A killer serial is coming to BBC America

Writer Paul Abbott knew he’d had an effect with his six-part conspiracy thriller “State of Play” when he talked to his father about it. “He drinks tea obsessively, and for the whole 60 minutes of the first episode, he couldn’t make himself a cup,” says Abbott by phone from his home in Manchester. “Now that’s a compliment!”

The U.K. has eaten up “State of Play” since it ran last year to enormous critical acclaim, awards and a ravenous viewership in love with the twisty plotlines, dirty government secrets and journalistic bravado. The 44-year-old Abbott, already a seasoned hand with crime drama after producing and writing for the police psychologist show “Cracker” and creating the detective series “Touching Evil,” says he wrote “State of Play” to try to hook the populace on serials again.

To his mind, “story of the week” shows -- where a plot is wrapped up tidily in one episode, like “Law & Order” or “CSI” over here -- lower an audience’s expectations. “Eventually we’ll be telling stories in 10 minutes,” says Abbott. “I think we can train [viewers] back up to longer narratives. I really missed that kind of television.”

“State of Play,” which debuts Sunday on cable TV’s BBC America, jump-starts with two murders, then focuses on a politician (played by David Morrissey) working on an energy policy report unfriendly to the oil industry, and two reporters (John Simm and Kelly Macdonald) investigating why one of the victims was his aide.

The theme of government in bed with private enterprise spurred Abbott, a socialist who’s become disillusioned with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration. Although Abbott, who got his start on British soaps, jokingly admits, “I seem to only get political when I’ve had a beer,” he was nevertheless angered to discover halfway through writing that British Petroleum regularly sponsors accountants to work in the treasury. “I went, ‘What?’ It just stank of business driving the country.”

Considering the show’s insider realism, it’s surprising that Abbott disdains research, preferring to let his instincts dictate and verisimilitude to get righted later. He’d never been inside a newsroom, for example, before “State of Play,” but after he finished the scripts, a three-hour vetting session in a pub with a reporter led to only a few lines being changed. “The minute anybody starts telling you how it should go, the creative side of you just shuts down,” says Abbott, who writes for 10 hours a day. “My writer mates think I’m barking mad, but I think writers like research because it’s an excuse for a day off.”

Outlines? Pish posh! He sold BBC on “State of Play” with the first five minutes, not even knowing where it was going. (It helps of course that he has a proven track record with TV dramas, enough so that a “By Paul Abbott” possessory credit appears on the title of the new series.) “The best thing any writer can do is not know what the next scene is, because then you really start zapping about. It can make you nervous, but you’re meant to be nervous.”

Says “State of Play” producer Hilary Bevan Jones, who has worked with Abbott since “Cracker,” “You can’t go in a taxi from one end of Soho to the other without Paul coming up with an idea. His mind is so fertile.”

Actors, too, love the sharpness and specificity of Abbott’s characters. Bill Nighy (memorable as the past-his-prime rock star in “Love Actually”), who’s become a heroic figure on Fleet Street with his witty, commanding editor in “State of Play,” says, “I said to Paul, ‘You’ve made everyone think I’m a clever guy now.’ I’ve even had a couple of job offers from journalists.”

Driven, impulsive protagonists dominate Abbott’s scripts -- be they crime fighters, factory workers or the older woman/younger man couple of his 1997 romantic miniseries “Reckless” -- and for someone who describes himself as “manic,” such characters keep him from feeling lonely.

He also stuck out in his working class Burnley, Lancashire, family, the ninth of 10 children, as the only one in a brood of “builders and car mechanics” who was academic and wanted to write. His independence came the hard way, though: When he was a boy, both parents deserted the entire family.

“My 16-year-old sister brought us up, and we were left to live our own lives really,” says Abbott, who still talks to his father, but who never reconciled with his mother before her death two years ago. “At the funeral, we didn’t know what to feel. Then my two eldest brothers who hadn’t talked for seven years, started punching each other’s lights out. And then everybody looked better! It was fantastic. That was how you deal with the knot we all had in our stomach. I paid for the damage, and it was the best check I’ve ever written.”

That said, Abbott will never hurt for inspiration: His newest series is a raucous comedy about a big family, called “Shameless.” Currently he’s writing that, a second “State of Play” and a screenplay for director Sam Mendes.

For someone as prolific as Abbott, time off with his wife and two kids is a problem. “We’ve got a place in France, and I was there swimming and my daughter shouted, ‘Daddy, it’s the phone!’ I said, ‘I’m in the pool, for God’s sake!’ She said, ‘It’s Sam Mendes!’ I said, ‘I’m out of the pool!’ ”