Leo Suter On Becoming Lynley: ‘Class These Days Looks Very Different’

There’s a new detective on the block… Well, you might remember him from the 00s, when Nat Parker led The Inspector Lynley Mysteries on the BBC. But this latest version of Tommy Lynley is played by Leo Suter – with a fresh face, coat and attitude for the aristocratic detective. Launching on BBC One next week, Lynley brings the storied detective – based on author Elizabeth George’s beloved character – bang up to date, joined by Sofia Barclay as Barbara Havers, the other half of this crime-fighting duo.

We caught up with Leo just before Christmas to find out more about becoming Lynley, from shaking off any Bullingdon Club connotations to narrowing down that perfect detective coat.

Q&A: Leo Suter On Lynley

Hi Leo, how’s life going at the moment?

Life is going well, thanks. We’ve just done the junket for Lynley, and tonight I’m doing a reading at St Paul’s Cathedral for the Cancer Research Carol Concert, which I’m excited and nervous about because it’s going to be emotional. I’m a recent father, so there’s a lot going on and being up there in St Paul’s Cathedral will feel quite special.

Lynley is about to air on BBC One. How does that feel?

It feels really good. It’s a strange thing because we filmed it more than a year ago. It’s already out in America, but I felt quite far removed from that. Being on the BBC in a prime slot is really exciting. And it’s always nice to share something that you worked so hard on. It finally gets to have a life on people’s screens, which is ultimately what it’s all about.

‘Lynley has a slight anglophile feel to it, someone who’s looking at England and British society from afar.’ (DI Thomas Lynley (LEO SUTER) & DS Barbara Havers (Sofia BARCLAY) in Lynley © BBC/Playground TV)

How did America react to Lynley?

All of my in-laws are American, so they’re my number one fans! It’s been really positive: the show did really well on Britbox, which is its home over there, and all the Americans are pleased with it, which feels good. It’s funny that the author of the books, Elizabeth George, is American; there’s definitely that flavour in the books and in the TV shows – a slight anglophile feel to it, someone who’s looking at England and British society from afar.

Can you give us an elevator pitch for the show?

How long is the elevator?! It’s a classic British detective show with knotty, complex crimes that unfold over 90 minutes. It’s a detective in a tweed coat driving around the countryside in a flashy sports car, figuring it out. It’s a tried and tested model, but I think the interesting thing for ours is that it really leans into the British class dynamic. That’s what the books and the original show was really all about – the fact that there’s this upper class detective and a working class sergeant. But Britain has changed loads since the 80s when Elizabeth George first wrote the books, and the 00s when Nat Parker first played Lynley in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries on the BBC. There is an interesting transformation of what an upper class-working class dynamic looks like now, and I think it will be interesting for fans of the original to see how that has modulated.

Had you seen the original series before joining the project?

I was doing my GCSEs when it came out, so I missed it! When I got the part, I watched the first episode that was available on BBC iPlayer, ‘Great Deliverance’, and I quickly realised that our version is very different. It is based on different books and the world of ours is much more contemporary. The Lynley that has been adapted to the screen for our version by Steve Thompson operates in a very different space. But I became immediately aware of why people loved it. I think Nat Parker does a standout job as Detective Inspector Lynley. But you have to appreciate the fact that a reboot is not a carbon copy of the thing that came before. You’ll never succeed [at trying that]. I’ve had to be confident in the fact that I’m going to bring something different to what Nat brought to the role. So there was a calmness in appreciating what existed in this back catalogue, knowing that I was going to do my own thing and bring a bit of Leo to Lynley. That was why I was hired!

How would you describe your Tommy Lynley?

Well interestingly when the tape comes in from your agent, it’s got a little blurb that explains who the character is – and there are a lot of similarities between me and Tommy Lynley on the surface. We both went to Oxford, although Lynley is an aristocrat who could have chosen a life taking over the estate and living quite comfortably in the family pile. He decides not to do that: he pursues a career in the police force, which is rather a strange thing to do for an aristocrat. It’s a risky, tough profession. My angle on that was that I went to Oxford and studied hard, got a good degree, and most of my friends have a very well trodden path ahead of them: going into the city, into management consultancy or training to be lawyers or doctors. That was a path I could have gone down, but didn’t. I decided quite early on that I wanted to be an actor – and that’s a scary profession, not without its pitfalls. So there’s the simple similarity that Lynley and Leo both went to Oxford, but also that we didn’t take the conventional route.

