Forget those kiosks you get in chemists, if you want to check your blood pressure, stress levels and pulse rate, tune into Virgin Media on May 19 for the season 2 opener of Malpractice.

SPOILER ALERT!!! With medical investigators Dr. Norma Callahan and Dr. George Adjei the only returning characters, the spotlight falls on Dr. James Ford, a clinical psychiatrist who finds himself in the doggy do when a female patient suffering from postpartum depression develops full-on psychosis and jumps to her death from a hospital rooftop.

Cue the dramatic unravelling of Dr. Ford’s private and professional lives and the general ramping up of tension to World Cup Final penalty shootout levels.

There’s only one place show creator and writer Grace Ofori-Attah, a psychiatrist herself, wants you and that’s on the edge of your seat.

Dr. Ford is played with an ever increasing air of fear, desperation and anger by Tom Hughes, the Cheshire-born actor who admits to it being a case of love at first script read.

“Having not seen the Malpractice with Niamh Algar in it, I wasn’t especially excited when I had the first twenty pages of the script sent to me,” the 40-year-old recalls. “We were shooting something else in Tenerife, so I went and sat in a bar, ordered a half of ale and thought, ‘Right, let’s see what this is about…’ I didn’t even touch the ale and after those twenty pages I rang my agent and said, ‘I have to do this!’ The writing was so exquisite. Grace pieces the story together in a way that you truly can’t predict. A lot of scripts have twists and turns and keep you hooked, but you don’t often find people who consistently change direction like she does. That’s a real skill.

“Then,” he continues, “you’ve the medical side of it which feels so authentic because of her own experiences as a psychiatric doctor. If you look at some of the other things she’s been involved with, like Boiling Point, Grace really is in that top tier of writers.”

Asked to describe Dr. Ford, Tom shoots back, “How long have you got? He’s hotfooted and idealistic; at times naïve and reckless; and has a bit of a dormant hedonist in him. He has immense amounts of empathy for his patients but can be blind to other people’s needs and feelings. He’s something of a mystery when it comes to his life outside of work, so there was a lot to play with. Of all the no-brainers in my career, this was the biggest.”

While only on screen for a matter of minutes, Antrim actor Hannah McClean – you might recognise her as Jen Robinson from the equally gripping Blue Lights – is remarkable as the patient Dr. Ford loses, Rosie Newman.

“I absolutely concur,” Tom nods. “It’s an incredible performance from somebody who’s as fantastic a person as she is an actor. Hannah really cared about her character and the storyline and the impact they might have on the audience.

“I can’t watch stuff I’m in at home on my own because I end up overthinking it, which isn’t helpful because you’re just looking for problems and things you might have done better. I’m not overly fond of premieres for the same reasons, but the other night I was at a screening of the first episode and there were moments when you could hear a pin drop. Hannah is worthy of all the praise that will be coming her way, but across the board everyone else on the show was flying. It was probably me that let the side down, to be honest!”

Having binged on all five episodes in one go – my vital signs still aren’t back to normal – I can assure Tom that the side has not been let down. In fact, you’ll have to go a long way this year to see a more nuanced performance.

While clearly having the time of his acting life now, the bug which first bit him as a teenager was the rock ‘n’ roll one.

“Manchester was only forty miles down the road, so you couldn’t move for Oasis when I was a kid,” he recalls. “I was born in ’85 so those albums were the soundtrack to my youth. I was ripe for that moment and started playing guitar when I was five-and-a-half – firstly in my bedroom and then in my late teens with my dad’s soul covers band who are kind of Chester’s answer to The Commitments. I still gig with them whenever I can, like I did a week-and-a-half-ago on the Friday night when I turned forty. Then, with some lads from school, I formed a band called Quaintways. They moved down to London to join me after I’d finished at RADA in 2008 and we became part of the same Camden Town scene as Bombay Bicycle Club. Music was my life. It still is my life and my escapism. It’s what lets me step off the world.

“The only thing comparable acting-wise to discovering Oasis was being taken as a teenager to the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and seeing these very political plays with lots to say,” he continues. “Feeling that buzz and then experiencing it myself as part of the Everyman Youth Theatre was the main stepping stone that lead me to RADA. I’m not a Scouser but I gravitated a lot towards Liverpool writers like Jimmy McGovern.”

Quaintways.

Hughes is best mates with Kyle Soller, the Andor actor who in the last issue of Hot Press told us about the student hovel they shared whilst both at the aforementioned Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“The day we moved in the fish in the pond started dying – and it got progressively worse from there!” Tom winces. “We survived it, though, and in doing so became really good friends. I hate to say it but Kyle’s musical knowledge is probably better than mine and he’s a top, top actor.”

Given his musical credentials, it was fitting that Tom made his cinematic bow as Chaz Jankel in 2010’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll biopic, which found Andy Serkis not just playing but inhabiting Blockhead-in-chief Ian Dury.

