I Fought The Law: How Sheridan Smith and Ann Ming became 'firm friends' after shooting latest series

And Sheridan Smith has certainly played a great many roles where her character has been fighting against the odds, troubled, up against authority figures, in some sort of crisis.

She’s just turned 44, and she’ll soon be seen in one of her finest performances to date – as the real-life campaigner and advocate for justice, Ann Ming.

It’s such a brilliant and accomplished performance that Ann was on set one day, looking through some stills that the production company had sent her.

She says: “I was flipping through the pictures, and I said to one of the people on set ‘Oh, I really don’t remember those? When were they taken?’ And the guy said to me with a smile ‘Actually they’re not you, Ann, they’re of Sheridan. Hasn’t she got you right!’”

Smith, who is sitting next to Ann at this revelation, smiles quietly. The two women are now firm friends, after the making of I Fought the Law.

It’s an incredible story, set over four episodes, which re-tells one of the biggest police blunders of recent years, and the battle of one woman and her family to bring a killer to justice. And not only that, to reform an 800-year-old law which was embedded in British justice.

Ann Ming was a nurse, living in Billingham – she still does – when one night her daughter Julie went missing. To Ann and her family, the event was inexplicable.

Julie was a devoted mum to son Kevin, had her own home, was rooted in Teesside, and held down a job with a local firm.

At Ann’s insistence, Julie’s home was searched, and the Cleveland Police sent around a forensics team.

Nothing was found to indicate foul play, and the only strange thing – according to Ann – was that Julie had left her make-up bag behind. Where Julie went, so did that bag, so why was it sitting on a shelf in the bathroom?

Then came a horrifying discovery that upended Ann’s hitherto stable world forever.

This time, the Cleveland Police acted with exemplary resource, and they became Ann’s allies. They still are.

They had a suspect, and brought him to trial, but things took an unexpected turn, after which Ann Ming and her husband Charlie dug in their heels, and became adamant that the law of double jeopardy – where the law prevents an accused person from being tried twice on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or a conviction – should be repealed.

In the drama, the name of that killer, who is now behind bars, is not revealed. Ann insisted that he should not be given a shred of any publicity.

And writer Jamie Crichton has deftly constructed the action on the early events, and Ann’s battle, which took her all the way to the House of Commons, and then the Lords observing her request.

Ann is still impassioned, delighted that she played “a tiny part” against all the odds, in getting a law reversed, and Smith has a look of deep, and very sincere, admiration on her face.

“I suppose that it all started when I was sent a copy of Ann’s book, For The Love of Julie, and it was one of those things that, when I started reading it, I had to keep going, hour after hour, to the end,” relfects Smith.

“Despite it being very much a ‘northern’ story, I rather think that a lot of people won’t have heard of the case, and the struggle that Ann had.

"Just for a start, the police incompetence took my breath away, but then I had admiration for them as they realised what a determined soul they had had on their hands. Ann’s a powerhouse, and I don’t use that word lightly.”

The thing that endears you to Sheridan Smith is not only her tenacity, but also her bravery when she plays a role like this one. She inhabits the part to a point where she almost becomes a mirror image.

The ‘look’ is right (she praises her hair and make-up and costume team here – but she has the mannerisms of the person as well.) She invests, and it always pays dividends, and it has happened time after time – Mrs. Biggs, the story of one of the wives whose partners pulled off The Great Train Robbery, Cilla (in which she brought the Liverpool singing star back into the spotlight) and The Moorside, where she played Julie Bushby, in the mini-series based on the kidnapping of Shannon Matthews.

There’s much more. She’s won a BAFTA, been in the charts, stunned audiences in the West End in musicals, starred in revivals of the classics, such as Rattigan’s The Flare Path and she’s been a stalwart of some of the best sitcoms of recent years.

And yet, you could well argue that she really doesn’t think a lot of herself or her talents. She gets the script, goes on set, and delivers the job.

She reveals that she’s now living back on “the home patch.” She’s given up London and returned to her home community of Epworth “just down the road from Donnie.”

Why leave London? She smiles a delicious smile, ruffles her blonde hair, and flashes a grin. “Oh, I dunno. London just became a bit too much and London is London, and I made a choice. That’s it.”

Her five-year-old son Billy is now enrolled at a local school, “and loving it, even if he does have a bit of a ‘darn sarf’ accent at the moment. I suspect that will soon disappear.”

Billy, she says, is her “little oasis of calm. I can play some scenes that are really intense, and harrowing, and I can leave the set at the end of the day, and be back with him, and it all becomes all right. That happened a lot on I Fought the Law.

"Shooting over for the day, back down the road to home. And it was such an intense shoot – we only had nine weeks, there were lots of exteriors and there were plenty of times where we’d be shooting a scene set in one year one moment, and the next, we’d jumped ten years on.

"I truly felt for the props people. The’d be creating a scene with a TV set that had a click-round dial one minute, and then, in the same living room, we were into remotes.

"And believe me, that matters. There are an awful lot of eagle-eyed viewers out there who’ll be straight on to ITV saying ‘Nah, that’s not right!’”

Smith thinks that live experience projects itself into her career. Her beloved older brother died of cancer, and so did her father.

Her mum Marilyn is still very much a performer, and a talented singer. Showbiz was, in effect, in her blood, but Smith’s talent evolved naturally.

Off she went, with no training to speak of, and she slid, apparently without effort, into leading roles after getting noticed in a National Youth Music Theatre production of Bugsy Malone. Except that there was a lot of effort, and there was also ADHD, which was only diagnosed last year.

When it was, Sheridan has said, “it made a lot of sense of all the sound and chaos in my head. Perhaps acting, for a lot of us, is the way that we let the emotions spill out?”

There is something so very likeable about Smith, who is a great giggler, and given (when appropriate) to corpsing on a set. There’s no “side.” What you see is what you get.

She stays connected with old friends, and you get the impression that Epworth is already well adjusted to seeing her popping into the local Co-Op for a carton of milk.

Ann Ming, it turns out, had been a Sheridan Smith fan “for many years.” It goes both ways.

Sheridan holds Ann’s hand, looks her in the eye and says: “Ann, you have given me the hardest job that I have ever done. But I hope that I’ve done you justice. That’s the only thing that really matters. Do you know what, from the first time I met you, I had you down as a firecracker, I really did.”

Ann sits back for a second. “Well,” she ripostes with a smile, “takes one to know one, don’t they say that…..?”

I Fought the Law starts on ITV1 August 31