‘Factoring race into class is essential for a modern take.’ (DI Thomas Lynley (LEO SUTER) & DS Barbara Havers (Sofia BARCLAY) in Lynley © BBC/Playground TV)

Class these days looks very different. I know posh people, and they don’t wear it on their sleeves. They’re not toffs in the same way they could be 45 years ago. People don’t make a big song and dance about going to posh schools or Oxbridge. In many ways, it’s the kind of thing you keep close to your chest. Once upon a time, if someone was in the Bullingdon Club, it’d be like, ‘Oh, la di da.’ But now you’d be laughed out of the room. It’s just so crass to behave like that. How Lynley comes across in those early books and in moments in the previous version of the TV show was relevant to that class context. But in this day and age, it’s just not right. 

Our Lynley is a bit different, a bit more contemporary. I think that’s one of the joys of a reboot: when you bring it into the modern age, that brings with it new, different flavours to cook with. For one, our Barbara Havers, played brilliantly by Sofia Barclay, is not white but British Asian. That brings a whole world of different lived experience into the mix, which I think makes it richer. And I think factoring race into the whole question of upper class-working class thing we’re trying to play with is essential for a modern take on that duality.

Did you do anything special to prepare for the role?

A big part of preparation for me is finding the costume. That was quite a fun process, knowing that the inspector and his coat is a big part of these shows. Getting the right coat was a real Cinderella slipper moment. The coat we landed on I had actually found in Dublin and bought for myself – knowing that I much preferred it to any of the other coats that were on offer! I thought I would wear it to work and hope that it stuck. And sure enough, the master plan came true. I brought it in, and the director said, ‘Hang on a sec. That’s a lovely coat. Maybe that’s the inspector’s coat.’ So they bought up all the stock of those coats, and they became the detective’s coat. I got to keep it, too, so now I get to swan around London as Inspector Lynley.

Tell me about filming in Dublin.

It was brilliant. I did three years of Vikings: Valhalla in Dublin, and it was the same crew and a lot of the same locations, so it was like going back to family. That job was a big part of my career. I loved it, but it was also very affected by Covid. The camera department was always behind two masks and had to be very separate. Over the course of three years you obviously get closer, but I’d never actually seen them without their masks on! Whereas on this job, I got to hang out with all the boys and not have masks over our faces. So that was really, really special. Now I’ve lived in Dublin for four years basically, and I feel really comfortable and at home there.

What are you most excited for audiences to see?

All the scenes I have with Daniel Mays. He’s such a brilliant actor, and he’s done so many police procedurals, so he was a brilliant scene partner to have. Also the scenes driving around in my Jensen Interceptor with Sofia next to me! That was a lot of good fun. 

I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s only at the end of the fourth episode, the season finale, that Lynley shares something emotional about himself he has in common with Havers – something that is a big part of her life, but he waits until right at the very end of our show to actually share it with her. It’s a really tender and sweet moment, and it speaks to the kind of character he is. That he actually is a bit of a lone wolf, and can suppress things, keep himself to himself. When he shares that information with Havers, it is a real moment of extending the hand of friendship and sealing the bond of their partnership. It’s a very satisfying moment. But you’ll have to watch all four episodes to get the full pay off!

‘Tommy Lynley is a bit of a lone wolf.’ (DI Thomas Lynley (LEO SUTER) in Lynley © BBC/Playground TV/Jonathan Hession)

Any standout filming locations?

Episode three begins with Lynley going on a run in the marshes and finding a body. Those marshes were the same marshes we used in Vikings Valhalla when Harold Hardrada had pulled down London Bridge and they were riding these sort of Viking surfboards. So there was this bizarre deja vu running through those fields and reminiscing on the time that I had long hair and a long beard and was doing these crazy battle scenes.

Also just being at the seaside. We’ve got these wonderful seaside moments [in Lynley] and we were blessed with some pretty good weather. There are some gorgeous shots of what is in fact the Irish Sea, but is meant to be the North Sea.

