91Èȱ¬

Pauline Quirke makes a welcome return to television this month as MJ Croft, a Detective Sergeant in charge of the Dover Missing Persons Unit – a new five-part drama for 91Èȱ¬ Daytime accompanying the factual series Missing Live.

Pauline has been absent from our screens for a couple of years while she set up a drama academy with her husband Steve Sheen.

"To be honest, I stopped for a while. I am not that desperate to be on telly, I only want to do stuff that really is worth doing. And I always ask myself, 'would I watch it?' If I can answer yes, then I'll do it," says Pauline.

"I took time out because I had stopped enjoying what I was doing and last year I realised I had been acting for 40 years – I started when I was nine years of age. But coming back to something like this has reminded me how much I enjoy it – especially when the scripts are as good as this. I would love to do another series of Missing.

"The brilliant thing about Missing is that there is no set pattern or formula to the stories, this sort of event can happen to anyone, it is universal. Anyone could go missing. You could say goodbye to a loved on a normal morning like any other and then never know what happened to them.

"I was amazed by how many people do go missing, that was a real eye-opener. There are the cases we all hear about, but so many that we don't. It surprised me that in this day and age with all the CCTV cameras and a big brother society that it is still possible to disappear."

Playing a detective is not a new departure for Pauline, having appeared previously as a Detective Inspector in Cold Blood and Maisie Raine.

"I am cornering the market in female middle-aged detectives but I have obviously upset a superior somewhere along the line, as I have been demoted to Detective Sergeant.

"I am fascinated by true crimes, so the books I read are either biographies or true crime – that's if I am not watching cookery programmes. But Missing is not just about solving crime and putting the pieces of the jigsaw together. MJ is not judgemental. We've all seen those hard-nosed detectives, they are cold and boring to watch. We wanted MJ to have some warmth and it is her human side which attracted her character to the MPU. The Unit is important to her because it changes people's lives."

Known affectionately by the rest of the cast as "Auntie", Pauline was away from home for six weeks filming in Dover and Maidstone.

"I had a little flat opposite Maidstone prison which was where we used to do the external shots for Birds Of A Feather when we first started – so I sent a text to Linda Robson and said 'guess where I am?'"

But filming in November on location in Dover was not without its challenges.

"I was very grateful for the scarves and horrendous knitwear MJ wears as we stood on a cliff top in 60mph winds!"

Pauline, however, was not just suffering the freezing temperatures for her art, she was due to have her right hip replaced after filming finished.

"I have osteoarthritis, and I was in terrible pain while we were filming. If there is any hobbling going on, that is why – normally I'm like a gazelle! On a couple of occasions I had to ask if we could start the scene with me out of the car, rather than trying to get out of the car, or at the top of the stairs not climbing them! Apparently my other hip is like an 18-year-old's and one Darcey Bussell would be proud of. I also have to have an arthroscopy on my knee after a fall at the Academy – but apart from that I am a picture of health!"

While Pauline has been away from television, life has not been restful.

"We opened our first Academy in 2007 and we now have them up and down the country and we have just opened the 17th – in Majorca.

"Over the years I have worked with kids at workshops, and I got talking to Sarah Counsel, a writer and drama teacher at Bristol Old Vic, about the performing arts and the whole celebrity culture and how it has gone mad. When I see children on programmes like X Factor, saying, if I don't get through it's the end of my world, it is just not right.

"When we first opened we never knew there would be more than one Academy and now we have 700 kids. The children, of course, have no idea who I am, I'm just the fat lady who makes the teas and coffees on opening day, but that's good!"