JULE SCHERER

It's not easy to like Gail Peck, but actress Charlotte Sullivan who plays the young officer in Canadian cop show Rookie Blue says she doesn't mind.

Peck is one of five rookie police officers that the TV show - returning for a second season tonight on TV2 - follows as they take their first steps on the job.

"I don't play her for people to like her, she is really eccentric and quite cryptic and strange and I adore playing her," the 28-year old actress says.

"Its seems that she doesn't give a s**t what other people think about her but in actuality it is a little bit more complicated and she wants to be accepted into the pack, she just doesn't know how." 

But Sullivan is quick to point out, that there are four other characters to like on the show: There's the lead character, Andy McNally (Missy Peregrym), the over eager Dov Epstein (Gregory Smith), the practical and responsible Traci Nash (Enuka Okuma) and Chris Diaz (Travis Milne) who tends to do everything by the book.

The one thing that sets Rookie Blue apart from other cop shows, she says, is that the protagonists are beginners.

"We're not seasoned, we don't know what we doing," Sullivan explains.

"In most cop shows it's all about people who are well trained and know what they're doing.

"Our show is the beginning of a cop career, the very first time they put on their walkie-talkie, the first time they put on their badge, the first time they put on their vest and even though they had an extensive amount of training, it's still the first day on the job and their nerves are so tightened.

"You're not watching a cop show where they're well established and they never screw up - that's a job of a rookie, you screw up and learn and you do it again."

When she was first offered the role, Sullivan doubted she could play a police officer.

"I thought I couldn't do that job because of my physicality, I think of myself as all noodle arms and not very coordinated and you associate cops with being incredibly athletic and I am terrible at sports.

"I think being a police officer would be one of the hardest job and I am so grateful that I only get to put the uniform on for a job and take it off at night and go home to my real life," she says.

Speaking of putting on the uniform, the petite blonde, who played Marilyn Monroe in last year's mini series The Kennedys, is glad to have talented costume designers in charge of her tailor-made the outfits."

"A lot of cops come up to us and say 'I love your uniform' because everybody gets the run-of-the-mill standard uniform in real-life and ours are kind of tweaked to flatter our figures."

Rookie Blue has often been dubbed Grey's Anatomy with guns, a comparison Sullivan relishes.  

"It's the most flattering comparison because that show also writes women in a really intelligent fashion," she says.

"I think if you take the same premises, five rookie cops, or five new interns going to a hospital for the first time and are learning on the job it's the same sort of concept."

 For the second season Sullivan is promising more drama between the characters.

"Gail, without asking, has moved herself into Chris and Dov's apartment

"She wants to mend Chris' wounds after he's been shot but he so healthy and so fine," she reveals.

And there's even more conflict on the cards, when Chris confesses his undying love for Gale.

"Just when you think their personal relationships are fine it turns a new corner in the next episode," she says.

-Rookie Blue, Tuesdays 9.30pm, TV2

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Grey's Anatomy with guns