Mark Williams is back as crime-solving priest Father Brown

This month Mark Williams will return to Australian screens as the inquisitive, quick-witted Father Brown in what marks the sixth season of the popular British crime drama.

Based on the short stories by G. K. Chesterton, taking on the role of the crime-solving Catholic priest in the 1950s-set series has further catapulted Williams’ acting career outside the Harry Potter franchise, where he’s known to fans as Arthur Weasley.

“I remember when I got the job, I was working on Blandings, which was a P. G. Wodehouse series, and I was playing the butler, up in Ireland,” he recalls by phone from the UK.

“We were filming at a big stately home in Crom Castle ... and I was shooting a scene in the drawing room dressed as a butler in the full 1920s gear and my agent phoned me and said that they’re going to do a series of Father Brown and they’ve asked if I’d go and read for them.

“She said ‘I’ve told them that you can’t do it because you’re working away, so they’ve made you an offer’. And I thought ‘Oh great, I’ll be playing a murderer or I’d get to be one of the detectives or something’, and I said ‘What’s the part?’ And my agent said ‘It’s Father Brown’.”

Needless to say, Williams accepted the role and went on to become a national treasure in his native Britain and is also widely adored in Australia.

“What I liked about Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton’s story, is his inquisitiveness and his humility,” he says.

“His mental processes will sometimes lead him to just catapult into action. So I enjoy that about him, because you can’t get a real sense of that in the book, in short stories, so that was my contribution, as it were.”

While he’s yet to do an official Father Brown visit to Australia, Williams often meets Aussie fans during filming.

“We get some Australians on set, which is great,” he says. “They come to the Cotswolds (where the series is) and one couple were touring, they couldn’t believe it.

“They were like ‘Oh my God, we watch it at home’, so that was great.”

Despite starring in a sweeping period drama set in the heart of the English countryside, Williams laments his lack of costume changes with Father Brown’s wardrobe rarely straying from his signature cassock.

“I get slight costume envy because there are great silhouettes in the fifties,” he says.

“Every now and again I get very excited because, if I go anywhere grand, I get to wear a cape that the costume girls call the party cape, but that’s about it. He doesn’t wear anything else really.

“But if any of the girls have to go off and change, (co-stars) Sorcha Cusack, Emer Kenny and Nancy Carroll would go off and get changed out of elaborate corsets and twin sets and ball dresses and everything, and I would just hang around in my cassock.”

In the season-six return, which airs on Saturday, Father Brown becomes embroiled in a scandal where a woman facing death row for the murder of her husband is exonerated and released just moments before she is due to be hung.

Having helped pin her for the murder, Father Brown’s reputation is in tatters as locals begin to question his motives.

“Katherine Corven, who in series five looked like she was going to the gallows, makes a reappearance,” Williams says “That was very exciting.”

While the episode is perhaps one of the most gripping in recent years, when it comes to recalling a memorable moment from the show, Williams insists he “doesn’t do favourites”.

“Having done so many it’s quite difficult to remember ... a particular location or people in the cast,” he says.

“I always enjoy, we do one a year, the episode with Flambeau because I get on very well with John Light.

“We often do some great action sequences there and its nice sort of witty interplay, so I must admit that I always enjoy the Flambeau episodes.

“And of course he was the first villain in the first story. The master thief, which is always a good thing to be ... so yeah, those are the ones I really enjoy.”

Father Brown airs on Saturday at 7.30pm on ABC.