"For years, Hannah has made an effort to use his status as a celebrity to support charitable causes. Soon after his role as the epileptic police officer Franky Drinkall in Out Of The Blue, he showed his support for the Epilepsy Association of Scotland. He was, for a long time, a spokesman for Oxfam's Cut Conflict Campaign." Wikipedia

"The first series concluded with DI Frank Drinkall (John Hannah) being murdered by a drug addict. Throughout the previous six episodes, the viewer had grown close to Drinkall, who when we first met him was diagnosed with epilepsy. His downward spiral and final dénouement, relied little on the conventions of crime drama, instead focussed on how Drinkall’s condition affected his mental well-being. Whilst it might not have been a soap, Out of the Blue was certainly anything but a standard crime drama. This genre positioning was further affirmed in the second series with the introduction of DS Jim Llewyn (David Morrissey), a similarly troubled figure.

Although featuring a very strong cast, excellent production values and scripts described by one overseas newspaper critic as “tautly written, with the sort of crisp, colloquial dialogue you expect from the Brits, it’s clammy, a kitchen-sink sort of drama”, Out of the Blue failed to establish and sustain a sizeable enough audience. Perhaps the brevity of the programme’s two series prevented the characters from gaining the kind of audience familiarity central to soap operas. Regardless, series creator Peter Bowker would later find greater acclaim in the police drama genre with 1998’s Undercover Heart." Jack Kibble-White
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