Peak Practice star, Adrian Lukis is planning a special get together on the set of the top rated medical series, introducing all of his children to each other. He wants his eight year old daughter Anna to meet his screen children Tom and Emma, to set her mind at rest about his TV family. ‘Anna was a bit worried when I first appeared on the series last year,’ explains Adrian. ‘She wanted to know who these children were and why they were calling me Dad. Because I spend seven months away filming the series, it must seem that I spend more time with them than her. Especially when she sees them on the television jumping all over me.’
When the 40 year old actor is at home in London with Anna and his wife Michelle, an actress turned psychotherapist, he makes the most of his time there. ‘Even though I’m away a lot I comfort myself with the fact that when I am home I’m available all the time. Whereas most other dads would probably be at the office. But even so I’ve decided Anna meeting my screen offspring is going to be a priority,’
Family problems will be stacking up like an NHS waiting list for Adrian’s character Dr David Shearer in this series. This week, while David is still reeling from his daughter Emma’s brush with meningitis, his wife Clare discovers she is pregnant. The couple are forced to make a heartbreaking decision, should Claire stop taking the drugs she needs and sink back into manic depression or should she keep taking them and put her baby’s health at risk?
‘It’s an overwhelming dilemma for David as a doctor and her husband,’ says Adrian. ‘But he’s toughened up a lot in this series, I’m pleased to say, so he’ll be able to cope with difficult decisions.’
He’ll certainly need to. This week’s episode also sees David go to the newspapers after a boy with Downs Syndrome is refused a life saving heart transplant operation. ‘The actor who played the character has Down Syndrome and he was absolutely great to work with, very friendly and affectionate,’ says Adrian. ‘In fact he knew his lines better than I did and he didn’t mind pointing that out either!’