JON Baird swears he has not got it in for the police.

The director's breakthrough film Filth was about Bruce, a bigoted, drug addict cop who manipulates and hallucinates his way through the festive season to win a promotion.

Now Jon is looking at the damaged relationship between the Metropolitan police, the public and the media in Channel 4's comedy drama, Babylon, which starts tonight, Thursday.

Both arguably offer a bleak portrayal of the boys in blue but not so says Jon.

He told Weekend: "I always felt that the important thing about Filth wasn’t that Bruce was a police officer but that he was an interesting character.

"It maybe makes it slightly more interesting that he is a policeman up to no good but he could have been anyone. He could have been a salesman or work for a council.

"Likewise, Babylon is certainly not a swipe at the police. Babylon is more a character driven thing about real human beings working in a huge organisation.

"It is about how a modern organisation like the police force has an effect on their lives and how their private lives effect their policing."

Babylon was created by multi award-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle along with Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

Jon caught the attention of Danny after he won London Critics' Circle's Breakthrough British Filmmaker award for Filth

His leading man James McAvoy, who worked with Danny on Trance, also won two awards for best actor at the London Critics' Circle and British Independent Film Awards.

And there are actually some parallels between Jon and Danny's careers as they both made their name adapting Irvine Welsh novels.

Jon added: "We have spoken about how we make films, how he made Trainspotting and what it is like to adapt Irvine’s work.

"We like a lot of the same films and obviously I’m a big fan of his so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from him working on Babylon."

Slumdog Millionaire director Danny filmed the pilot episode of Babylon and Jon directs the following three episodes of the seven-part series.

Jon said: "Danny let me get on with it and showed me a lot of trust but he was always there if I needed him. To have someone like that on your team is phenomenal really."

Not bad for a little known filmmaker who had a life-changing meeting with his hero Irvine Welsh in 2008.

The pair met after Jon released his first film, Cass, and Irvine was doing a book launch for his novel, Crime.

Jon, who first read Filth when he was 26, said: "There’s an old phrase in the entertainment business – ‘never meet your heroes’ because you get let down – but he was the opposite.

"He was so much more than I thought. He was a lovely guy and very funny and self deprecating.

"I just said to him I really love Filth and I’d love to film it and he said the rights had been made available and we started talking about it and it went from there.

"We got on pretty much straight away as we had a very similar sense of humour and I wanted to adapt the book as a dark comedy more than a social realism film.

"That was the way people had wanted to adapt the book before but it would never have worked because of Irvine’s writing and humour.

"Throughout the project I never felt any pressure because Irvine always had my back."

Filth went on to become the second highest grossing 18-certificate film in the UK in 2013, only behind Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.

"I always thought it was Irvine Welsh's best book but people said it was unfilmable," added Jon.

"But I didn’t think so. I thought the main character Bruce was so interesting and you can always a great script out of an incredible character.

"It’s been a whirlwind of excitement but the five years it took to make was a lot of blood, sweat and tears."

Irvine Welsh's work is full of extreme characters and the seedy underworlds they inhabit so why do readers and viewers relate to them so well?

"I think that’s real life," said Jon.

"Irvine creates unsavoury characters but they’re all very human. None of them are caricatures and I think that’s the bottom line.

"People respond to things they can identify with and people are fascinated with complex characters.

"Irvine’s books play on things that we would secretly like to do or say but obviously it’s not accepted or the norm so it’s a guilty pleasure.

"Even in the darkest of stuff there is always an element of humour behind it."

And now after five years, Jon can breathe easy after Irvine gave the thumbs up to Filth's screen adaptation.

Jon added: "The first thing he said to me after he saw the film was a very generous thing. He said: ‘I think it’s better than the book’. For an author to say that to you was a very humbling."

- Babylon starts tonight, Thursday, on Channel 4 at 10pm