Bernard Hepton - the Honourable Officer

Growing up in the Seventies, one sure sign of a quality TV drama was the inclusion on the Radio Times cast list of Bernard Hepton. It’s only recently that I discovered he had enjoyed a lengthy career as producer and director before finding fame at the other end of the camera. Not all his output was on Mum and Dad’s agenda or of any interest to my childhood self but he starred in some truly memorable series throughout that decade.

Like Colin Blakely, Peter Barkworth and others, Hepton was a regular presence on the TV landscape, specialising in tall, honourable characters, perhaps with a hint of vulnerability. Judges, archbishops, senior cops or politicians: all were meat and drink to this Bradford boy, be it in a contemporary or historical setting. 

I remember being very aware of the BBC’s prestige Tudor-era serials of 1970-71, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R and am pretty sure I was in the lounge on occasions they were on the screen, possibly even paying some attention. Whilst the enduring images in my brain are of Keith Michell’s fat-suit and Glenda Jackson’s white make-up, I must also have seen Bernard Hepton in the crucial role of Thomas Cranmer. 

Then in ’72, when I was eleven, Colditz came along. World War 2 films were always on the box but Gerald Glaister’s prisoner-of-war series approached the subject in a very different way. Yes, there were plenty of cliched gun-toting Nazi guards, hackneyed German accents and stiff-upper-lip British officers but, unlike the monochrome TV pictures, not all the characters were so black-and-white. There were some enthralling episodes and, homework completed, I was allowed to watch most weeks. It wasn’t simply a case of Allies v Nazis. There were conflicts between the prisoners and also between those charged with preventing any escape. The mutual respect between the rival officer classes was ever-present and in particular Bernard Hepton’s Kommandant was portrayed as an honourable human being, unlike the brutally bitter and twisted SS Major Mohn (Anthony Valentine). 

A few years later, the same production team were responsible for another claustrophobic wartime drama, Secret Army. Many of the same ingredients were present and correct but this time Hepton was on ‘our’ side. For three years, his character Albert Foiret ran a small bar-restaurant in Belgium. His customers were occupying German troops, blissfully unaware that the establishment was a front for the Belgian Resistance smuggling rescued Allied airmen back to Blighty. It’s interesting to watch the original show to rid my mind of the more lasting memories of Eighties comedy Allo Allo! and Gorden Kaye’s character Rene, his appearance so blatantly based on Hepton’s Albert. The latter also provided some continuity at the start of Secret Army spin-off series Kessler in 1981. He was a useful witness in the later hunt for the evil SS major who escaped capture after the war. Sadly, nobody seemed to care what happened to the sitcom’s looted painting ‘The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies’… 

Around the time I first went off to Exeter University, the Beeb broadcast another of its classic adaptations, and I became hooked. Like most Le Carre novels, Tinker Tailor Solder Spy was slow-moving and wordy, requiring considerable attention (I could never watch it now!); an action sequence would typically involve Alec Guinness giving his spectacles a particularly vigorous wipe. Guinness played George Smiley and one of his former recruits, the duplicitous Toby Esterhase, was a role made for Hepton. He reprised the role in the follow-up, Smiley’s People, and it was a crucial part requiring some mesmerising scenes with Guinness. 

Also in my undergraduate days I watched Bernard in a very different spy thriller, Blood Money, this time as a DCS in Scotland Yard, and I would later welcome his appearances in Bergerac (as a senior MP) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (as a judge). Back in ’76 he also joined the stellar cast of I Claudius, another series demanding more concentration than most 15 year-olds could possibly possess, but those narrow eyes were unmistakeable. 

Amidst all these heavy dramas, I’m glad to report Bernard Hepton did fit in a few comedies. The only one I would have watched was Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ’Em. In the first series, he was one of many notable character actors roped in to have their sanity severely tested by Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer. In Bernard’s case, the humour was ramped up by his character being a psychiatrist. Our Frank was, of course, way beyond the scope of professional diagnosis or treatment. 

His TV appearances became scarcer in the Nineties but it was only a few years ago that he died, aged 92. The announcement flooded my mind with happy memories of one of Britain’s finest television actors of my lifetime.

