goes haywire (he and Adelayo Adedayo‘s Rachel find a gun, not drugs) and he’s stuck owing the wrong person money. To fix that problem, he agrees to pick up drugs for Jodie (Faye McKeever), only for that to go sideways, but fortunately(?!), Casey’s (Emily Fairn) there to get the bag.

Below, Freeman and writer Tony Schumacher take us inside Chris’ head in Season 2.

In what ways do you think Chris is doing better in general this season, and in what ways is he doing worse?

Martin Freeman: When we meet him in Season 2, he’s doing better in that he has acknowledged that he needs to get help basically and he’s set himself up in a little flat. It’s not paradise by any stretch of imagination, but he’s trying to work things out so that he can have a space with his daughter and where he can have a space where he talks about—or where he at least is open to talking about what’s going on his life and his brain. Where he’s worse, I guess, is there’s a call out, a potential emergency, which ends up bringing him back into contact with his father [Bernard Hill] in Episode 1. That’s certainly one thing that sends him into a tailspin, which temporarily makes things more complicated.

Where did you want to start Chris off this season to lead to the situation he finds himself in by the end of Episode 2, having to do with Jodie wants for the money, and then once again dealing with Casey?

Tony Schumacher: I wanted Chris to be in a better place emotionally because six months have passed and I think it would’ve been kind of weird if he just stayed the same guy. I think we’re all on the journey through life, so I wanted Chris to at least be trying a little bit harder and wanting to do things differently and stop making the same mistakes, but I think we all know that that’s easier said than done in life, isn’t it? We all keep making the same mistakes over and over, and unfortunately, Chris just can’t help himself. He’s just one of those guys.

Courtesy of BritBox

Chris does keep trying to be a good officer and not get tied up in these less than legal dealings, only for exactly that to happen. What would take for that to change for him? Would a day job help, or would he just be fooling himself that it would?

Freeman: Yeah, to a certain extent. I think probably the only thing that would help him is not being in anything like a situation where people are offering him nefarious, illegal things to do. At the same time he is—I mean, adrenaline junkie sounds like a glib way of putting it, but he’s definitely addicted to that side of what policing provides. He’s definitely addicted to or drawn to that part of his personality and that part of life, which is a little bit darker. So if he went and became a librarian, that on the one hand would be very good for him. Until he can sort himself out, it’ll always be the danger of him smashing [up his life] and burning it into the ground or something. The thing that he is drawn to is the very thing that is harming him, I think.

Yeah, because he’s looking for a day job though in the same field. 

Freeman: Correct. He wants a job still in the police force. I feel he’s kind of institutionalized. I think sometimes you are doing something so wrong, but you can’t actually see a world outside of it. If someone said I couldn’t be an actor anymore, I would probably look for something related to it in some way because that’s what I’ve done all my adult life. So I think for him, he can’t imagine a world [outside of policing]. It’s too much trouble and he needs something now. He needs something now in order to maintain a relationship with his daughter. So yeah, it’s convenience as well as being that a little safe space is the police [for him].

Schumacher: I’ve always thought of Chris as being good at being a cop, but not a good cop, if you know what I mean. He’s good at being a police officer and he enjoys being a police officer. He enjoys helping people and stuff, and he’s good at that, but he’s just not good at life. I think that’s one of the reasons why he stays in the police.

Chris is trying really hard to be a good father, but that also includes lying to his ex about having the day job that he doesn’t. Talk about him doing that because he had to know that she’d learned the truth eventually.

Schumacher: I think the closest thing I can think to the analogy I’ve used with Chris is he’s like someone whose life is a set of stairs and he just keeps falling down. He trips on one step and before he knows it, he’s tumbling down all the others. And so I think he says things and he makes decisions very much in the spirit of the moment because he’s always kind of falling through life. He’s always making these mistakes. I think the character that he’s closest to in the show is probably Casey in that they both are just falling through life.

Courtesy of BritBox

Something I continue to enjoy is Chris and Rachel’s dynamic, the really reluctant allies that they are. Talk about getting them riding together again and tying them up in this whole thing with finding the gun and now needing to get the drugs for Jodie for the money and now dealing with Casey again.

