BEN McKenzie has had some dicey days at the coal face recently.

On the set of his new series Gotham, in which he plays the young brave rookie detective James 'Jim' Gordon, he came crashing down to earth while performing a stunt.

"It involved driving a guy back into a concrete pillar. It's safe, if you look where you're going, but I dropped my head and I caught the edge of it," recalls the Texas-born actor, smiling.

Despite the grin, the mishap resulted in a nasty wound to his forehead, which saw him carted off to hospital.

With Hollywood placing such a big emphasis on actors having model good looks, it's understandable why many would shun scenes like this. But McKenzie, who had his big breakthrough as bruiser Ryan Atwood in US teen drama The O.C., loves the physical side of his job.

"The fighting that we are doing is almost like an old-school Western bar fight," says the 36-year-old, who moved to New York to find work after graduating from the University of Virginia. "It's going to be down, dirty and brutal."

He admits he's no "kung fu master", or even a "martial arts student", for that matter, but he tries to do as much of his own stunt work as he can, because "it's fun".

"Also, when I'm watching an action scene, if I can see in a wide shot, not just a close up, the actual actor doing the work, it's exciting, it makes me lean in," he adds, and he says he can usually spot if a stunt double's been used.

It's just as well McKenzie's keen to get stuck in, as there are plenty of action-packed scenes in Gotham.

Based on characters in the original DC Comics, the series follows Jim Gordon as he navigates the mean streets of Gotham and, in the process, tells the story of how some of the legendary comic's biggest villains, including Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and The Joker, started out.

"[What excited me about the role], and it's probably the same thing that terrified me, is taking on an iconic character," says McKenzie.

"Jim is a great character. At the heart of Gotham is a really beautiful relationship between a guy figuring out how to bring justice to the world without losing his soul, and a young guy who is suffering at that moment from a tragedy."

That "young boy" is Bruce Wayne, aka the young Batman, who Detective Gordon meets when he finds himself tasked with tracking down the murderer of his wealthy parents, Martha and Thomas.

With rich pickings for material surrounding the iconic characters, this Batman prequel has plenty of plot avenues to go down.

But it's precisely this fanfare, and weight of expectation, that left McKenzie, who lives in Los Angeles, initially dubious about signing on the dotted line.

"This is an international set of characters and mythology, and you don't want to mess it up," he says.

YOU can look really foolish and it can be really bad for your career."

To put his mind to rest, he had several meetings with the directors and writers, so he could find out as much as possible about how the series was going to be made.

"I'm a little OCD about that kind of stuff," he admits with a shrug. "You can't just tell me that it's going to be great.

"Thankfully, Danny Cannon is the most technically proficient director I've ever worked with and a talented artist, so he was able to show me his drawings as a visual reference."

McKenzie may worry about whether the show, which also stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Sean Pertwee, will flop or flourish but so far, it's been a hit. "We had a group of kids in from Make-A-Wish Foundation Australia," says McKenzie, who is looking forward to hearing his nieces' and nephews' reaction to the series.

"It's been pretty great to have kids come and see that some sets are larger than life. It's an incredible experience for a child to soak up that grandeur."

He wasn't an "enormous fan of Batman" when he was a youngster, however, but believes that the "entertaining" show will reach out beyond comic book buffs.

"I would watch this show if I wasn't in it, even though I'm not a big fan of Batman," McKenzie says. "That's about the highest compliment I could pay."

l Gotham starts on Channel 5 on Monday, October 13