For five years Jamie Bamber risked his life as Lee “Apollo” Adama in an ongoing battle against a race of robots determined to wipe out what was left of humanity in the futuristic sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. Not long after that series wrapped production, the actor took to the streets of London to help keep its citizens safe from the criminal element as (Junior) Detective Sergeant Matt Devlin in Law & Order: UK. From a professional as well as personal standpoint, the chance to work on a British version of the long-running U.S. franchise was something he could not pass up.

“I was intrigued with the concept of taking an iconic American TV show and remaking it for a British audience,” says Bamber. “This was also an opportunity for me to return home [to the UK] with a big splash and work there for the first time in five years. Personally it allowed me and my family to reacquaint ourselves with London life as well as family over there and gave our kids the chance to get to know their roots.

“So I sent the producers a couple of [audition] tapes and was then flown to New York to meet with them. We had a friendly and very positive chat and it sort of all fell into place. By the time I had finished work on Battlestar the deal was done and I had a month to get myself back to London with my family.

MORE

It should be clear by now that I just can’t quit ‘Battlestar Galactica.’

On June 11, BBC America began re-airing the acclaimed Syfy series, and there’s still time to get on board. The entire four-hour miniseries that kicks off ‘Battlestar’ airs starting at 5PM ET Saturday, so if you’ve never seen this thought-provoking drama, now’s your chance.

Last week, I talked to ‘The Closer’ and ‘Battlestar’ actress Mary McDonnell about working on the Syfy show, and I also recently chatted with Jamie Bamber, another member of the ‘Battlestar’ cast who also appears in ‘Outcasts,’ a sci-fi drama that debuts on BBC America 9PM ET Saturday.

Bamber, who also appears in BBC America’s ‘Law & Order: UK,’ said he still constantly meets people who say they meant to watch ‘Battlestar.’

“People are always saying, ‘I’ve been told it’s good, I never got round to seeing it,’” Bamber said. “Not everyone has seen it, and BBC America has a whole different audience that may not have been tuning into Syfy all those years ago” when ‘Battlestar’ began.

MORE

Jamie Bamber is one of the pioneers of the recent British Invasion of American TV. In 2004, the handsome, London-born actor began a five-year run on the acclaimed reboot of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, skillfully assuming an American accent as the morally upright Apollo.

But here’s a less well-known fact: he’s actually American.

“I ought to say that as a lifelong U.S. citizen my position is different from most Brits coming here,” he said, on-set shooting a pilot in Vancouver. While Bamber spent his formative years in the UK, his U.S. citizenship is owed to his American father. He now lives in L.A. with his wife and three children.

“I came because I was able to work here and because I felt a need to be here,” he adds. “I wanted to acknowledge my U.S. heritage and to belong to it more closely. Having said that I am certainly British by formation and education and readily think of London as home. I had never lived in the U.S. till 2007.”

After a stint in Britain as DS Matt Devlin on Law & Order: UK and, recently, Mitchell on the sci-fi drama Outcasts, Bamber may return to American TV this fall. He has re-teamed with Battlestar exec producer Ron Moore for the NBC pilot 17th Precinct, an innovative cop drama with supernatural elements. Bamber plays a Yankee police officer on the series, trading in Apollo’s patrician tones for a working-class Irish accent. “My preparation was pretty minimal,” he says, “although I did re-watch The Fighter and The Town to absorb a hint of Bostonian Irish.”

Bamber joins the likes of Minnie Driver, Ioan Gruffudd, Jason Isaacs, and Toby Stephens in the cadre of UK-based actors booking U.S. pilots this season. We had the chance to ask the 38-year-old star why so many British thespians make the westward pilgrimage each year. And he gives an illuminating look at the ins and outs of the TV business on both sides of the pond.

MORE

Jamie Bamber returns in a new series of the crime drama Law & Order: UK, screening on Thursday, Sept 9 on ITV1 (not STV)…

Is it good to be back playing Matt Devlin again?
“Yes. Mainly, I look forward to working with Bradley Walsh again. He’s a very funny man and a very different kind of actor to me. He’s fantastic in the show. We’re like a double act and it’s the double-act part of the show that’s the appeal of it for me. We’re not quite good-cop-bad-cop, but it’s that sort of chemistry between these guys as they try to get information out of witnesses and suspects. Matt always pre-judges and sees everything in a black-and-white way, while Bradley’s character, Ronnie, is more measured.”

Do we get to know more about Matt’s life away from work?
“We have an episode where you get a window into his past and he has to deal with his failure to be a proper friend to someone from his past. As an actor, the chance to get inside the character with a story like that is a real treat. But that’s not what the show is really about. It’s about the stories, not the characters.

“It’s a format show and the format is about giving people a moral dilemma, a conundrum to solve – and they get to watch the criminal justice system come to terms with dealing with that. It entertains, challenges, stimulates and provokes and each week is a separate story. You don’t need to have watched the previous week to pick it up. It’s a good format.”

Looking through the storylines for this series, the first episode seems to have a lot of echoes of the Jamie Bulger case…
“The similarity is deliberate. The cases we pick are the complex ones, the morally ambiguous ones. The best episodes are the ones that draw on something that people will recognise from the news headlines. Law & Order is all about showing people who mess up other people’s lives, and how we as a society cope with them. Drama is there to examine the society in which we live.”

Do you think it gives viewers a more informed idea about how the police and CPS work?
“Yes and it’s good that it does. As a member of the public, you form your opinions on the police and the Crown Prosecution Service via the headlines – and they are usually negative. The tabloids in particular like to ram down our throats how the CPS has gone soft or how the police are corrupt.”

Your next role is in the new BBC sci-fi drama Outcasts, isn’t it?
“That’s right. Initially, I wasn’t sure about doing it because I didn’t want to do something so similar to Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar was such an untouchable experience. I didn’t want to sully it with something else that might not live up to it. I play a pioneer on a colonised planet. Earth has gone kaput and there are 50,000 people left trying to make an existence for themselves on a planet far, far away. But he’s also damaged goods – he’s a like bomb waiting to go off.”

Have you anything else coming up?
“I’m doing my first French language film. It’s a romantic comedy and I play a character loosely based on Andre Agassi. I speak the language and it’s been a dream of mine to work in French for years.”

SOURCE

Jamie recently did a new interview with Galactica.TV which can be read here.