Detective Senior Sergeant Sparkes divorced his wife Lorraine after finding out about her affair with Simon. Lorraine hit his superannuation and so Sparkes had to come back to work after his heart attack. He took on a position of ‘mentor' to the Homicide Squad and in particular developed a mentoring relationship with Simon, for whom he's developed a soft spot – after all, they were both duped and dumped by Lorraine.

Personally, Sparkes has settled in a new relationship with Kelly Pilsbury (played by Annie Jones), single mother of two daughters. Career-wise, things take a dive for Sparkes when he feeds case information to an old friend, it results in Sparkes being busted down to Uniform and sent to an outpost in the country.

MARSHALL NAPIER

Marshall Napier makes a dramatic physical transformation for his role on City Homicide by strapping on a prosthetic stomach.

Playing overweight detective Wilton Sparkes has added about 30kgs to Marshall's frame and he admits the fat suit has helped a lot with his character's development.

"I enjoy changing appearance. It's something you often get to do on stage, but not as often for television. But it does half the work for you because you certainly feel like the character with it on," he says.

He describes Wilton Sparkes as a "big, fat angry man on the verge of a heart attack". "He's also having some problems at home," he adds.

Far from his popular character on McLeod's Daughters (where he starred alongside daughter Jessica Napier), he also distances comparisons between Wilton and former roles on police dramas' Water Rats, Police Rescue (for which he received an AFI nomination), Stingers and Blue Heelers.

"I did play a whole spate of policemen at one stage. I haven't been a cop for a while and now I'm stepping back into a familiar role for me, but this character is quite distinctively individual," he says.

"I have an uncle who is a cop and while working on other roles and films I have got to talk to many police and I think I have a feel for it now."

The New Zealand born actor, who moved to Australia 20 years ago, is in-demand in theatre and film roles as well. He recently finished a stint in New Zealand filming The Water Horse with two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson.

Last year, Marshall took his own play "Freak Winds" to New York where it had a three-month run off-off-Broadway. The actor wrote, starred and directed the thriller, which had previously played to sell-out crowds in Australia in 1999 and 2000.