Game of Thrones’ John Bradley is busting the brooding detective cliche on North Shore

There are certain cliches we expect in crime drama TV shows. What happens when you turn those cliches inside out?

North Shore is a British-Australian co-production. Picture: Channel 10

The damaged anti-hero cop is a well-worn trope in detective fiction.

We all know the type – they’re brooding, they’re compromised, and they never crack a smile. The world is dark and they’re merely another shadow. All they can do is try to catch the bad guy, but they have no real hope that change is possible.

From Luther to Top of the Lake, TV is littered with them, the spiritual descendants of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. We love them, but as any interrogation scene has taught us, you need a good cop to balance out the bad cop.

For the most part, the good cop archetype tends to be found in quaint English villages with alarmingly high murder rates that are never remarked upon. Sometimes they don’t even have a badge.

You tend not to find them in the police departments of big cities. The milieu is too world-weary for such a kind soul.

Which makes Channel 10’s North Shore something of an outlier.

Starring English actors John Bradley and Joanne Froggatt alongside an Australian cast that includes Kirsty Sturgess and Rob Carlton, the murder mystery features Bradley as a mild-mannered detective sent to Sydney to observe the investigation into the death of a politician’s daughter.

Bradley’s character, Max, doesn’t bluster nor does he try to intimidate. When it comes to attracting bees, he’s all about the honey.

North Shore stars Joanne Froggatt and John Bradley. Picture: Channel 10

“It’s become a bit of a cliché now that a detective in a crime show has to be sort of brooding and very serious, and look like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Bradley told news.com.au. “I think it’s nice with this that we can approach that type of character from a slightly different angle.

“Somebody that is personal and hopefully charming, and sees the funny side of things because that’s just as valid a representation as a murder detective as anything else. You just don’t see it very often because it’s been hijacked by a brow-furrowing, haunted detective.”

Bradley, best known for his portrayal as the equally sweet and charming Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones, filmed the British-Australian co-production in Sydney in late-2022. He had never been to Australia before and escaping the English cold for our sunny climes was only part of the appeal.

He had worked so frequently in projects that are out-of-this-world, or more specifically, out of our world, that he desired to inhabit a character you could find down at the pub.

“I’d never really played a character that exists in the real world. I’ve done a lot of things that are heightened, whether they’re a medieval fantasy series or they’re set partly in space or in the world of international pop stardom,” he explained of his roles in Game of Thrones, Roland Emmerich disaster movie Moonfall and Jennifer Lopez rom-com Marry Me.

“So, I’d never really done anything that felt grounded in the real world you see out of your window. And I’ve never done a part that has a family dynamic to it. I’ve never sort of dealt with relationships breaking down and family turmoil and what that means and the effect that can have on somebody.

John Bradley had never been to Australia before the North Shore production. Picture: Channel 10

“When this came along, it ticked so many boxes and I was drawn to this character and felt like the part I’d been waiting for. I felt like I was in a part of my career when I’d best be equipped to tackle a part like that.”

Created by Mike Bullen, the English writer who created Cold Feet – and who calls Australia his adopted home – North Shore wraps its core murder mystery with layers of a relationship drama and a political thriller.

Bradley’s Max isn’t just a cop on a case. He’s also a cop whose wife has decided his secondment to Australia is a trial separation for their under-strain marriage, a cop who’s found an unexpected bond with his Sydney-based sister-in-law, and a cop with professional challenges after he refused to play along with his unethical boss in setting up a suspect.

The complexity in Max’s story runs parallel to the series’ ambitions to tackle more than just the central crime.

“[The show] is hard to define cleanly because Mike has a great track record in writing relationships. There are parts of this that is a romantic relationship drama and part of it is political drama and there are comedy elements to it too.

North Shore us broadcast on Wednesday nights. Picture: Channel 10

“Mike has done a great job of pulling all these disparate types of drama together and packaging them into this one thing. It was a pleasure to play all those beats and play Max in those different dynamics.”

And just because Max is the good cop doesn’t mean he’s a pushover. Bradley certainly didn’t see him that way, having gleaned something in Bullen’s script that Bullen hadn’t considered until the two had a chat about it.

“There’s a knowingness to Max where he knows how nice he is, and he knows that is actually the best tool that he has in his armoury to get information out of people. It’s not that he’s naïve and bumbling.

“He’s actually quite manipulative in a way because he knows that if he is nice to people, if he charms them, if he takes an interest in their life, and if he gets people to soften towards him, that’s as useful a tool as standing over somebody in an interrogation room and barking at them until they cry and break down.

“It’s a new personality to play the narrative of a crime drama through. It feels quite fresh and quite new. I can’t remember the last time I saw it.”

North Shore is streaming now on 10 Play with new episodes on Channel 10 on Wednesdays

Originally published as Game of Thrones’ John Bradley is busting the brooding detective cliche on North Shore