TV ’tec on Taggart’s double celebration

Apr 20 2008 Wales On Sunday

IN today’s TV climate where shows seem to be getting the chop left, right and centre, it’s unusual to find a series that has survived the death of a lead actor and turned around a major ratings slump.

Taggart has achieved all this and more, and this year the cast and crew will reach two very special landmarks – their 25th year and the 100th episode.

Show stalwart Blythe Duff, who has played DS Jackie Reid for an astonishing 18 years, says she couldn’t be more delighted that Taggart has just been recommissioned for another series.

“We’ve been given the go-ahead to make 10 films this year, which is lovely, particularly when the ITV network have been very circumspect about the programmes they’ve recommissioned,” she says. “It would have been such a pity in our 25th year to have missed out on that opportunity.”

When Blythe heard the news, there was no doubt in her mind that she would sign up for another year of playing Reid.

“Very rarely do you get a job that lasts for this amount of time and gives you some time off,” she says. “I think that’s the reason I’ve always been very happy to commit to it.

“It takes up quite a chunk of my life, but not all of my life and it’s certainly afforded me a lovely lifestyle that I’d never have had if I’d just been earning the Equity minimum for theatre jobs.

“There’s a strange thing that sometimes you feel you have to defend the reason you’ve stayed in a programme for so long,” she continues. “I do lots of other things, but this is the thing that means I can stay in Scotland, allows me to do network television, and that means I can work with lots of different directors and actors, so why would anybody think that I wouldn’t want to carry on doing it?”

Indeed, she says she feels privileged as an actor to have been given an element of security in her career.

“I think anybody who has a longevity in this business should always feel lucky, and if you don’t it’s time to move on,” says the 45-year-old from East Kilbride, in her endearingly frank way.

And luckily, Blythe hasn’t got bored of her character or her storylines. She says there have been occasional moments of deja vu, but thinks the show remains realistic and gritty.

“We were doing a fairly intense storyline about wife-beating not so long ago,” she remembers.

“You have to treat it with the respect that the police would treat it with, because there are people out there who might be going through this situation, and they have to believe that there’s somebody out there that’s going to help them.”

It also helps that Blythe has her own personal police adviser at home – her husband Tom. He was a detective sergeant until four-and-a-half years ago, and has always been on tap for Blythe to talk to about her scripts.

Blythe lives in Glasgow and says the fact that Taggart is filmed in and around the city is a huge plus point for her, because it means she can go home every night. “I never take that for granted,” she says. “Acting’s not the kind of job where you tend to spend a lot of time at home.”

Being around so much means she can keep an eye on her two teenage daughters, Sarah and Katie. Although not their biological mother, Blythe has looked after the girls since she married Tom, a widower, in 1997. They are now at the age where they are starting to go out with friends, and Blythe admits she does worry about the world they are growing up in, particularly when it comes to crime.

“I think we should always be worried about the fact that kids feel they’re not having as good a time as they could be so they are more drawn to standing about and getting drunk. If we weren’t worried about it we’d be very silly.”

Taggart returns to ITV1 tomorrow at 9pm