Duggan's dancer

The attraction between the cop and the pathologist remains a mystery, Michele Amas tells FIONA RAE.

The only thing Michele Amas doesn't like about pathologist Jennifer Collins is that she's a fool for love. But the object of her affections, Detective Inspector John Duggan, doesn't even notice.

John Bach stars as Duggan in Duggan from Tuesday on TV One. Two successful pilots last year garnered the show a green light for a series and, in what is surely a first for local television, the 11 episodes are self-contained whodunits. P.D. James in the picturesque Marlborough Sounds, Cluedo with boats.

Collins is Scully to Duggan's Mulder.

"She's incredibly strong-willed," says Amas, who plays Collins. "She's really good at what she does. She's determined and resourceful.

"She's lively and cheeky and it's a good contrast between her and Duggan, because Duggan is so much more straight and not as much fun and so she can bounce off him a lot."

But then there's that attraction-to-the-man of mystery. "They have this sort of dance of intimacy," Amas explains. "It can be a little bit wearying that it doesn't occur to her at any stage to give it up. In fact, the more he ignores her, the more she turns it up. Sometimes I think, 'you're an intelligent woman, why do you keep trying?'

"But, it's fun, too, so that's why she keeps trying. She can play with him. The day he might turn around and be interested in her, she would probably have a huge different reaction - that might not be part of the game at all."

Collins finds Duggan so fanciable because he's "good at his job and she admires people who are competent and strong. Nobody can nail him down."

Not unlike John Bach himself, apparently. Amas describes her co-star as "very private." He rarely gives interviews, saying he believes who he is as a person is unimportant, and what is important is that people believe who they see on screen.

"John has an enormous amount of integrity and determination about what he does," says Amas. "He is a perfectionist and what he fights for is his character, which I really admire - he takes time to deliver what he needs to deliver for the character. He won't be pushed around into short-changing it to make up time or whatever.

"He takes the time that it takes and he stands by it. He can because it's his show and he's got that sort of clout because he is Duggan and it's a good example for the other actors - to be loyal to your character."

Duggan is certainly a class act, with the talents of Liddy Holloway, Michael Hurst, Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Ginette McDonald employed in upcoming episodes. Amas herself has been working in theatre and on screen for the past 15 years.

Amas says she felt an "instinctive recognition" for the "emotionally healthy" character of Jennifer Collins. Her research for the role included talking to several pathologists and she discovered that, surprisingly, more women are entering the profession - and was told that women make better pathologists than men.

"They stay in the job a lot longer than the men because they have an ability to multi-task; they can go home and do family stuff to give them a balance that men perhaps don't have the ability to do and one male pathologist said that the women can deal with the horrific things that they have to see a lot better. It's having other things in their life, other focuses."

Amas discovered quite a lot of humour on the job, too, and that pathologists watch their television counterparts.

"They do comment on how authentic an autopsy is, and a couple of times I had to explain that in drama you take licence with some of the procedures. We break all sorts of rules - they know and it gives them something to talk about."

It's not poking about in gruesomely made-up bodies that fazes Amas so much as the technical jargon built into her dialogue. She describes a sort of "verbal dyslexia," in which scientific terms of three syllables or more have her tongue in knots.

"And I'm the one who has to say those things. No one else can say them, so I have to sound like I know what I'm doing and for a while I was asking the writers to make it easier and I don't think they quite knew why, and I'd say, 'I have trouble with big words.'"

Who: Michele Amas

What: Duggan

Where: TV One

When: 8.30 pm Tuesday