Stephen Campbell Moore on why we need dramas that tackle the British Empire – and why TV audiences shouldn't be 'spoon-fed'

‘The Last Post’ actor defends the ‘confusing’ plot of The Child in Time, and explains why he’s started taking television as seriously as theatre

Stephen Campbell Moore stars in ‘The Last Post’ (BBC)

We’ve been seeing a lot of Stephen Campbell Moore lately. He was in the BBC’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, crops up in Goodbye Christopher Robin, a film about AA Milne out this weekend, and stars in The Last Post, Peter Moffat’s new Sunday night BBC drama about military police officers and their wives in Yemen in the 1960s.

“It doesn’t matter when you film stuff, it somehow always comes out in the same two weeks and people say, ‘You’re in everything!’” laughs Campbell Moore. “I have plenty of time when I’m out of work – but people accuse you of monopolising the television.”

Still, you can’t fault his work ethic: Campbell Moore was so determined to film The Last Post he put off having surgery on a brain tumour till after four months of shooting in South Africa. It’s the second time the actor has gone under the knife to remove tumours from the pituitary gland.

You can see why you might not want to miss out on The Last Post, however: it’s an ambitious work, offering both relationship drama and high-stakes conflict; it questions the role of the British Army in a little-known period of history, and looks at the position of women in an era of huge social change. It’s glamorous, period telly – I’d kill for Moore’s on-screen wife Jessica Raine’s wardrobe – but also politically thorny.

Campbell Moore and Jessica Raine in ‘The Last Post’ (BBC)

“My character, Ed Laithwaite, is in this crisis point in his life – trying to work out ethically and morally if he’s in the right place, seeing oppressive, interrogative tactics and the way prisoners are treated,” explains Campbell Moore. “His loyalty lies with his men, but he has a growing degree of sympathy with the people they’re fighting.

“It reminded me of some of [George] Orwell’s characters: he’s no superhero – he’s a character of mediocrity – but he aspires to be better than he is. Part of his potential tragedy is you’re not quite sure if he has the capacity to do it.”

Laithwaite doesn’t share the bantering bonhomie of the other officers; he’s an outsider in this macho world, beginning to question both its authority and efficacy. In this, I suggest, he represents a more modern or enlightened voice: today, we see such imperialistic approaches as sowing seeds for future conflict.

“I think that is true on a broader level – he does present the argument that nowadays most people would,” agrees Campbell Moore. “The oppressive force enslaves itself through bad methods, as we’ve seen in wars recently; we become culpable through an ethical degradation.”

‘The Last Post’ is on BBC One on Sundays (BBC)

The history of the colony of Aden, in what is now Yemen, won’t be familiar to many viewers. It is bizarre, I suggest, that while other countries are forever examining their troubled pasts – America and slavery, Germany and Nazism – in Britain we don’t really face up to the legacy of empire, and avoid telling those stories.

“Yes, we let ourselves off the hook – there is a sense that what Britain represented in the world is not as just a cause as we’ve been trying to present for decades,” he says, adding that children should be taught that about the British Empire and how it was “a double-edged sword”. “If we learn about history, our choices become a bit more conscious.”

This allows me to segue seamlessly into The Child in Time and its educational debates... Campbell Moore played Charles, who despite writing a government paper on the need for more rigid discipline for children, rejects society and runs off into the woods in a desperate bid to find his own inner child. Campbell Moore has a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter with his wife Claire Foy, star of The Crown (and just announced as the new Lisbeth Salander in a reboot of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise). As a parent, what does he make of the different attitudes towards childhood McEwan was exploring?

Campbell Moore starring opposite Nicole Kidman in ‘Photograph 51’ in 2015 (Johan Persson)

“Discipline and control and conservatism vs freedom and being yourself and your own animal – anyone who’s completely on one side is excessive,” he concludes. It’s a joy watching his daughter’s natural character emerging, something you’d never want to constrain, but he also acknowledges that complete freedom is equally unwise: “I’m learning about this: as a parent if you give as much rope to your child as possible they’ll go around destroying the environment!”

Although hailed by critics as emotionally devastating and intelligently crafted, The Child in Time also prompted a backlash: its main story, of a couple whose daughter disappears, was told non-chronologically, and viewers complained it was confusing; a suicide was also criticised for lacking clear motivation. The press whipped up a pretty dismal story about the drama being “too difficult”.

“One of the things I really loved about the screenplay was the obliqueness of it,” says Campbell Moore, adding drily that “the phrase spoon-fed comes into my head” at such complaints.

“Actually, it’s great being in things [that divide audiences]: you have people almost angry because it’s not what they bought their telly for, and other people relieved it had that complexity. And people watched to the end – it obviously gripped people even if they were upset about it.”

He also points out that suicide is so often devastating because it’s unexpected or unexplained. “I’ve experienced it a couple of times when people have taken their own lives and that clear narrative isn’t there: there are signs, fragments from which you can try to piece something together.”

Campbell Moore appears in ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’, starring Domhnall Gleeson as AA Milne

Goodbye Christopher Robin may also confound audience expectations: for all that it’s about the creator of Winnie the Pooh, it’s hardly a cuddly kids story. “AA Milne comes back from the First World War and has what we’d call PTSD. He moves to the country, and almost for the first time, really meets his son. It’s almost a begrudging relationship – he’s trying to write a book about pacifism and this lovely boy keeps knocking on his door and asking if he wants to go for a walk and can he think of a good name for a donkey…”

Moore plays Ernest Shepard, Milne’s friend, an artist also suffering shell-shock, and who provided the much-loved original Winnie the Pooh drawings.

“I went to the British Museum and got to see all his original sketches: Eeyore, Piglet, Winnie the Pooh,” says Campbell Moore. “I love drawing as well so I spent quite a few hours in their trying to mimic his style – that sort of research is very good fun.”

Moore may be all over our screens, but his career so far has been as much on the stage. And looking at his theatrical CV, he’s clearly got impeccable taste: The History Boys, Clybourne Park, Chimerica, Photograph 51… “I’ve been very lucky with those plays in that I instinctively felt they were brilliant and they’ve done well,” he acknowledges.

He admits he was picky about writers – and now, perhaps understandably in the wake of brain surgery, is beginning to extend that pickiness to film and TV projects too. “I used to have more respect for the stage, I’ve always gone by the quality of the writing. And I’ve only really recently realised that if you’re going to have a valuable relationship with the screen, you have to do the same thing. That’s a little revolution that I’ve had!”

If his current run is anything to go by, it’s a quiet revolution that has done no harm at all to his career.

‘The Last Post’ begins 1 October, BBC One; ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ is in cinemas now; ‘The Child in Time’ is available on iPlayer