A special relationship

Star David Schwimmer on playing a brash American fighting cybercrime in Britain – and those Friends reunion rumours.

- SEAN MARLAND 

Suited and booted, David Schwimmer strides past a bank of computers into a glass office and sets his coffee down on the desk, before greeting TV Times with a wave and a big smile.

The New York-born actor, who’s known all over the world for playing Ross Geller in hit US sitcom Friends, is just as friendly as his most famous on-screen character.

But now he’s about to take on a very different role in Sky One’s new workplace comedy, Intelligence.

Today we’ve been invited to visit the set of the goofy six-part series, set inside the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a less-glamorous version of MI5 based in Cheltenham, where the team tackle international and domestic cybercrime from a desktop.

David plays brash American Jerry Bernstein, a National Security Agency employee who causes a stir when he arrives from the US to help his British counterparts. But he soon builds a rapport with nerdy computer analyst Joseph Harries (played by David’s friend and series creator Nick Mohammed).