Chris O’Dowd appears in the new BBC drama The Crimson Petal & The White.  The four-part adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel starts this Wednesday, 6th April at 9pm on BBC2.

This week O’Dowd was interviewed in The Metro, where he talks about his unplanned move into comedy and the character he plays in The Crimson Petal & The White: “William’s a difficult character to like but I was attracted to his faults, I could understand them. He’s very selfish and deluded, he’s heartless and he has problems with loyalty. And he’s very lazy…he really is a piece of work.” According to critics who have seen his performance O’Dowd manages to render this character sympathetic, so it sounds like we’ll get the chance to see him flexing his acting muscles in this one.

He also mentions that his episode of Little Crackers (the innovative Christmas series on Sky which featured autobiographical short films directed by a host of UK comedy talent, including Julian Barratt and Julia Davis) is going to be turned into a sitcom series!

For a different perspective on The Crimson Petal & The White, you can read what the author of the book, Michel Faber, thinks of the TV adaptation in this interview with The List.  Overall it seems he’s pleased, saying: “I was happy; my story had given birth to this separate entity. It loses some things and it gains some things, and again with the TV series. It is darker overall than the book, it’s got more of a thriller pace to it, and there are elements of the book that are magnified to provide more televisual tension.”

If you catch it on TV this week, let us know what you think!