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When Gene Hunt steps out of his Audi Quattro and into Ashes to Ashes, the first thing we see is a snakeskin cowboy boot. It slaps onto the concrete outside a derelict industrial building, then stands as the camera crawls up the solid, nononsense frame above its pointy toe and cuban heel. Finally, the lens comes to rest on Hunt’s stern, craggy face, and his laconic Manchester drawl rings out across the car park: “Today, my friend, your diary entry will read, ‘Took a prozzie hostage and was shot by three armed bastards.’ ”

It’s beautiful timing. Until Hunt’s arrival, the sequel to Life on Mars has been more than slightly upsetting. The effervescent Keeley Hawes plays Alex Drake, a police psychologist who receives a tape from an officer – Sam Tyler – who has just committed suicide. (Okay, wait: if you didn’t see the hit BBC series Life on Mars, here’s what you need to know. Tyler had an accident and woke up in 1973. Was he mad, or in a coma, or had he been taken back in time? Whatever happened, it was as if he had landed on a different planet. He thought that maybe, if he could work out the reason he was there, he could get home. Then he killed himself.)

Drake has a daughter, and is driving her to school when she gets involved in a hostage situation with a gunman who has asked for her by name. Awful things happen, and her poor daughter seems in terrible jeopardy. Then Drake takes a bullet to the head and wakes up on a boat on the Thames. Before she can say “Why am I dressed as a prostitute at a party where the only music they are playing is from 1981?”, she’s in a scuffle with a posh drug-dealer, and we don’t know why, what’s happened to her daughter, whether she’s dying or what on earth she’s doing in 1981. Then Gene Hunt arrives, and we know everything’s going to be all right.

The Manchester DCI, played by Philip Glenister, has already passed into television folklore. There are websites devoted to his one-liners: “She’s as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot” and “He’s got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course” are popular. But most people’s favourite seems to be this exchange with John Simm, as Tyler:

Hunt: I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.

Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?

Hunt: You make that sound like a bad thing.

With his 1973 standard-police-issue nonPC attitude, he was an overnight hit with viewers, critics and the meat-eating end of the tabloid market. He also acquired a huge fan base among coppers and the ladies. So, when Simm decided that two series of Life on Mars was enough, the BBC begged its creators, Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, to keep Hunt alive. Given that he existed only in Tyler’s mind, this proved something of a problem, until Graham hit on the idea of the tape and the psychologist – essentially, Drake is so intrigued by Tyler’s case that her mind summons up his characters in her moment of crisis.

The demand for Hunt doesn’t surprise Glenister. “As soon as I picked up the script, I loved this guy and knew how to play him,” he grins, sitting back in his chair in a room above a Soho street market. “The estate agent down the road used to tell me that every Tuesday morning, people would be coming in, saying, ‘Did you see him last night?’ But when Ashes to Ashes came around, my initial reaction was – ooof, not sure. John and I created such great chemistry on and off screen. I have a huge respect for him, and I think he thinks I’m all right as well. So, that on-screen crackle between Tyler and Hunt ... just saying it! It doesn’t sound like a firm of solicitors any more, it sounds like a crack 1970s cop team. When I heard, though, that they were casting Keeley, that there was going to be an element of ‘will they or won’t they?’, a love-hate relationship rooted in masculine and feminine – well, I was in.”

Glenister chooses his words with care. Masculinity, he believes, is the key to Hunt. “A lot of people ask me why he appealed to so many people – whether it be the police force, which is more obvious, or women, when he’s such a misogynistic dinosaur of a man,” he grins wickedly. “I was chatting to a mate who’s a writer, and he said, ‘Gene’s lack of self-awareness.’ In an age when everything is based on image and looks and packaging, this unreconstructed Neanderthal man comes onto the screen and they go – yes, thank you, this is how we all feel.”

There is something of Hunt about Glenister. When he swears, his voice has a slight Cheshire lilt. And he bemoans the excessive choice available in our age, fearing for his two daughters’ innocence. “My six-year-old is becoming image-conscious already. Where do they get that? School?” He plays golf, because “a man should have a hobby”, and he scorns the burden of paperwork on the police – even though he’s not really a policeman. Yet he is a little wary of excessive identification. “I don’t think you should push the character too far, or I’d end up as Del Boy,” he grimaces. “You have to move on. Playing this character has changed my career – I’m not going to moan about it. But every time you play anything, you only get called up for similar parts, and most of what I’m getting at the moment are pale Gene Hunt scripts.”

He hopes his body of work will stand him in good stead when moving on. Born the son of a television director, and with his brother Robert an actor, he thought about going to drama school after a few years as a movie publicist. “I was working on a film with Richard E Grant, and told him I wanted to go to drama school. ‘Go for it, you c***,’ he said, and I did. Thank goodness.”

At the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London, he studied with Graham Norton and Rufus Sewell, then shared a flat with the actor Jamie Glover, who introduced him to his wife, the actress Beth Goddard. “I’m very happy, but I’d ban marriage for anybody until they’re 30. That’s what your twenties are for – to be as hedonistic and crazy as possible. Get it all out of your system. Have a great time.”

Roles in Clocking Off, State of Play and, recently, as Carter in the BBC’s Cranford, he believes, show his versatility. “The reason I did Cranford was that I knew I was going back to Gene,” he explains. “Carter was a man ahead of his time, rather than stuck in his time. It was a reminder to people that I can do other parts. My next job is an American vampire-slayer – which, you have to confess, is against Hunt’s type.” He still sounds a little regretful, though, as he dismisses a sequel to Ashes. “But you couldn’t move Gene to the 1990s.” He shakes his head. “What are you going to have him do? Arrest Noel Gallagher for drugs?”

Ashes to Ashes starts on BBC1 in February

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