Nice to be in a Christmas show that’s not Father Ted

Trainspotting actor Kevin McKidd is back on our screens and, once again, the subject is trains.

“It all started with Trainspotting. There has to be a train involved somewhere in everything I do, it turns out,” he jokes.

McKidd stars in the Primrose Railway Children, a CBBC family drama kicking off the channel’s Christmas programming this Sunday.

The Grey’s Anatomy star says it was fantastic to film at home, working with crews that remember him from early in his career.

“I get very homesick.” he admitted.

“I’m in Los Angeles filming for nine months of the year so anytime I get to come home and work with people from my past and connect with everybody… it’s lovely.

“I cut my teeth here as an actor doing Trainspotting and Small Faces and all those films back in the day, so it feels like coming home for me.”

Born in Elgin in Moray, McKidd started acting in local youth theatre before going on to study drama at Queen Margaret University.

He found success in his role as Tommy Mackenzie in Trainspotting in 1996.

Since 2008, he has played American doctor and fans’ favourite Dr Owen Hunt in Grey’s Anatomy.

Voicing the characters of Lord MacGuffin and young MacGuffin in Disney Pixar movie Brave in 2012 gave him the opportunity to exhibit his real off-screen accent as well as some Doric, a dialect he heard spoken at home by his grandfather.

McKidd said the Hollywood film and TV industries are starting to recognise the beauty and versatility of filming in Scotland.

He said: “There is so much that Scotland has to give. Back 30 years ago, big Hollywood studios would come for the weekend and film the mountains and leave again. But now more and more productions are coming to Scotland and setting up camp here.

“There’s films in Scotland now that aren’t necessarily set in Scotland but the architecture and landscapes are so stunning they can be used for different areas. There’s a lot more versatility to Scotland and I think people are realising that in the industry.

“Scotland’s crews are some of the best in the world, really highly skilled and its some of the best locations in the world. I mean, look at it, its stunning. “

The Primrose Railway Children was filmed in and around Glasgow, the dramatic Scottish Highlands and the country’s heritage railways.

The story follows children Phoebe (Ava McCarthy), Becks (Ida Brooke) and Perry (Tylan Bailey) and their mum who are living a comfortable life in Glasgow before being uprooted and moved to the remote highlands of Scotland.

The 90-minute CBBC special is an adaptation of Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s popular children’s novel – itself a modern-day retelling of Edith Nesbit classic, The Railway Children.

When the children’s dad (Kevin McKidd) mysteriously disappears, the Robinson family are uprooted from their lives and find unexpected excitement, adventure and a new sense of belonging.

McKidd said: “It’s about a family that goes through its challenges like every family has to at some point and there’s some separation of the parents and it’s about how do you heal that, how do you come back together again and how do you find a place to belong.”

He said he was “honoured” to be part of the TV Christmas schedule – although it’s not the first Christmas programme he has appeared in.

“The only thing that I’m in that’s regularly on telly at Christmas time is the Father Ted Christmas Special – it keeps getting repeated,” he said.

“But that was 27 years ago so it’s time for a refresh.”

He said the project had given him the opportunity to let his own children enjoy some of his work.

“I don’t get to do many things that my little kids get to watch because I’m on Grey’s Anatomy and it’s all this fake blood and it’s quite scary.

“It’s nice to actually have something I can sit down with my family at Christmas and watch and let them see what Dad does for a living.”

The Primrose Railway Children is on CBBC and BBC iPlayer on Sunday, 1 December.