“Old Craigy, hasn’t he grown up?”

Returning to series television has been a bit of an eye-opener for actor Craig McLachlan.

Back this week in The Doctor Blake Mysteries, McLachlan has been overwhelmed by the reaction to his role as Doctor Lucien Blake.

While he has appeared in a string of productions including Heroes Mountain, Packed to the Rafters, At Home with Julia, NCIS: LA, House Husbands and Redfern Now, the role as Ballarat’s police surgeon in the 1950s has been a revelation to those who still remember his golden locks and rippling muscles of Neighbours’ Henry Ramsay. Newsflash: that was 25 years ago.

“Heroes Mountain, whilst it was a terrific movie, was one night. But being on a series people are reminded week by week, ‘Fancy that. Old Craigy, hasn’t he grown up?’

“It’s been pretty amazing, actually,” he told TV Tonight.

“Let’s just say I have a few more fans of the show and indeed of Doctor Blake. One of the funniest reactions was a dear, senior couple who came up to me in a late night supermarket and I’m looking at the healthy Yoghurt section and the fellow taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Shouldn’t your housekeeper be doing this for you?’ And off he went.

“I thought for a split second, back in the day when I was the young 20 year old thing that would have been a couple of screaming kids. Now it was this delightful couple!

“So it’s just been lovely. Delightfully surprising at every turn.”

Indeed McLachlan was taken aback at the bumper ratings the show enjoyed on Friday nights.

“The biggest surprise to me has been how popular (the Friday night mystery slot is). I had no idea. I knew Phryne was on Fridays but it really wasn’t until I had reason to follow how we were doing and chatting to people at the ABC. But there were people in the street who would come up and they just love that murder mystery thing. It’s been really surprising to me.

“Even with the return of the various sport codes (on Fridays) we held our own but I even had the boyfriends and husbands of the gals who like the show saying, as only an Aussie bloke can, ‘The missus made me watch the show. I didn’t want to. But it wasn’t bad!’ There’s been a lot of that as well.”

In Season 2, McLachlan is again joined by Nadine Garner as housekeeper Jean Beazely, plus Charlie Cousins, Joel Toebeck, Cate Wolfe, John Wood, and Belinda McClory.

McLachlan says this year the show is “definitely grittier” but there has also been lessons learned about the procedural element.

“In Season 1 in some cases amendments were coming in as we were shooting scenes because the big lesson for everybody was the whole murder mystery element of doing these things,” he explains.

“Things read great on the page and you get on set and suddenly it dawns on you, ‘Hang on we can’t reveal this…’ So those lessons were learned sometimes the hard way when we were literally filming and realising in an instant ‘We can’t do this.’”

Under Writer / Producer George Adams, McLachlan says the show is also more confident second time around.

“There is a confidence because we know how the audience responded to Jean and Lucien. But there is that ‘second album syndrome’ where you just go ‘I hope we don’t f*** this up.’ It’s fleeting but you read scripts and go ‘We’re definitely on the right page, here aren’t we?’ No pun intended,” he laughs.

“But that’s been fleeting. The scripts have been terrific, the stories have been engaging and interesting. So we’re all back!”

Doctor Blake has been so successful, it has enjoyed a sale to BBC1, a rarity for an Australian title -but not a first for McLachlan himself.

“George is a mad Scot and Tony (Wright, Exec. Producer) is an Eastender and they always had a vision of producing something here that was BBC-ish and here they are, selling it not just to BBC4 but to BBC1. It’s pretty special,” he admits.

“Would Neighbours have been the last Australian show sold to BBC1? I know they don’t have it any more, but it would be a lovely irony.”

The Doctor Blake Mysteries airs 8:30pm Friday on ABC1.