Gina McKee - Ice Cool on Wearside

For an actor whose performances have graced the small screen so consistently for so long, Gina McKee could be forgiven for wondering why this fan has witnessed so few of them. Guilty as charged. I feel negligent, a fraud. However, she shouldn’t be too downhearted because Ms McKee has nonetheless entered my personal pantheon of TV Treasures. She has made her name in serious drama. That elegant, ‘long’ face and cool, near-glacial expression have secured a fair few costume drama roles such as The Forsyte Saga and The Borgias but they’re simply not my cup of tea. 

Yet bizarrely it was in a comedy that Gina McKee first came to my attention. Back in 1987 The Lenny Henry Show shone the spotlight on to the comedian’s one-time sketch character Delbert Wilkins. Much of the humour was drawn from Delbert squeezing his larger-than-life personality into the confines of a small-time Brixton pirate radio station. For the six-part series, a supporting cast had to be introduced, straight men and women to Lenny’s scene-stealing star. Gina was the straightest of them all, the sole voice of sanity who started out as a café waitress before becoming the radio station’s receptionist when the ‘Brixton Broadcasting Company’ went legit.

She also dead-panned it during Channel 4’s Drop The Dead Donkey and as a regular reporter on Chris Morris’ more barmpot news satire Brass Eye. By this time McKee had taken a giant leap towards stardom thanks to her part in BBC2’s Our Friends in the North. I’ve already raved about Christopher Eccleston in this series but, as the only female lead, she was outstanding, in more ways than one. 

In the rollercoaster saga of North-Eastern politics and relationships, I remember willing Eccleston’s Nicky and McKee’s Mary to get back together at the end. Amidst the thrilling and emotional ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ finale it would seem that I was to get my wish, although it was to the production’s considerable credit that not all loose ends were tied up in silk red ribbons and bows. If only more drama series were brave enough to do the same.

With a death toll of around a quarter of a million, there were a lot of tragic endings following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. The natural disaster was still raw when HBO made its Tsunami-The Aftermath in 2006. There’d been a fair few documentaries, including tourists’ own video footage, but this was only a film ‘inspired by real-life events’. I say ‘only’ but the Thai locations lent a real authenticity to proceedings. Special effects and a top-notch cast did the rest. There was no opportunity for Gina McKee to glam up for this one; it wasn’t a role for aqua-phobes! She was excellent, of course, as a mum separated from part of her family by the devastating tidal wave but unusually she was passed over for the major awards. With the likes of Toni Collette and Chiwetel Ejiofor leading a heavyweight cast, acting accolades were distributed more widely but it was a gripping two-parter when shown on BBC2.

I have also watched Gina in programmes such as Waking The Dead and heard her narrate the football documentary series Premier Passions, focussing on the fortunes of her local club Sunderland FC but in recent times, her most memorable performance came in 2018’s Bodyguard. While Keeley Hawes and Richard Madden stole the plaudits, she provided some ballast as the anti-terrorist chief caught up in political intrigue. But would she prove to be the baddie? We had to wait for the nerve-shredding if rather incredible climax to find out!

Provided the world ever recovers from the coronavirus impact on the global economy, there is talk of her reprising her role in a follow-up. Poor Jed Mercurio will have to juggle writing duties on all his ratings blockbusters but I’m sure it will be worth waiting for.

Gina McKee isn’t the only actress from the North-East, of course. Liz Carling, Jill Halfpenny and even Donna Air and Denise Welch have kept the flag flying for the Wear, Tees and Tyne but McKee seems to have escaped the ‘Geordie’ typecasting. She’s acting royalty now, don’t y’know, pet?