Stephen Tompkinson has a cut on his lip which is so realistic it bears closer inspection.

“You should see the other fella,” he smiles, before admitting it’s fake.

The actor is standing outside an office block in Leeds, which is doubling for a police station in gritty new ITV1 drama DCI Banks: Aftermath.

The drama was filmed in West and North Yorkshire, with locations including the Provident Financial building on Sunbridge Road, Bradford, which doubles as the exterior of the police station where Banks is based, Headingley, where the murders took place, and White Holme Reservoir in Calderdale. DCI Banks’s Cottage is in Huby, North Yorkshire ‘’The setting is a character in itself, it’s very atmospheric,” says Stephen. “It offers both the metropolitan city and the countryside surrounding it. There are so many varied locations in such a close area and they all afford you different moods. I’ve had a great time filming here.”

Stephen has just rehearsed a scene in which he interrogates a suspect. The hushed set looks just like any other cops and robbers drama – until the eponymous character blows his top and his emotion fills the room.

This pilot, which Stephen hopes will be made into a series, is based on a crime novel by award-winning Yorkshire writer Peter Robinson.

Stephen plays Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, a troubled, workaholic policeman who has been advised to move to Yorkshire from London, for what he hoped would be a quieter life. But Banks’s workload shows no sign of calming down.

The drama begins with a domestic call to a seemingly ordinary house in the North, leading to a policeman’s murder and an injured suspect.

Before long, DCI Banks is faced with the most challenging case of his life involving the discovery of four bodies, a serial rapist and the search for missing girl, Leanne Wray.

The fact that Banks also has DS Annie Cabbot from Professional Standards on his case only adds to his problems.

Dressed in Banks’s uniform, a blue suit and red tie, Stephen Tompkinson is light years away from his highly-strung alter ego. He’s only too happy to talk about the show, which the star thinks is rather special.

“He’s a humanitarian, he takes it all too much to heart,” he says.

While detective dramas can be formulaic, Stephen says the polished, intelligent script from Robert Murphy, the man behind drama series Cape Wrath, really helped the cast. “His adaptation was really gripping,” says Stockton-on-Tees-born Stephen, 44. “You get right inside Banks’s head, the tension is palpable.”

He went to extreme lengths to ensure he captured the right tone for his troubled hero by tracking down its creator.

“I was desperate to meet Peter Robinson,” he says. “He’s from Yorkshire, but lives in Canada. I flew over to meet him. I wanted to find out why he came up with the character, what it is he liked about him and try to get as near to the essence of Banks as I possibly could, as a mark of respect.”

Peter Robinson has written many thrillers involving DCI Banks, but the Aftermath story stood out for Stephen.

“We chose it because it was the strongest individual case,” he says. “When you’ve only got a two-hour pilot, we didn’t want to cloud the audience’s view of who Banks was with too much of his back story.”

When asked what has been the most interesting day of filming, he doesn’t have to think too hard.

“Well yesterday was very chilling,” he says. “It was the discovery of four bodies in the cellar of a seemingly ordinary-looking semi-detached terraced house. Your immediate thoughts are that Fred West’s house would have been like that. From the outside you have no idea, and why should you? So it’s a real shock. The art department have done an amazing job.”

This may be a work of fiction, but creating the scene had a dramatic effect on cast and crew.

“There was hardly anything said, people just got on with their jobs,” says Stephen. “There were three bodies wrapped in polythene and one girl playing a fresh dead body. Very disturbing, very chilling, but these things do go on.”

Twice-divorced Stephen, who’s the father of ten-year-old Daisy, rose to fame on Channel 4’s Drop The Dead Donkey and is one of the nation’s most popular actors,.

He directed BBC drama The Lightning Kid four years ago and hasn’t ruled out a return to the director’s chair.

“They keep offering Wild At Heart, but the only time my schedule would allow would be right at the end of filming,” he smiles. “The last episodes are always the most dramatic, and I don’t know that I’m ready to make that leap.”

Back to DCI Banks, and Stephen confesses it was good to get his teeth into something gritty.

“Variety is the spice of any actor’s life,” he says. “Having both shows for ITV is a big help. If Banks goes to a series, they’ll make it work alongside Wild At Heart, so I’ll have the best of two amazing worlds, with a bit of luck.”

- DCI Banks: Aftermath begins on Monday on ITV1 at 9pm.