Steven Mackintosh - from there to here

One of the most watchable TV actors of the past two decades must be Steven Mackintosh. He doesn’t often command star status but, like many of my Treasures, he has the ability to elevate a mundane drama into something special. Too scrawny for romantic leads, he has tended to play supporting characters either on the fringes of society or cops you’re not sure whether or not to trust. 

To be honest, I’d forgotten one of his earliest appearances, although I had watched probably every episode. When Sue Townsend’s glorious Adrian Mole books were transferred to the small screen in the mid-Eighties, ITV bravely broadcast them in half-hour slots without a laughter track, which I considered the right decision. The casts were a curious blend of familiar adults (Bill Fraser, Beryl Reid, Stephen Moore, Julie Walters) and unknown teenagers. Whereas Gian Sammarco (Adrian) and Lindsay Stagg (Pandora) didn’t persevere with acting for very long, the boy who played his best friend Nigel in both The Secret Diary… and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole. certainly did. Good choice. 

Thirty-three years later, he is almost unrecognisable, but I suppose that goes for most of us! In 1993, he was further transformed into a gay rock star in the BBC’s controversial adaptation of The Buddha of Suburbia. I found a lot of the hedonistic scenes uncomfortable to watch but was well worth persevering with. There were superficial similarities between Steven’s Charlie Kay and David Bowie, who was a big fan of author Hanif Kureishi and wrote the series soundtrack. 

Mackintosh also cropped up in relatively orthodox parts around that time. He was a PC in the excellent Between the Lines and sergeant in an Inspector Morse story. Since then, he has risen through the ranks, earning promotions with age. In 1998, he portrayed a missing vice squad officer in Peter Bowker’s engaging six-parter Undercover Heart, although Daniela Nardini and Lennie James probably had more screen time as the cops trying to find him. A decade later he had been promoted to Inspector for the worthy series Criminal Justice, starring Maxine Peake, followed quickly by elevation to DCI in the first series of Luther, at first the straight man to Idris Elba’s intriguingly unconventional lead character before going off the rails. 

For all his fictional TV career, Mackintosh just never seems to look older. The hair may have become a bit greyer and wispier, even running to stubble on that sharp chin, but he retains that distinctive slim, angular appearance. That youthful vibe helped when portraying a young man confronting the sexual abuse he suffered at a children’s home in BBC Wales’ harrowing film Care in 2000. It also earned him a BAFTA Best Actor nomination, with which I couldn’t quibble, although Michael Gambon inevitably took the honour. 

Unlike the veteran thesp, Steven Mackintosh possesses a very ordinary face, and I mean that as a compliment. Besides cops he is also an ideal actor for roles requiring anonymity, as in 2012’s Inside Men. The everyman air has also seen him well cast opposite bigger female stars.  He was Jane Horrocks’ neglected hubby in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, which had the rather implausible premise of a supermarket manager running for Parliament and riding a tide of populism to become PM. Yes, I Know we have seen Donald Trump in the White House and Leicester City winning the Premier League, but this storyline stretched credibility to breaking point. 

A few years ago, he even co-starred with a global film star in Toni Collette. However, the ‘open marriage’ theme to Wanderlust was not altogether to Angie’s or my taste, given we were relative newly-weds! The acting was fine, and I empathised with Mackintosh’s character, but we didn’t persevere with the series beyond episode one. 

Also in 2018 he had an important part in Channel 4’s bleak adoption crime drama Kiri, although it was clearly a Sarah Lancashire vehicle, and in 2015 supported Emily Watson in the emotional 7/7 bombings film A Song For Jenny. I suppose this packed a more powerful punch for me given that I was travelling to work in London on that traumatic morning, and one of the victims lived a few streets away.  

Four years earlier he was in another drama based on the aftermath of an iconic terror attack, From There to Here. As he was playing the sleazy low-life brother of Philip Glenister. I felt this was Steven Mackintosh going back to his roots on the wrong side of the tracks. The series revealed his attempts to recoup debts making him an unwitting accomplice in the 1996 Manchester Arndale Centre explosion. Just another example illustrating Steven’s supporting actor golden touch.