BRANDON: A N.Y. COP IN LONDON

The British have always had a fascination with American cops-and-robbers shows. Telly Savalas was a folk hero in England years after “Kojak” waned in America. “Hill Street Blues” is now at the top of the charts there. In the past, the British have tried to create home-grown versions of this series genre (e.g., “The Sweeney,” “Callan”), but they’ve had little transatlantic success.

Now they’re trying again with “Dempsey and Makepeace,” but this time they’ve imported American actor Michael Brandon to star. The 10-part series will air in Los Angeles on KTLA later this year. Co-financed by the Chicago Tribune TV Syndicate and London Weekend Television, “Dempsey and Makepeace” gives the standard shoot-’em-up formula a new twist by pointing up differences between America and Britain.

“I run to the wrong side of the car,” Brandon said, chuckling--”the steering wheel is on the right in England. Naturally, people are afraid to drive with me. I keep stealing my gun back. British cops aren’t allowed to carry guns, except by permission. The series is very British, except for me. It has more grit and more violence than an American series. And it’s less glossy.”

Jim Dempsey (Brandon) is a wise-mouth New York detective who joins an undercover unit of Scotland Yard because he’s a wanted man back home. His partner, Harriet Makepeace (Glynis Barber), is the daughter of a lord. According to the chauvinistic Dempsey, “Makepeace wouldn’t survive 38 seconds in New York.”

Brandon, who jokingly describes himself as a “grease-ball hoodlum from Brooklyn,” has played supporting roles in film and television for 15 years (“Lovers and Other Strangers,” “Promises in the Dark,” “FM,” “Rich and Famous,” “Emerald Point, N.A.S.”). However, he may be better known as the ex-husband of Lindsay Wagner and former boyfriend of Kim Novak.

Brandon, 39, saw “Dempsey and Makepeace” as an opportunity to change his life. “I was in a comfortable rut in California,” he recalls. “I had a good house, good friends, a good life. But the message coming to me was that I was banging my head against the wall. I remember walking into a men’s shop and saying that I wanted to change my image. I was checking out different forms of consciousness.”

Then he happened to read the “Dempsey and Makepeace” pilot, which his agent had sent him by mistake. He liked it and pursued an audition. “ ‘You’re not right for the part,’ my agent told me. ‘They don’t want to see you. The role is written as a California millionaire.’

“ ‘This character should be a New York homicide detective,’ I said. ‘You gotta get me a meeting.’ I arrived as the producers were packing their attache cases on their way to New York. They’d already seen 100 guys. I told them their concept was off. We had some laughs. Then they called from the airport and asked if I could get them some pictures.

“I sent them over to London with a note saying, ‘Dese are dem pictures youse guys wanted.’ They came back to me two more times to discuss my concept. A few weeks later I sold my car, gave away my animals and went to London.”

That was in March. Now, Brandon has all but settled into an English way of life. He’s renting a small house off King’s Road that was home to Warren Beatty when he was making “Reds.” During the filming of “Yanks,” Richard Gere lived there.

“ ‘Dempsey and Makepeace’ has a lot of capers,” Brandon explains, “but we’ve seen all that. The only thing that makes a series different is the characters. In the beginning, Dempsey was action man--cold, unfeeling, macho . In the first scene I was supposed to kill four people on an airplane on my way over to England. Was I a policeman or a killer?

“Now we’ve created establishing scenes in New York. In the new version, I killed my partner, who was involved in the drug scene, so I’m sent to London until the heat’s off. I’ve added charm and humor. Dempsey now has a twinkle in his eye. Every once in a while you’ll catch a glimpse of his vulnerability and sensitivity.

“They’ve let me add lines and even whole scenes. I’m a New York guy. I write my own lingo. I’m good at the Mickey Spillane stuff. If I see a way to get a laugh, I will.

“American actors are experts of the casual reality, relaxed acting, natural style. That’s what I do. Whatever’s happening I incorporate. The British seem to memorize lines and set out a way of doing them. Sometimes it’s a game for me to try to upset Glynis’ plan--by not being predictable. I know what she’s going to do, but she doesn’t know what I’m going to do. The director encourages me, and it makes her more spontaneous.”

The son of an auto mechanic, Brandon spent his adolescence in a Brooklyn street gang. “It was very unglamorous,” he says, “but it was the only game in town. I survived because I was funny and I was fast. I did a lot of running to save myself. I had a lot of fights and got my face battered and bones broken.

“After high school I started working for some criminals in the beauty supply business. I made them a lot of money. What I was doing was not against the law, but it was against certain company policy. I never got caught.

“I was doing this and going to college at night. And the nights I wasn’t in school I worked in a bakery to supplement my income. I also wrote poems about death.

“Then I met a model who had appeared on a book cover. She was the most famous person I’d ever met. Her name was Rita, and we had drinks. She said to me, ‘You’d probably make a good actor because you’re so outgoing and funny.’

“I asked her: ‘How do you become an actor?’

“ ‘You go to school,’ she said. She gave me a couple names of schools. I don’t think she knows the impact she had on my life. It was a time when I was ready for a change.”

Shortly after this encounter, Brandon was bedridden for six months because of a spinal infection. “While I was in bed, I started reading ‘Hamlet.’ That’s what I used for my audition at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. It was the first acting I’d ever done.”

Brandon’s first professional work was on the New York stage with Al Pacino in “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” Eventually he settled in Los Angeles to work in films and television, but he never found a part that brought him stardom.

His private life was equally unsettled, he says. “I’ve never been in a relationship longer than three years. I’ve never really rooted. I’ve always been terrified of losing my freedom. That’s one of the reasons I could never commit to a series.

“I’ve finally reached a place where I can accept the idea that I don’t know how long I’ll be doing a series. We’re supposed to shoot 15 more episodes this year and maybe another 22 later. This is the most secure I’ve been in 20 years.”