Hugh Laurie - from upper-class twit to scheming baddie

As a fully-fledged adult, I have grown up with a wide range of talented entertainers of a similar age. Many emerged on television as part of an established duo or bunch of friends who cut their teeth as performers and writers on the university stage. For instance, Whitehouse and Enfield, French and Saunders, Mayall and Edmondson are long-standing household names for those of my generation. But few come posher than Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. 

Whilst Fry spent most of his public school adolescence getting expelled or imprisoned, Laurie followed the traditional upper-class passage of privilege from local ‘prep’ to Eton and finally Cambridge University. There, his educational achievements were suppressed by extracurricular activities but I reckon he’s come out of it all pretty well. Like Peter Cook, Eric Idle, Clive Anderson and various Goodies before him, young Hugh became President of Footlights where he and then partner Emma Thompson encountered a largely reformed Mr Fry, and the rest is history. 

Stephen could have sneaked into my list of TV Treasures but for sheer length and breadth of output I’ve leaned towards Laurie. In 1983, the two appeared with Thompson in Alfresco, ITV’s early toe dipped into the waters of what was to become known as alternative comedy. I watched a few instalments without being hugely impressed, unaware of the colossal careers most of those contributors would enjoy. They also included Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton, the latter clearly falling short in the acting department in the collection of sketches! 

Instead he excelled at comedy writing and was partly responsible for The Young Ones, which I did watch. Religiously. He even wrote roles for himself and the old Footlights alumni in the classic episode ‘Bambi’. That included the University Challenge skit pitting ‘Scumbag College’ (Rick, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike) against the wealth-flaunting aristos of what else but ‘Footlights College’ featuring Laurie as ‘Lord Monty’.   

Lots of actors have over the years made upper-class twits their speciality. However, few have portrayed them with such childish and wide-eyed gusto as successfully as Hugh Laurie. The pinnacles of his aristocratic inanity were showcased in Ben Elton’s brilliant Blackadder canon of the late Eighties. As the foppish Prince Regent in Blackadder the Third, he propelled the simplicity dial to eleven but who could blame him for his bewildered befuddlement when faced with Samuel Johnson’s vocabularian verbosity?  Two years later, Blackadder Goes Forth saw his George as an upper-class WW1 officer, his stiff upper lip and cheery demeanour protecting him from the blatant horrors of the trenches. He was so stupid that he even allowed himself to cross-dress (as Georgina) and be wooed by Stephen Fry’s incompetent General Melchett. Rather successfully, it transpires…. 

That same year, the pair were reunited in the sketch show format for A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I felt it promised more than it delivered, but sometimes caught the zeitgeist, be it in the world of yuppie businessmen or coaching cheating footballers. I wonder if a young Neymar or Wilfred Zaha were in Hugh’s class? The football theme also cropped up in a 1991 Comic Relief news bulletin skit. Indeed, in the early days, he was a regular sight on Red Nose Day before other obligations took priority. 

At the start of the Nineties Hugh Laurie was extremely busy on TV, but he was also making a name in other entertainment media. There were various film roles, and one sweltering summer evening in 1990 I was with a group of friends watching his hilarious performance on the Theatre Royal stage in Gasping by – who else?- Ben Elton. Alongside Bernard Hill and Jaye Griffiths, he portrayed another upper-class twit in the yuppie satire but showed a gift for knockabout physical comedy too. He was clearly more than a mere sketch comedy phenomenon. 

I confess I can’t remember it, but my 1993 diary records my enjoying an ITV crime drama series All Or Nothing At All. Hugh starred as a feckless financial adviser, not with Emma Thompson but her mum Phyllida Law. Not a Fry in sight. The same was true when he appeared alongside Reeves and Mortimer in the 2000 reboot of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in the guise of a shady doctor at a psychiatric retreat. Both parts suggested Hugh Laurie was shifting gear from posh, loveable prat to posh, devious crook. It suited him like a sleek, shiny Armani. 

In the first series of Spooks, he was back in upper-crust goodie mode, although of the rather more intelligent kind. Which is a relief because he was the amiable head of MI6. His character’s work with the CIA also heralded the actor’s migration to the USA for a new and unfeasibly lucrative phase. 

