Denis Lawson cheered Marchlands cast with dancing

Denis Lawson found shooting 'Marchlands' so draining he often broke the tension with a song or a dance.

The 63-year-old actor plays local mill owner Robert Bowen in the supernatural ITV1 series and he admitted the only way he could cope with the intense scenes between him and co-star Tessa Peake-Jones -who plays his wife Evelyn - as they try to cope with their granddaughter Alice's death was to joke around.

He told BANG Showbiz: "We were first up and we shot for two weeks solid and by the end of that two weeks I remember us talking together and we were thinking 'I wonder how much longer we can do this' because every scene was really intense. It was quite draining.

"I usually broke the tension with a song or a dance number; I do a good tap dance - not in takes usually."

Jodie Whittaker plays eight-year-old Alice's mother Ruth Bowen and revealed her relief that her scenes were set in 1968 and didn't include any supernatural activity - because she is terrified of ghosts.

Jodie said: "I have a very overactive imagination and when it comes to paranormal activity I think there are plenty of people like me who believe everything they see so I'd just be terrified.

"If I was Nisha [the modern day character haunted by Alice's ghost] I'd have been straight out of the house.

"There's no way I'd be living there, it would be a modern building for me."