In The Philanthropist, British actor James Purefoy plays Teddy Rist, a hero who is ‘Bill Gates, Robin Hood and James Bond rolled into one,’ according to NBC’s website; a hero who moves from dodging bullets while delivering a life-saving vaccine to blackmailing a prime minister for women’s rights.

The credit list behind the television series is impressive: Emmy Award winner Tom Fontana (Homicide: Life on the Street, Oz) wrote the pilot, which was directed by threetime Emmy nominee Peter Horton (Grey’s Anatomy), while the exec producers are responsible for The Shield, The Office, Ugly Betty and The Tudors between them.

“When they pitched the idea to me, I thought it was ludicrous,” laughs James, who’s probably best known for his role as Marc Antony in Rome. “I just didn’t believe there was a billionaire who would get as involved on the ground as this. I figured if you had that much money you would just pick up a phone or write a cheque or throw a $20 000-a-plate fundraiser and deal with problems that way.”

Despite his initial scepticism, James accepted the role after being introduced to the real-life inspiration behind the show. “There is a billionaire, an American guy in his late 50s, who profoundly believes that you don’t just write cheques, that philanthropy’s about getting down, boots on the ground, eyeball to eyeball, engaging with people, listening not telling. As soon as I met him it all clicked into place. He is the most extraordinary liver of life I have ever come across; with an appetite for all aspects of life, one of them being philanthropy. He goes around the world on a jet with his family and helps people. It’s great because I know now that if anyone ever says, ‘I don’t believe a billionaire would do this kind of thing,’ I have evidence to disprove them.”

James, who is an ambassador for Action Aid, felt his character tapped into the zeitgeist of Obamadom. "In the US we have a new president, who, for the first time in a long time, is not only able but willing to listen, not tell; to cajole and argue and discuss and understand where people’s problems are coming from, rather than use force; to put that might to being able to enable those ideas, rather than ramming them home with the muzzle of a gun.”

According to James, “The show steps up to the plate in the way that Obama is asking everyone to. With this series, we start in Nigeria, we go to Kashmir, Burma, Paris, and Kosovo, then back to Nigeria, to San Diego and then we end up in Haiti. For a major US network to make this, it’s very risky and a cultural shift. If it gets picked up to do more, it will show that the American public is ready to engage with a character who is going to these different places.”

As a means of exploring other cultures, television comes with its own challenges. For example, the pilot was set in Nigeria, but shot mostly in Cape Town and Mozambique, using South African extras speaking Xhosa, rather than Nigerians speaking any of the country’s 521 languages. While this is both cost effective and hardly unusual, it’s like setting a movie in Germany, but shooting in France, using French actors speaking French, although the producers are probably right when they say that their target audience won’t know the difference, especially since this is all just background dialogue.

James initially questioned one of the episodes’ storylines, where his company, Maidstone-Rist, is placed on The Human Rights Watch Company List for doing business in Burma, where pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for the past six years, having spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention. After a debate with his business partners, Philip and Olivia Maidstone (Law & Order’s Jesse L. Martin and Burn Up’s Neve Campbell), Teddy decides to fly to Burma, break into the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s house, and ask her what they should do. “Despite my concerns that this was all a bit far-fetched, two weeks after we shot it an American man did exactly that in real life.”

The American, John William Yettaw, was apparently researching a psychology paper on forgiveness, but both he and Aung were arrested as a result, which is perhaps a good example of the way things can go wrong when well-meaning foreigners try to help in situations they don’t understand.

James is conscious that’s he’s playing that post-colonialist nightmare: a pale male American rushing around the world to save the day. “White males have just as much right to change as anybody else, haven’t they?” James counters. “And he does change. I like the fact that he goes in thinking he has all the answers, but he doesn’t. The answers often come from the people he is trying to help, which is the way it should be, obviously.”

Throughout our interview, James fluctuates between idealism and self-deprecation. “On this show, I’m doing the things I’d like everyone else to do. I would like to see billionaires behaving like this and thinking with a social conscience. Would I rather that they put more time into this kind of thing rather than building another yacht that can hold three helicopters? Yes, I would. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anybody? The people who have gained their wealth in the last 15 years - the hedge fund managers, the people who have brought on a culture of debt, the people who have made millions out of selling people mortgages they couldn’t afford - would I like to see them engage a slightly different part of their brains and use their wealth imaginatively to make a change in the world? Well, yes, I would. I’m not going to pretend I don’t.”

He’s speaking passionately, but he reins himself in. “However, this show is unlikely to change the world. This is network television; I’m not going to get on my high horse. But if you’re going to make a piece of network television, I’d rather be involved in something that maybe, maybe, and I’m stressing that maybe, maybe might change slightly attitudes about other countries in the world. One of the things our billionaire talks about is concrete baby steps. If you don’t plant the seeds, you’re not going to get the orchard. I’m proud to be part of this show because I think we’re planting little seeds. Nearly all of them will wither and die, but there may be one, and all you need is one.”

Thankfully, if the pilot is anything to go by, this mix of optimism and cynicism seems present in his character, which keeps the show from ever feeling preachy. “On the one hand, he does want to help, but he’s also quite glib. He can put on his armour of sarcasm, and amusement and wit, so he’s a reasonably engaging person to hang out with for an hour. He does lots of good things for people but his personal morals are highly questionable. He drinks a lot, he probably does drugs, and sometimes he blatantly uses his money to pull women. He is a man full of contradictions, which makes him very interesting to play. Through him you find out stories about these countries you wouldn’t otherwise know about.”

At the end of the pilot, I ask myself what I have learnt about Nigeria. Apparently it has bad storms, loose women, drug dealers, extreme poverty and corrupt officials who accept bribes, although Bonnie Henna does stand out Dr. Chima Balo, a strong, beautiful African doctor.

This is the stereotype of Africa we are used to seeing; to our shame, this is sometimes a stereotype we deserve, but this is also what drives Africans to write our own stories in protest, to remind the rest of the world that we are the cradle of humanity and that we have produced our own Nobel Prize winners, that the rest of the world can learn from what we get right as well as what we get wrong. In the show’s defence, Teddy returns to Nigeria in a later episode, which may give viewers a more rounded perspective on the country.

But perhaps it’s unfair of me to expect a completely authentic, non-patronising view of Africa on American television. The Philanthropist marks a beginning: in James’ phrase a "concrete baby step" towards an open dialogue between America and the rest of the world. As James said, “The show’s message, if there is one, is that it only takes a little thing to happen for good things to come out of it. You don’t have to try change the entire foreign policy of the country; you can just change one little bit.”

By James’ own admission, he knew very little about human rights in Nigeria before he started this show. He knows a great deal more now. The Philanthropist premieres on NBC on Wednesday, 24 June 2009. James concludes, “The Philanthropist is not a show you’ve seen before. In spite of all the action, this is really a character journey. A journey of a man who has everything, but because of the loss of his son, has nothing. The heart and soul of this show is the relief, the moments of peace and purpose that come to him from trying to do some good in the world.”

Moonlighting serviced the South African and Mozambique legs of The Philanthropist, which also shot in Prague in the Czech Republic.

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Click here to watch the trailer.

Kevin Kriedemann