Apparently, so good was his accent that Hugh Laurie was considered a quintessential American when first auditioning for the role of Dr Gregory House. No matter. He got the gig and proceeded to star in House for eight long seasons, becoming in the process one of the highest paid stars on the US network. Who’d have thought it? Thankfully Channel 5 snapped up the UK broadcasting rights and I could take the opportunity to experience the Brit’s superb performance for myself. The character was a beguiling melange of eccentric pill-popping hospital specialist, irascible boss and frequently obnoxious human being. His saving grace was a Sherlock Holmes-ian brilliance when it came to spotting rare infectious diseases, albeit after a few near-fatal misdiagnoses, in each episode. With greying stubble and walking cane, this was a new-look Laurie, and he pulled off the difficult task of making such a walking contradiction both credible and charismatic. I persevered on and off for a few series before the format began to seem repetitive, and didn’t once see him on subsequent American hits Chance, Veep or Avenue 5. On the other hand I did witness his nice turn in 2019’s Catch-22 adaptation, including the funniest scene of the whole series. I was torn: it was reassuring that a Brit could succeed across the pond but a little disappointing that he needed to arm himself with transatlantic drawl to do so. 

It’s been evident for ages that Hugh Laurie is a real Renaissance man: not just a comedy writer/performer, cartoon voice artist and serious actor, but also Cambridge Blue at rowing (his dad won an Olympic gold in the same sport), novelist. passable guitarist, drummer and sax player, successful jazz-blues singer (but not my cup of Tetley’s) and accomplished pianist. In retrospect, his musical skills have slipped into quite a few comedy programmes over the years, from Comic Relief Country singer to tickling the ivories on Jeeves and Wooster. 

More recently he’s slipped back into the bodies of egotistical bastards, and has deserved all the plaudits. He was superior to any Bond baddie in 2016’s The Night Manager and an engaging duplicitous, ambitious Tory politician in 2020’s Roadkill. More Blackadder than Prince George, perhaps, but his Peter Laurence was another great Hugh Laurie character to be treasured.

Sophie Okonedo: A class actor for all media

Sophie Okonedo surely possesses one of the most striking faces on our screens, a visage that probably a great deal to her mixed Nigerian-East European Jewish heritage. Thirty years ago I don’t think there were many black female faces in British drama but now we are really spoilt for choice. The likes of Thandie Newton, Nina Sosanya, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Michaela Coel have become familiar faces in the UK, many also cracking the lucrative American TV and movie markets. 

For this almanac of TV treasures, I’ve tended to exclude film stars. Fortunately, as an Oscar nominee (for Hotel Rwanda) and Tony Award winner, her big screen and stage careers have not come at the expense of a serious CV of British television. And there are plenty of programmes I’ve seen myself. 

Her first TV appearance I probably watched came in a 1991 episode of Casualty. She made a convincing young athlete brought in with mystery pains by coach Tom Georgeson, who was always playing slightly dodgy characters. Was he giving his charge performance-enhancing drugs or was it just a case of over-training to reach the top? I think between them, Duffy, Charlie and Dr. Julian (Nigel le Vaillant) wheedled out the truth. 

In this era of endless crime thrillers (love ‘em!) it is perhaps surprising that I’ve never seen Sophie play a cop, although she is no stranger to the criminal justice system on the side of law and order. In the Nineties, she had a regular if peripheral part as Janet McTeer’s smart secretary in Lynda La Plante’s uncompromising prison series The Governor and has since played all sorts of legal professionals. In 2009 Okonedo was Maxine Peake’s solicitor in the absorbing second series of Criminal Justice, which was ‘stripped’ across a single week on BBC1. Then in the following decade she was fabulous as a barrister colleague and courtroom rival to David Tennant’s lead character in The Escape Artist. She had to juggle loyalties with the search for truth regarding Tennant’s dubious actions, but was he guilty of murder and consequently a danger to her…? It lost a bit of credibility towards the end but you really felt for Sophie’s character. 

In 2016 she was promoted from a prominent human rights barrister to Director of Public Prosecutions in the thoughtful Undercover. Being a work of fiction, of course she had to harbour a secret past, involving her hubby Adrian Lester, which could jeopardise her reputation and career, while championing the base of an American death row prisoner. I can’t imagine a British DPP doing such a thing but Ms Okonedo seemed to make her character credible. 

