Amanda Redman relishes her role as partner in crime

SHE might have been a copper in New Tricks, but Amanda Redman has a criminal side too.

ITV’s new Sunday night drama The Trials of Jimmy Rose will be the third time where she has played the wife of a crook, after Sexy Beast and Honest. Are casting directors trying to tell her something? “I think they are,” she chuckles. “But I enjoy playing these characters because they are strong women. “I’ve always maintained most women are strong anyway but I think any woman who has brought up kids on her own, as my character has had to do in this, would have to be.” Amanda plays Jackie Rose in the three-part drama, childhood sweetheart of career criminal Jimmy (Ray Winstone) whose marriage has been spotted with long periods of absence at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. “Out of all the years they’ve been married they’ve spent more years apart than together as he’s been inside,” explains Amanda, who married second husband Damian in 2010. She has a daughter, Emily, from her first marriage to fellow actor Robert Glenister. “She’s still in love with Jimmy but she doesn’t need him.”

Ray Winstone as Jimmy and Amanda as Jackie (PA Photo/ITV/BEN BLACKALL) Released from his latest stretch and feeling all of his 61 years, Jimmy now wants to go straight but finds that decades of feeling like he has taken them for granted have soured his relationship with Jackie and their two children, son Joe and daughter Julie. Hearing that his granddaughter has gone off the rails, and eager to make amends with his family, Jimmy determines to bring her back home. But he triggers a chain of events that could force him back into crime. “I love working with Ray,” says Amanda. “We have been great mates for a long time and worked together as husband and wife on Sexy Beast. “I was very lucky on this job as the actress who plays my sister, Marion Bailey, is one of my oldest friends we are godmothers to each other’s daughters so it was a very relaxed set.”

Now aged 58, Amanda was nominated for a BAFTA earlier this year for her role as Gwen “Dove” Cooper the cuckolded wife of comedian Tommy Cooper in the one-off film Not Like That, Like This. It was her first gig after leaving New Tricks and, along with Jimmy Rose, gives lie to the suggestion there are no good roles around for actresses in their 50s. Voice that opinion to straight-talking Amanda, however, and you’re given short shrift.

David Threlfall as Tommy Cooper and Amanda Redman as Dove Cooper (Robert Viglasky / ITV)

“I’ve been very lucky but you can count on the fingers of one hand how many good roles there are for women my age,” she responds. “There are a lot of good actresses out there out of work. “It’s not the same for men script writers seem to know how to deal with men in their 50s but not women. “That’s wrong because the demographic for people who are watching television happens to be women my age, who would like to see themselves represented. “It’s not an easy decade irrespective of your profession,” she continues. “I’ve lost friends, I’ve lost my mother, it’s just not a terrific time in one’s life. Apparently, it gets easier in your 60s, so I’ve got that to look forward to.”

One thing viewers won’t have to look forward to is Amanda appearing on the new series of Strictly Come Dancing. She posted a photograph on Twitter earlier this summer of her and Anton du Beke at a Buckingham Palace garden party but says the topic of conversation was cucumber sandwiches, not contracts for Strictly. “I’ve turned it down three times,” she tells me. “I love watching the show but I’d rather stick hot needles in my eyes than appear on it. I’ve got two left feet and would be an absolute laughing stock.” The Trials of Jimmy Rose is on ITV, tonight at 9pm.