Anything you can tease about a possible second series?

Well, all I would say is that there’s so much still to explore. The fact that Lynley only shares that truth about himself with Havers right at the end of our series proves there’s still so much that these two characters can get to know about one another. It feels like they’re only just getting started. In terms of the books, Elizabeth George has written lots of them and continues to do so, so there’s definitely legs in it. I would be thrilled to get a chance to continue playing Lynley, because it was genuinely really good fun with a great bunch of people. And I think people will really enjoy the good old murder mystery.

Any roles in the pipeline that you’re excited about? (If you’re allowed to tell us!)

This summer I did a film called The Face of Horror, with a really visionary auteur director called Anna Biller. It was the first time I’d ever shot on film which felt very classy. Anna has a really extraordinary visual style; her colours and costume are really stand-out, unlike anything else. Her film The Love Witch (2016) is a cult classic – so fans of that will know what I mean. It was really exciting to be doing something very different [to Lynley]: Anna wanted an acting style that she described as Shakespearean – quite big, and quite different to being a detective! I also wear very vivid, technicolour mediaeval costumes in it, so that was great fun, too. 

I also just did a play [The Line of Beauty at London’s Almeida Theatre], which was really special. It was the first time I’d done a play since university, which was more than 10 years ago. It reminded me of how much fun it is to be on stage – the electricity of a performance every night. It’s such a thrill.

Can we expect to see you back on stage soon?

I hope so! I really, really enjoyed it, and there’s something about the camaraderie that you get with a group of actors when you’re going through a run together that’s really wonderful. That’s how I got into acting: doing plays at school and university. That’s the world I come from. The film and TV world happened after university and is this road I’ve gone down, but I only wanted to become an actor based on really enjoying doing plays. I’ve definitely got to do more of them.

‘There’s definitely a romcom in me somewhere, and it would be fun to scratch that itch.’ (Photography by David Reiss; grooming by Michele Baylis; styling by Grace Gilfeather [sweater, Soft Goat; trousers, Kit Blake])

We did a production of Jez Butterworth’s The Winterling at university. I did lots of plays at university. Some of them were good, some of them not so good. This one was really, really good – and it was really nice to feel like I was doing something that was good with really talented people. That cemented my idea of wanting to be an actor. It was with a bunch of other students who are now professional actors as well. David Shields who is in Punch [on the West End] at the moment was in it, as was Arty Froushan who was also in The Line of Beauty and is a wonderful actor. We’re now doing different things, but I think that troupe of us would all look back on that play fondly – and as something that probably inspired our careers.

What’s a genre you’d like to do more of?

It’s nice having done the detective – that feels very much like a genre that one should tick off. I’ve done the action thing with Vikings Valhalla. I’ve done the period drama thing. I’ve not done a romcom. I’ve done comedy: I had a small part in Intelligence with Nick Mohammed and David Schwimmer, which was brilliant. The improv and the wit… Being on a comedy set is a different beast. I loved it. I think there’s definitely a romcom in me somewhere, and it would be fun to scratch that itch.

Who is an actor, writer or director you’d love to work with?

There are a lot, but I would say some of my fondest acting memories are of the early days doing plays at university. Working again with those people would be really special. We’ve known each other now for 15 years! I know that is a bit of a cop out answer because you want someone new, but being able to come back to work with people who you worked with before makes it richer – you’ve got stories that will add to things. So yeah, doing plays again with my uni mates would be quite good fun.

What Leo Suter Is Loving Right Now

I’m currently watching… I just introduced my American wife to The Night Manager so we can watch season 2 together. It stands the test of time!

What I’m reading… Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter to my newborn.

The last thing I watched (and loved) was… Mr. Scorsese

What I’m most looking forward to seeing… KENREX at The Other Place in London. Jack Holden who stars in that is the guy who adapted The Line of Beauty for the Almedia.

My ultimate cultural recommendation… Sir John Soane’s Museum

I’m looking forward to… My dad’s carol concert this weekend, which is our big family Christmas thing.

Leo Suter stars in Lynley, beginning 8.30pm Monday 5 January 2026 on BBC One. Catch up with all episodes on BBC iPlayer.

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