It hasn’t been all heavy stuff. Eleven years ago she was a stunningly exotic 29^th-century queen of the UK in a moving Matt Smith-era Doctor Who adventure and before that a ‘bit on the side’ in a Murder Most Horrid comedy with Dawn French. However, Sophie seemed more at home on the other side of the equation, as a wronged girlfriend appealing for help from history professor Paul McGann in Sweet Revenge. 

But when it comes to showing a full range of emotions, Okonedo is one of the best in the business.  She may not have resembled a traditional Nancy but that mattered not a jot in a 2007 production of Oliver Twist, in which the character found regular conflict under the thumb of nasty Bill Sykes, played with relish by Tom Hardy. The previous year Sophie was out in Thailand. Great! Unfortunately her role had her washed away in one of the worst natural disasters of recent times. In Tsunami: The Aftermath, she was one of the many missing trying to be reunited with her family. Screened when the tsunami memories were still quite raw it was a powerful two-parter, combining a heady mix of thriller, drama and extraordinary special effects. 

Nevertheless, if I had to choose a favourite Sophie Okonedo performance, I’d pick her role as factory forklift driver Jenny in Clocking Off. She featured throughout the third series, but starred in the episode written by Danny Brocklehurst, which received a BAFTA nomination. Back in 2002, she was a relatively unknown quality, but the series became known as fertile ground for new acting talent, from Maxine Peake to Ashley Jensen, as well as more experienced hands like Ricky Tomlinson, Lesley Sharp, Sarah Lancashire and David Morrissey. Unlike these familiar names, whose accents suited the Lancashire setting, Sophie is a London girl but that’s no problem for an actor as gifted as Sophie Okonedo CBE.

Rob Brydon - Small man ON the box!

Everybody seems to love Rob Brydon. Tom Jones has his supporters and Gareth Bale a dwindling number of superfans but Rob has a legitimate claim to be the most popular living Welshman. Over the past two decades he has appeared in some of the funniest shows on television. However for all his undoubted successes, in my opinion his isn’t even the best character in any of them. Then again, would any of his prime programmes be the same without him? I think not. 

At the start of the millennium, I probably heard him in assorted adverts – he’s voiced anything from Tango to Tesco, Pot Noodle to Fairy Liquid – but, being an Essex boy, I missed his teeth-cutting Nineties work on Radio Wales. I also failed to watch his BBC2 comedy series Human Remains and only tuned into Marion and Geoff after word of mouth recommendation. Better late than never. 

At first these took the form of ten-minute fillers on BBC2, in which Brydon delivered in-car monologues by naïve taxi driver Keith who took a while to realise his wife Marion was having a long-standing affair with the aforementioned Geoff despite the obvious clues he was drip-feeding the viewers. It took a few instalments for me to appreciate the dark humour but the show revealed the qualities that Rob has been demonstrating ever since. It was a Baby Cow production, continuing a Steve Coogan thread which hasn’t really stopped. 

In series 3 of Little Britain, Rob had a small but regular role as the hen-pecked ‘ex’ of the grotesque Matt Lucas character Bubbles de Vere but it was three years earlier, sharing the same bill with Little Britain’s David Walliams on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, that I first became aware of his extraordinary gift for impressions including the unique 'small man in a box'. From Brucie to Tom Jones I couldn’t stop laughing, and his singing voice wasn’t bad either. 

Like Sir Tom, the boy from Baglan is a proud Welshman and when on QI in 2008 launched a well-deserved attack on casual Welsh racism which has somehow been allowed to pervade comedy for donkey’s years. When Brydon ‘does’ icons of his homeland such as Jones, Hopkins and Burton he does so with wit and respect and in his early days of national fame he was an ideal chat or panel show guest, although you were left wondering what the real Rob Brydon was like. When he took over as host of Would I Lie to You in 2008, his days as mere bit player were quickly consigned to history. 

In the early days I considered it a so-so show, not quite in the same league as Have I Got News For You? However, I now consider the celebrity fib-telling half-hour to be one of the most consistently hilarious on the box. Much of this relies on the brilliant quips and exchanges between David Mitchell and Lee Mack but I love the moments when the chairman has the chance to show what he can do in the final edit. Naturally Would I Lie To You? offers opportunities to show off those impersonations but at times he can rival the team captains for anecdotes and personality quirks which also emerge from his ‘stand-up’ gigs. 

