Playing a marine detective in her brutal new series turned out to be great fun for Nicola Walker

While most of the country was learning to take life more slowly during lockdown, Nicola Walker was doing the opposite. ‘I was learning how to pilot a powerboat,’ she says, proudly showing off her speedboat licence as she tells me about her new crime drama, Annika.

In it, Nicola plays DI Annika Strandhed, the recently appointed head of the Marine Homicide Unit in Glasgow, which tackles crimes committed on the rivers and lakes of Scotland.

‘My co-star Jamie Sives and I had to pass our tests otherwise we wouldn’t have been allowed out on the River Clyde behind the steering wheels of these powerful boats to film scenes,’ she says.

Nicola Walker, 51, stars as head of the Marine Homicide Unit in Glasgow, DI Annika Strandhed (pictured) in a new series 

Nicola, 51, is clearly pleased to have passed with flying colours. ‘We had to know, and show, what to do if someone falls overboard, navigate our way around buoys and many other things.’

Jamie Sives – best known for his role as Jake in the BBC’s hit thriller Guilt – plays diver DS Michael McAndrews. Annika’s other colleagues include the headstrong DS Tyrone Clarke (Ukweli Roach), and DC Blair Ferguson, a role taken by Katie Leung, Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films.

But it’s Norwegian Annika who takes centre stage, and she has lots of quirks including using literary and historical references to solve crimes. In the opening episode it’s Captain Ahab’s search for a giant white whale, in the novel Moby-Dick, that she draws upon. 

In later episodes, Norse tales and Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy Of The People are on her mind. ‘She certainly doesn’t do things by the book,’ says Nicola. 

‘Her management skills are unorthodox – she skipped a leadership course to go on a mini break to Madrid – and is awkward with her team when she first meets them.

‘She tells them she should have brought them cupcakes on the opening day – in fact she offers them Norwegian liquorice, which is an acquired taste.’ The work of the marine homicide unit is not for the faint-hearted. 

Nicola, who got her speedboat license during lockdown, said she and Jamie were able to do their own thing on set. Pictured: Jamie Sives as Annika’s colleague Michael

The first of the six episodes features the discovery of a man’s body with a harpoon through his neck, while a later story concerns the drowning of a deeply unpopular scientist in Loch Katrine, Glasgow’s main water source.

Happily, the fun-filled filming process was in sharp contrast to the brutal storylines. In fact, once Nicola and Jamie had received their speedboat licences there was no stopping them.

‘Normally on the set of a TV drama you’re so infantilised – if you go to the toilet someone comes with you and almost waits outside, walkie-talkie in hand, telling the producer how long they reckon you’re going to be before you’re back on set,’ she says.

‘But, on this, we had far more freedom. The rest of the crew were on a floating platform but we couldn’t actually see them because they’d floated off.

‘Jamie and I were able to do our own thing, which included quite fast figures of eight in our RIBs [rigid inflatable boats], before someone came on the walkie-talkie to tell us to get back into position for the next shot.

Nicola (pictured) revealed Anikka’s character has been given a teenage daughter for TV, despite having a son on BBC Radio 4’s version 

‘But the production team’s radios weren’t always reliable. Walkie-talkies, very cold Scottish weather and very fast RIBs don’t do too well together and often Jamie’s radio would die within a few minutes of filming starting, freeing us up and making the two of us answerable to no one for large chunks of the working day!’

The character of Annika was already familiar to Nicola. The creation of writer Nick Walker – no relation – she’s played her in six series of Annika Stranded on BBC Radio 4, where she’s a leading light in Oslo police’s murder squad.

But in lockdown a plan was hatched to give her a new life on TV, with the character transplanted from Norway to Scotland.

‘On radio Annika has a son and that’s been changed to a teenage daughter, Morgan, but essentially it’s the same character,’ says Nicola.

Like many productions that are about to arrive on our screens, the filming of Annika took place in the shadow of Covid-19.

‘Scotland actually went into a second lockdown just as I was travelling up to Glasgow by train to start filming,’ says Nicola. ‘During the first, I’d been with my husband [actor/writer Barnaby Kay] and our teenage son Harry, which was great.

‘The second lockdown was tougher because I had to stay in Scotland and film completely away from my family. I didn’t see them for three months.

‘But at least we got the shoot completed. I remember reading the script for the first time and thinking to myself, ‘This will be impossible to film during Covid.’

‘Sometimes it’s only afterwards that you take in what you’ve done. The other day I was thinking, ‘What an achievement to have made Annika under those circumstances. How the hell did we do that?’

Nicola hopes to be back on the water filming season two of the TV series later this year – and hopefully getting a bit more screen time at the steering wheel.

‘When I watched the episodes, I was hoping there’d be more of me in the boat than there actually was,’ she says.

‘It never really feels as if we were out there, for hours at a time, making tight turns and chasing suspects, in the freezing cold. But trust me – we were!’ 

Annika, Tuesday, 9pm, Alibi.

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