Dirty Denski at the Bulgarian Queen Vic
It is Dirty Den back on television as you never thought you would see him – where the only thing dirty is his overalls as he tries to live the simple country life.
Former EastEnders star Leslie Grantham returns to the small screen this week to star as a suspected MI6 agent in the Bulgarian version of Eastenders.
Grantham – who quit as crooked Den Watts when he left Albert Square to go back on the stage – plays a retired chemist trying to make a new life for himself in the country where thousands of Britons have settled.
The star plays the title role in the new locally made Friday night TV soap, The English Neighbour.
Grantham, 64, is the only non Bulgarian cast member in the show where he plays John, a Brit obsessed with living the simple life in his new country.
And when the debut episode is broadcast on the Bulgaria’s BNT channel next Friday (9 September) he will be speaking a mixture of Bulgarian and English – with the English dialogue subtitled in Bulgarian.
“At first I thought it was a British series being filmed in Bulgaria, but then they told me it was actually a Bulgarian series and I would be the only English person in it,” he explained.
In the series Grantham sets up home in the fictional village of Plodorodno and soon starts rubbing his neighbours up the wrong way.
The star – who swaps Den’s sharp suits for bib and brace overalls and a baseball cap – is soon set upon by scheming locals.
In these exclusive pictures from the soap, Grantham’s character is seen trying to fit in with his new neighbours while others show him clowning about with other cast members on the set.
“There’s a local femme fatale who definitely wants to cement international relations with him, an ex communist who is convinced he’s a spy and he still gets in the odd scrape with the law, a bit like Albert Square.
“He even becomes a regular down the local bar that passes for the Queen Vic,” said one set insider
“But he’s a lovely guy and a real professional. Most of the time he hasn’t really got a clue what any of the other actors are saying but it doesn’t seem to bother him,” they added.
Grantham explained: “I have to learn the script in English first to get the emotions right. Then I have to learn the same lines in Bulgarian.
“It’s strange being the only English actor on the set. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to let the English side down. Then there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to let down the Bulgarian side, so when I do screw up I get upset with myself.”
The star revealed he fell for the show when he realised how easy it would be to be seduced by a quiet life in another country.
“My character is totally fixated with Bulgaria. He comes out on his own to do all the paperwork,” he said.
“The village is a strange place – it thinks it’s English. There’s even one chap, named Noki, who wants to change his name to Nottingham Forest.
“So when an Englishman turns up, they think it’s great. But my character wants to go back to traditional Bulgarian ways, planting my own vegetables and doing everything myself.
“So the other villagers think I’m a bit mad,” he added.
But in an interview with local media, Grantham is scathing about what’s being served up to British TV fans today.
“Now it’s all frivolous, celebrity lose weight, celebrity change your wardrobe,” he told the Sofia Echo.
“If you offer a starving man dog pooh, he’s going to eat it. They’ve been told they should watch it and so they do.
“We now have satellite TV – about 200 channels – but, as my wife says: ‘All you look at is old movies and football,’” he added.
As the star of Britain’s biggest TV drama, Grantham once pulled in a record breaking 30.15 million viewers for the Christmas Day episode in 1986 where Den served divorce papers on wife Angie.
Now local critics are wondering if his new series will make any impact on local telly ratings. “It’s very unusual to have a character speaking English. People sort of know who he is but he isn’t really a star over here. Not yet, anyway,” one said.
via Croatian Times.