“My dad’s a massive Ian Dury and The Blockheads fan, so I knew all of that music from growing up,” Hughes tells me. “It was a really interesting take on a biopic and, yeah, Andy totally brought Ian, who was a complex character, to life. It was a masterclass in what you can achieve as an actor which I really needed at the time.”

Tom exuded Liam Gallaher-esque cool and attitude in his next film, Cemetery Junction, which was written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

“That will always live long in my memory,” he reminisces fondly. “I finished Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll on the Friday and started Cemetery Junction on the Monday. There was a heatwave in London which lasted all summer, I’d not long left RADA and found myself as part of this incredible onscreen threesome with Christian Cooke and Jack Doolan who also became my offscreen mates. I don’t know whether it was Ricky or Stephen who had to go off and do something else for a month, but when we all reconvened they could sense the chemistry between us and were delighted when it carried through to the film. Jack lives in North Carolina now but flew over and surprised me for my fortieth, so there you go!”

Facial hair was sprouted for his impressive turn as Thomas Trafford in The English, a 2022 paella western set in Kansas and Wyoming but shot in central Spain which also featured Stephen Rea as a wonderfully wayward Irish sheriff.

Did he manage to unpick the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that is Mr. Rea?

“As chatty as I am now, I’m quite quiet on set and more focused on finding the rhythm of my own character rather than unpicking other people,” he says. “I was in a lot of scenes with Stephen and, wow, what an actor! The back-and-forth felt like tennis with him serving the aces. I found him to be wonderfully warm and embracing, so I wasn’t sat there thinking, ‘He’s such an enigma!’”

It was off with the leather chaps and on with the toga when Tom followed The English up with a starring turn in Those About To Die, the Roman gladiatorial epic, which he said “Yes!” to because of the screentime he’d be sharing with another acting great.

“Having been instinctively drawn to social realism – that’s what got my juices flowing early on in my career – I thought it was remiss of me not to broaden my mind and try different genres,” he reflects. “So, I did a horror movie (Shepherd); a fantasy thing (A Discovery Of Witches); and a western (The English). I hadn’t done a big epic though, which is what drew me to Those About To Die. The first season budget was something like $140 million, so we’re talking designer togas! What I wasn’t drawn to at first was my character, Titus. My agent kept going, ‘You’re sure it’s not singing to you?’ and I was like, ‘I want it to sing to me because it’s the last genre I haven’t tasted, but I’m just not getting that feeling. The thing about Titus is that he’s so cast in his father’s image. He’s learned the rules of how to be a soldier – obey without question – and everything else from him. For me to be able to play this naïve sort of kid trapped in a man’s body, the actor opposite me is going to have to be really good.’ My agent went ‘Okay, let me call you back’, which she did ten minutes later. She was crying laughing and said, ‘It’s Anthony Hopkins!’ I was like, ‘Okay, there’s the depth I can follow, I’m 100% in!’”

Tom with Anthony Hopkins in Those About to Die.

Tom was expecting great things of the fabled English actor, who plays Emperor Vespasian, but did he deliver?

“Oh, yes!” he enthuses. “Tony, as he insists on being called, was truly amazing. He was the most gracious, kind, funny, playful man and very respectful towards myself and Jojo Macari who plays his youngest son, Domitian. Being in a scene with Anthony Hopkins was one of the best acting experiences I’ve ever had. What he gives you in that moment… he’s just wicked!”

Talking as we were a moment ago about social realism, is Tom waiting on a call from Mike Leigh?

“Or Shane Meadows or Ken Loach,” he laughs. “With all three of those auteurs it’s mostly improvised, which I’ve never leant into before but would really love to try. I imagine it feels almost as live and freeing as theatre does.”

Malpractice is the first in a triple-whammy of shows that Tom has coming out this year. Next up in June is season two of The Gold, a ratings-grabbing account of the £26 million Brink’s-Mat heist which finds him joining S1 stalwarts Hugh Bonneville, Charlotte Spencer and Emun Elliott.

“That was the job in Tenerife I was talking about earlier,” he explains. “I come in as a new character as things move on from the 1983 robbery and you get to follow the gold which would be worth over a hundred million today. It’s everything you want that sort of thriller to be”

The same writer, Neil Forsyth, is also responsible for Legends, a Netflix drama about British customs officials who infiltrate one of the country’s most notorious drug gangs.

“We’re about a month-and-a-bit into the shooting,” Tom concludes. “It’s an amazing cast – Tom Burke, Hayley Squires, Johnny Harris and Steve Coogan. My first few weeks have mainly been with Hayley and Johnny who are both incredible. Again, it’s brilliantly written and a lot of fun to be part of.”

• Malpractice is available to watch now on Virgin Media Play.