Los Angeles---British actor Sir Derek Jacobi's PBS roles tend to leave their mark on him as well as his appreciative audiences. Jacobi gave himself a mild case of whiplash evoking the awkward twitches of a genius-fool Roman emperor in the revered 1970s drama "I, Claudius". He felt a different kind of pain as Brother Cadfael. A psychic distress, he explains.

"The only thing I don't like about the role is having my head shaved for the tonsure," he says, referring to the hairless circle marking those in the order. It requires a twice-a-week razoring, Jacobi said. "Any man who hasn't gone bald, when they take that bit off it's like a mutilation. It makes me feel very funny in the groin when they do it."

Jacobi, 56, was in Southern California to promote his biggest TV role here since "I, Claudius." Wearing a sports coat and neatly pressed jeans, he looked young and dapper despite remnants of his latest barbering. The series is based on the works of Ellis Peters, pen name of 81-year-old British writer Edith Pargeter. Jacobi said he met Pargeter during filming. Did she offer any advice on the role? "You do it. It's yours now," Pargeter told him. She also extended an apology: "I didn't realize how difficult my books were to film. Next time I'll make them easier."

Although some scenes were a bit uncomfortable--such as one that had Jacobi dragging a corpse out of a chilly, mid-November Hungarian river while burdened by monk's robes--the character itself is a pleasure, he said. "The good thing about Cadfael is he's a very worldly monk. He's a man in his 50s, and he's only been a monk for the latter part of his life. He's a man with a past, and during the course of the series the past revisits him in the shape of various people." That includes a son Cadfael had not known existed.

The monk's skills as an herbalist, along with his intellect and powers of observation, serve him in his detective work. And a surprising number of bodies pop up in bucolic Shrewsbury. Pargeter, who set Cadfael's adventures in a historical period of civil war, manages to bring the turbulence of greater England to the village. "Within that small area she cleverly makes it perfectly feasible that people are dropping like flies," Jacobi said.

His only reluctance in taking the role was a fear of clerical typecasting: he played Thomas Becket on stage just before "Cadfael" and is set for a papal turn, also in the theater, after. But Jacobi knew it was time to get back into TV. "In England, people think you're either dead or you've left the business, that things have gone wrong for you, if they don't see you on their television screens," Jacobi said. "Also, my bank manager would be highly delighted, because you don't get rich in the theater," he said. He paused, then added with a smile and an emphasis on the personal pronoun: "I would be highly delighted."

Money aside, his career has been a rich one. A Cambridge graduate with a history degree he hopes never to have to use as a teacher, Jacobi has worked with the National Theatre, toured the world as "Hamlet" and was recently appointed director of an English theater company. He even has a loyal female club, the 'Jacobi Cadets'.

Movie fame, however, has eluded him. Jacobi regrets that the glory days of British cinema, which allowed actors such as Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson to work both stage and screen, are gone. "Something in me says I would like to do the big American film, but one of those films that comes from nowhere," a sleeper with big impact like a 'Bonnie & Clyde', Jacobi said. "If they (films) were to happen, they would probably have happened by now," he said. Then, hopefully: "They may in my dotage."