YOU might know him as former beat cop Tony in Shameless or killer Kenny in last year’s Cracker revival.
Now Anthony Flanagan is about to take the lead as a detective hunting a serial killer in new two-part ITV1 thriller Instinct.
But he’d just filmed an altogether different role when we met earlier this month.
Stockport actor Anthony plays an engineer called Orin in episode seven of the new Doctor Who series.
Not that he has any ambitions to fill David Tennant’s shoes when the moment comes for the Time Lord’s next regeneration.
“It’s almost like Coronation Street,” he told me. “You’re just living nine months doing the same sort of thing.”

Instinct writer and executive producer Lizzie Mickery certainly hopes we’ll be seeing more of her creation. As ever, it largely depends on the ratings the drama gets next Monday and Tuesday.
Her other work includes the first three films in The Messiah series and The State Within, one of the best TV dramas of the last 12 months.
Parts of Instinct are bloody and shocking but Lizzie maintained: “I don’t think it is particularly gory. Often with these things, you see probably less than you think you see.
“But it’s also disingenuous, if you’re going to do something like this, to say, ‘These things don’t hurt.’
“You watch some US movie, a crash-bang thriller, and somebody gets really badly done over and the next thing they’re standing up and they’re alright.
“I really think that it’s almost a responsibility – you can’t hide away from the fact that violence and these sort of situations are incredibly painful.
“But I do think our imaginations fill in far more than you actually see on the screen.”
Click here for today’s MEN TV feature on Instinct.
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