Opportunity knocks for Trevor Eve as he wakes the dead by playing Hughie Green

We're used to seeing him on our screens as the suave cold-case cop weekly charged with waking the dead. And now it seems the actor Trevor Eve may finally have succeeded – by transforming himself into the late TV legend Hughie Green.

Eve, who first found fame as Eighties TV detective Eddie Shoestring, meticulously adopted the characteristics of the gameshow host for a 90-minute biographical film due to be screened on BBC Four next month.

And with his white hair, comically pursed lips and one raised eyebrow, Eve looks uncannily like the Opportunity Knocks presenter.

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Titled Hughie Green, Most Sincerely – after Green's famous catchphrase – the film will focus on his troubled private life.

Although he regularly attracted 24million viewers and was at the heart of the entertainment industry for 30 years, Green was hooked on alcohol, prescription drugs and women.

The opening scene shows the bombshell revelation at Green's 1997 funeral that the five illegitimate children he fathered included the television presenter Paula Yates.

To prepare for the role Eve, 56, absorbed himself in every aspect of Green's life, reading his son Christopher's biography, talking to old friends and watching black-and-white clips.

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Ben Evans, the executive producer, said: "Trevor did a huge amount of deep research.

"On the rare moments that he wasn't on camera, he would be in his trailer looking at old footage, studying that very odd mid-Atlantic accent, and then getting the facial tics and mannerisms bang-on.

"It was a masterclass in acting, watching how he put together this character."

The transformation is all the more remarkable as the producers avoided using prosthetics to alter his face.

Evans said: "Trevor spent a lot of time working with a make-up artist, but while you have to suggest something of the physicality of the person, you don't want a rubber head.

"Hughie and Trevor have completely different face structures, so it was Trevor's performance that made this work.

"He morphed his face into Hughie's. It was extraordinary."

Mark Benton plays Green's arch rival, Stars On Sunday host Jess Yates, and Emma Stansfield is Jess's wife, Helene Thornton, who had a fling with Green that led to Paula's birth.

Paula – who married Bob Geldof and died of a drugs overdose in 2000 after the death of her lover Michael Hutchence – appears on television in the background and is a major focus of the plot.

"There's no evidence to suggest Hughie and Paula ever met and this drama doesn't say anything different.

"But what it does suppose is that he took an interest in her," said Evans.

"We do suspect that he put enough pieces of the puzzle together to know that she was his daughter.

"The DNA evidence after his death confirmed it, but this drama is partly about whether he 100 per cent knew."