Walken is very funny, as he’s proved several times hosting the US sketch show Saturday Night Live. His first stint working in Bristol (two series of The Outlaws were filmed back-to-back), happened to coincide with violent protests against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill earlier this year. “First time I came here there was a lot of noise outside. Second time I came, there was too. First time it was politics, second, it was the soccer.”

He ascribes his sense of humour to his upbringing. Growing up in Queens, New York, after the war, his mother pushed him and his brothers to perform.

“I was from one of those families that meant I was in showbusiness from the age of five,” he says. “And when I was growing up in America, it was the birth of television after the Second World War. There were these huge shows. Whatever my sense of humour is, it was formed by people like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, and Broadway musical comedy.”

Walken trained at the Washington Dance Studio and got his first break on the Broadway stage opposite Liza Minnelli. “I was in Broadway musicals for years, as a dancer, and I think my whole sensibility and even my acting technique is very ‘absence of a fourth wall’,” he says. “The famous fourth wall doesn’t really exist for me, because of all that time in musicals, where always the other character in the scene is the audience. So I’m always very aware of the audience.”

It’s an audience who, in recent years, have been pummelled with a type of movie-making that is light years away from Walken’s musical roots.

“Nobody’s asked me to do a Marvel! But I think it’s too bad that with a movie that costs $200 million to make, you know, dozens of smaller movies could be made for that money. And then it’s too bad that if you make a movie now, it’s unlikely to be seen in a [cinema] unless it’s one of those big ones. The smaller movies more likely go straight to the small screen.”

It’s part and parcel of a commercial evolution that has ended up with a legend such as Walken appearing in a big-budget TV series part-financed by a one-time online bookshop, Amazon. But when it means that younger viewers will get to see Walken strut his stuff, it seems churlish to complain.

As well as Walken and Tomlinson, there are five other disparate characters working at the community hall in The Outlaws, from a straight-A student (Rhianne Barreto) who shoplifts for thrills to a young man in debt to the wrong people (Gamba Cole), a middle-aged, middle-class Brexit supporter (who confounds the usual stereotypes) and a sad-sack lawyer played by Merchant.

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There’s a thriller plot to do with “county lines” drug gangs, and the whole thing is underpinned with some very real peril: the wonder is that it’s a comedy at all. “I think humour can always naturally arrive from very dramatic situations,” says Merchant. “I often think back to a lot of the comedies that I loved growing up, whether it’s Steptoe and Son, or Reggie Perrin, or particularly Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. If you removed the laughter tracks, they would be desperately bleak, existential dramas.”

To lighten the mood, musical veteran Walken breaks out some of his old moves. “Yes, there is a bit of dancing on the show,” the actor confirms. “Have I still got it? You know, I hope so. You’ll have to watch and see.”

As it happens, I have watched it. No spoilers, but Walken has still got it.

The Outlaws is on Amazon Prime.

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