When Ralf Little left his role as Detective Neville Parker in the BBC’s Death in Paradise last year, his mum fretted he wouldn’t work again.
“About six months ago I went to visit her,” the 45-year-old says. “My mum’s done this my whole career – she’s always worried about me. She went, ‘So, I’ve been thinking, now that your career’s over you could go back to medical school this September and qualify in five years and the good news is you could still work till you’re 75.”
Little was indeed once on the edge of a career as a doctor. He dropped out of studying medicine at Manchester University when he was 18, in 1998, and first appeared on TV screens as put-upon little brother Antony in The Royle Family.
But unlike his mother, he has never himself looked back since dropping out. Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash’s beloved sitcom about working class family life made him a household name and launched his acting career – which, despite the departure from Death in Paradise – is far from over.
He recently shot dystopian movie The Flaw, in Greece, and is recording the fifth series of his Two Pints podcast with his former co-star (in the eponymous noughties’ sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps) and longtime friend, Will Mellor. The pair are taking it on tour with 12 live dates this November.
Speaking to me today over video call from a hotel in Winchester, he says there’s a serious side to the podcast. For all its silliness and innuendo – the show promises the two “chatting shit” with each other, celebs and guests over two pints, or cups of tea – he finds the space for conversation to help him make sense of modern life. “You do a podcast and you can really have some time and space to figure out thoughts and talk things through. Life’s complicated, things are complicated, society’s complicated, ideas are complicated – you’ve got to be able to parse them out properly.”
He was initially hesitant about podcasting. “For someone who’s quite gregarious and likes to chat, I’m actually quite private. So, to sit down and let it all hang out on a podcast, or show facets of my life on Instagram, I did feel a little bit reticent.
“I didn’t think it would do any harm but I’m an actor and I’ve never wanted to be a personality. I don’t want people’s perception of me to be so familiar that they can’t see me as a different character.”
But that hasn’t been a problem so far. With his endearing, down-to-earth performance, Little made DI Neville in Death in Paradise a likeable nerd, who had gratifying levels of depth. The gentle, Caribbean-set mystery, which with its 14 series is one of our longest-running detective series, earned him a surprising new legion of fans over his four series run. “I’m big with teenagers again. Apparently it’s one of the last few shows on television that families will sit and view by appointment.”
The show, broadcast in over 240 territories, is so popular that it generated its own tourism on Guadalupe, where it is filmed, with Little using breaks to show fans around the set. “People would come from France, the UK, we had Italians, Germans, Hungarians, loads of Dutch. Some guy came over with his two teenage daughters from LA where you can walk down the street and see stars. I was like, if people are gonna make that much effort, [spend] so much money, so much time, the least you can do is spend five minutes showing them round.”
Little grew up in Greater Manchester. Casting agents spotted him acting in small roles in series including in Coronation Street, having picked up parts following early displays of talent in his school plays. His breakthrough as Antony Royle, the household skivvy and butt of jokes among the warm but lazy Royles, was sensitive and lovable and gave audiences a quietly intelligent and funny character who matured on screen.
Funding for original scripted TV and new regional voices are both on the demise. Would a show like The Royle Family stand a chance of being greenlit in today’s industry?
“The reality is that The Royle Family only got made because of several strokes of luck,” says Little. Aherne effectively held a final series of her spectacularly popular The Mrs Merton Show to ransom on the proviso that the reluctant BBC make The Royle Family. “It’s slightly passed into history as a genius bit of commissioning but even that was made through hustle.”
Now, he says, “there are fewer opportunities, fewer government programmes for young working class voices to get into the industry – the Seventies’ and Eighties’ Jimmy McGoverns and (Royle Family co-star) Ricky Tomlinsons.
“It’s a weird time. The entirety of television has completely changed from under me while I’ve been doing my career. It’s a constant grind and constant hustle to try and get anything made.”
He compares Aherne’s nineties grit to that of Liverpudlian Stephen Graham’s with Adolescence. “I think things go in waves. You get certain trailblazers like Stephen Graham going, ‘I’ve got this great idea and a bit of power and I’m gonna pair up with [Adolescence writer] Jack Thorne’. That’s how these extraordinary voices come through. I hope that there’s space and room for those voices to continue to be found.”
I mention how in The i Paper recently, A Thousand Blows actor Daniel Mays described the British TV industry as “f**king dead”, and how executives have talked of its “existential crisis”. Little nods in agreement. Despite his success, does he, like his mum does on his behalf, still worry about getting work?
“Yes, of course. Very much so. I’m not saying I wake up every day and have done for 30 years worrying, it’s not like that. But until you’re Brad Pitt, until you’re at that level where you’ve got five scripts in front of you going, ‘How lucky am I, I’ll do this one’ – which is not the case for almost every actor on the planet – I don’t think it ever goes away. There is always an anxiety about it.”
The early career influences of Aherne and Cash have played into Little’s navigation of both acting and fame. He worried, for example, that “icky” social media would be akin to “selling out” and impact his credibility. “That’s so deeply ingrained in me through Caroline and Craig, who taught me that you keep your integrity. That’s why it took me so long to bother with Instagram.
“About six years ago I literally had a conversation with myself and said, ‘These cultural ideas you’re clinging onto just don’t exist anymore.’ It still doesn’t sit massively comfortably with me, this self-promotion, but that is the world.”
He had his fingers burned in the process. When Little challenged former health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s statistics on NHS mental health figures on Twitter, their ensuing spat became headline-fodder, which left a typically private Little “very uncomfortable”. What had compelled him to wade in?
“Naivety. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. I was trying. I had a platform and I didn’t want to look back and say I actually was able to try and say decent things but didn’t ever try. In the end I gave up.” The invasion that the fall-out brought was too much; he sticks mostly to promoting Two Pints now. “I also don’t know if I changed a single thing, by the way.”
Outside social media though, I certainly associate Little with decency – loyalty and patience have been variously traits of DI Parker, Antony Royle and his Two Pints character Jonny. But, “I’m a completely different personality type to pretty much any character I’ve played. I actually have quite a dark sense of humour.”
So, who would he love to play? “One line in any Star Wars film and I’m out, I’m retiring.” Meanwhile, he suspects Dan Harmon, creator of his favourite show, Rick and Morty, might enjoy The Royle Family: “I have this little dream that one day someone’s going to show it to him and he’s going to say, ‘This is amazing – I want to get that guy to play a character’.”
In the meantime, he says: “I’m very grateful to have become seen as very able to play this nice, slightly sweet guy. But I’d love to play a real nasty piece of s**t.”
November Nonsense: Two Pints Podcast Live Tour will be on the road from 1-22 November. CuffeandTaylor.com
