Actor talks about Heartbeat Axe

Actor Joe McFadden, who plays 60’s copper Joe Mason in Heartbeat, has spoken about ITV’s cancellation of the series. The actor talked about the axe while appearing on popular Channel Four chat-show, The Paul O’Grady Show.

Heartbeat actor Joe McFadden, who plays Joe Mason in the Yorkshire based drama, has talked about the shows cancellation by ITV. The actor discussed the long running series axe while appearing on the popular Channel Four chat-show, The Paul O’Grady Show. Filming on the final episodes of the series recently got underway on location in Yorkshire with on-lookers reporting to the tabloids that some cast members were visibly upset.

“It’s sad, you know. I had a great time on that show. Some of the girls got a bit emotional last week when we filmed the last one. I mean it’s 17 years. It became a big part of my life. I will miss the people. We were all joking that for the show to continue we had to find a way of introducing judges and a panel. That’s what you seem to need for TV nowadays. It is still so popular with the fans. You’d get 300 – 400 showing up when you are filming. We had a thank you party for the village where we film, last week. They were so sweet. It was great. They all came. We had to say thank you.” – Joe McFadden speaking on The Paul O’Grady Show

ITV cancelled Heartbeat and its spin-off The Royal in January of this year due to declining ratings for both dramas. While they had once commanded big audiences both had seen their audience dwindle over the past eighteen months with some episodes of both shows barely rating over 4 million viewers. ITV decided not to renew either show until the stockpile of filmed episodes run out in 2010 but its highly likely that at that point ITV will officially axed both shows.

While appearing on The Paul O’Grady Show the actor also confirmed he had won a role in BBC One drama Casualty. To read the story on McFadden’s new role click here >>