Schumacher: Yeah, they are. They’re great fun to write together those two characters, and I think Adelayo and Martin just made them too special. It’s a real special mix of people doing special stuff on screen, so I love writing for those guys and I really wanted to get them back together again because I pushed them apart at the end of that Season 1, and it was so important for me to get them back together again in a way that felt inevitable. They’re drawn to each other, the two people who love each other but hate each other, and they’re drawn together. It just felt inevitable that they’d be back together again. So it was great fun to come up with different ways, different things that I could do to get them back in their car and easiest way, I think in the most realistic way, was to clip Rachel’s wings and force her back into that mess with Martin.

What are you enjoying most about that dynamic in Season 2?

Freeman: I like the fact that it doesn’t ever really get too sentimental. I like the fact that there is genuine respect for each other and there is genuine ambivalence as well because they’re quite different people, but there’s enough similarity in that there’s a malcontent in both of them and there’s a darkness in both of them and an alone thing I think in both of them. They like being on their own, but I think they would have to admit if they’ve got to be with anybody, that they can tolerate each other. And their relationship, I suppose, is a very, very British thing, in they take the mickey out of each other a lot, their affection is shown a lot of the time in hostility, which is very, very British.

And from Chris’s point of view, he’s always had a thing of looking for her as a younger person on the job, a newer person on the job. When she got enough into real shtuck in Series 1 when she was being abused, basically he was the person she called and he didn’t hesitate. He came to rescue her. They sort of keep each other sane a little bit. I think they’re both very cynical people and they recognize that in each other. I enjoy all of that so that when that’s the kind of playing field that you are on, you only have to do something very, very small. One of those characters only has to give a little bit of affection or a little bit of warmth to put in the world. It’s like if you haven’t touched anybody, there’s no physical contact between you and somebody else, all that person has to do is just put a hand on your elbow and it’s like it means everything. I think that’s a little bit what is with Rachel and Chris, which goes a long way in the world that Tony has set up between them.

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Rachel is keeping an eye on her ex and his new girlfriend this season. What did you want to do with her off the clock with that, especially considering it also comes up on the clock for her a bit?

Schumacher: It’s a difficult one because it was like Rachel was drawn to the flame almost, and there is a degree of she wants to save this woman, she wants to be this savior and stop this woman making the same mistakes that she made. But at the same time, Rachel knows that what she’s doing is wrong. People should have free will to do their own things and she’ll be allowed to just carry on with the life, but she’s drawn to the flame of Steve. She wants to end his reign, and she’s doing it in a way which is dangerous, and she’s similar to Chris in that way, that there’s ways of doing things that would’ve been easier. But to do that would mean being honest with yourself and she can’t be honest with herself over what happened and what she went through. She’s traumatized as well, I think, very much so. Yeah, she’s drawn to it. It’s a horrible, horrible situation for her to be in.

Martin, you brought this up earlier a bit, but Chris and his father’s relationship is tense to say the least. How does Chris feel about his dad, and what did you enjoy playing that this season?

Freeman: I think he has probably gone through the last decade, I imagine at least, not actively thinking very much about his dad. It’s not like he’s been calling him or dropping in on him or anything. I think when we see him see his dad, that’s the first time I would imagine—me and Tony never came on the definitive number, but let’s just say many years. Many years I think since they’ve seen each other, certainly many years since they’ve sat down [and talked]. There’s no love lost for Chris. And what I enjoyed about doing that was every single minute, every single minute of those scenes I enjoyed doing, enjoyed working with Bernard Hill very much. I know it was a fantastic coup for Tony to get him because I know what he means to Tony as well, but also what he means to everyone in British TV over the age of 40 and also what he means to the city of Liverpool. I loved every part of it, and to be honest, I think the scenes between Tom and Chris are, I mean, this is bad because I’m in them, so I can’t really say this—

Schumacher: I’ll say it, Martin.

Freeman: I’m trying not to be English for a minute. They’re among the best scenes in the show, I think.

Schumacher: Yeah, I agree totally. I think getting Bernard to do that kind of stuff was—he was such a part of my childhood. He played a really important character in a drama written by Alan Bleasdale in the ‘80s when I was growing up, and he was such an important part of Liverpool and became such an important part of the show, which was so important because Chris’ father is such a massive part of Chris’s problems. To get that and to confront those issues with such amazing actors was, I mean, beyond a dream come true. It really was. It was just incredible.

The Responder, Thursdays, BritBox