It’s an event fans of TV icons Dempsey and Makepeace have been dreaming of since the show ended in 1986. The duo real-life husband and wife Michael Brandon and Glynis Barber are heading for the Dundee stage.
Michael and Glynis met on the set of the popular 80s crime drama while portraying the oddball pairing of two police officers: James Dempsey and Harriet Makepeace. Next week they star in romantic play Love Letters at the city’s Rep Theatre.
Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Love Letters, written by A. R. Gurney in the 1980s, maps a 50-year relationship between the impulsive, rebellious Melissa Gardner and dependable, staid Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. It follows a lifetime of letter writing between the pair from their first exchange of thank-you notes.
The production has played both on Broadway and in the West End with different actors but this is the first time Glynis and Michael have starred in it and the seven performances at the Rep are their only current dates.
Glynis, 57, is at home in London when she chats to The Courier Michael has gone out but returns later.
“Michael and I have never been on stage together,” Glynis says. “I guess we are sort of perfect for Love Letters because they like actors who have maybe been around a bit and to have a couple who are actually married adds an extra frisson to the play! “We have always wanted to do a play together but have never managed.
“It’s a lovely piece. It’s a relationship between two people who meet in childhood in a very affluent society on the east coast of America. It’s sort of Katherine Hepburn The Philadelphia Story sort of territory and they meet probably aged around five and they begin a correspondence.
“In those days people wrote to each other and they begin with thank-you letters. They see each other occasionally but it is a life mostly made up of correspondence.
“They don’t ever get to spend much time together and don’t realise what they are to each other until way down the line. Their lives happen and go in quite different directions and yet the letters continue.”
Running from 1984 to 1986 on ITV, Dempsey and Makepeace was a crime drama that followed the exploits of James Dempsey, a tough New York cop seconded to London’s elite SI-10, where he worked with Detective Sergeant Harriet Makepeace. The drama attracted more than 20 million viewers in the UK and was shown in more than 70 countries.
And the “will they, won’t they” plot line also seeped into the actors’ private lives. They married in 1989 and had son Alex in 1992.
These days, Glynis has 13,000 followers on Twitter and loves to keep in touch with her fans who are thrilled at the prospect of her and Michael appearing on stage. Some are reported to be travelling to the city to see it from as far afield as Canada, Poland, Holland and France.
Glynis says: “It’s been a long time but there are still a lot of fans out there and I suppose it’s a nice chance for them to see us in the same thing, live.”
Unlike his wife, Michael, 67, is not a fan of social media: “Glynis Twitters, you see I don’t and they call me ‘he who must not be named’.
He says: “I’ve been doing other plays and I came out once and there were 30 girls outside the door of the stage and they knew the sweets I ate, the shower gel I used and where I had been on holiday and I was like: ‘What’s going on?’”
Michael adds: “Once you surrender to the style of Love Letters and get caught up in the story it is compelling. It’s about timing, circumstance, star-crossed lovers and the one who got away!”
* Love Letters at the Rep Theatre, Dundee from May 7-11.