However, his talents don’t stop there. My only encounter with Rob Brydon in the flesh, as it were, was at a special BBC Radio staff day. I forget whether it was an anniversary of the Beeb or Broadcasting House but one session I signed up to was an interview by him. I forget the interviewee but it’s Rob’s questioning I do recall. It obviously proved a useful audition because some years later he was given his own BBC TV chat show. Amiable enough but not ‘appointment to view’. 

Another of his greatest hits – possibly THE greatest – is, of course, Gavin and Stacey. Launched quietly in 2007 on BBC3 this latest Baby Cow production has grown from inauspicious beginnings to become the most popular sitcom of the 21^st century. I didn’t cotton on until the second series but re-runs have ensured I’m au fait with every episode, especially since moving to Wales where all children probably have to take exams in it. Writers James Corden and Ruth Jones take the best lines as Smithy and Nessa but amongst the splendid supporting cast, Rob Brydon’s Uncle Bryn is one of the most likeable characters. With his rigid side-parting and natty line in sweaters or cardigans, Bryn isn’t the most exciting member of the Barry-based West clan but is arguably the most eccentric. His non seqiturs and rambling stories are legion and yet he has the ability to conjure a surprise or two. 

The show has yielded a few musical set-pieces over the years but none have surpassed the rendition of ‘Islands in the Stream’. I can’t stand line dancing but the notion of Nessa and Bryn as Dolly and Kenny just had to be a winner. Roping in a real-life Bee Gee (Robin) and yer actual Tom Jones, it even rocketed to number one, assisted by this all-time classic 2009 Comic Relief film. Even after umpteen viewings it still makes me titter. Last year Angie and I paid homage in a couple of lockdown front garden performances. Angie’s costume and make-up made for a splendid Ruth Jones but donning plastic cowboy hat and neck-scarf doesn’t make me Rob Brydon. Not even with my chin! 

Performing ‘Islands’ in character gave no sign of Brydon’s own vocal capabilities. They did, on the other hand, surface occasionally during one of the surprise comedy gems of recent years, The Trip, alongside old mucker Steve Coogan. I first saw them starring together in a TV screening of Michael Winterbottom’s film-within-a-film, A Cock and Bull Story. It was a clever idea but the humour derived from the part-improvised dialogue between Brydon and Coogan playing exaggerated versions of their media persona: Steve as a vain, egotistical womaniser and Rob a starry-eyed family man with a crush on Gillian Anderson. 

It wasn’t the greatest movie in the world but when Winterbottom and the two actors took the best ingredients and cooked them in a different setting, they were on to a winner. The first series wasn’t all laugh-out-loud stuff. Much of it was bittersweet, touching on love, loss and relationships, played out in a series of posh restaurants and grey Lake District landscapes as the duo became food critics for a broadsheet newspaper. That wasn’t the funny bit. What made me cackle were the incessant competitive impressions involving the pair as they munched and sipped their way through expensive menus. My fave from the original The Trip has to be their enlightening duel of the Michael Caines! Their inventive scene with Ray Winstone was also hilarious, albeit a bit rude. 

As their culinary travels expanded to reach the gorgeous coastal scenery of Italy and Greece (I missed The Trip to Spain, when it was poached by Sky), their relentless rivalry took in prestige of awards won, knowledge of Ancient Greek legends and more mimicry, from Godfathers (Trip to Italy) to Demis Roussos and even each other. The first episodes of The Trip to Greece were particularly satisfying, and I could empathise with Rob and Steve as they contemplated the ageing process. 

Coogan’s frequent assertions were correct: he is a better actor than Rob Brydon. However, when it comes to an actor who is equally at ease doing sitcoms, panel shows, voiceovers, stand-up and slightly darker material, the Welshman has the edge. Not sure, though, if I’d want to spend a day with him driving around Europe…

Wendy Craig - Perennially Harassed Housewife

I can’t with any honesty proclaim Wendy Craig to be one of my favourite TV actors but for longevity she is hard to beat. She also has a special place in my own history of live entertainment. At the age of seven I was taken up to London for a post-Christmas treat: Peter Pan, the first pantomime I can actually remember. I still recall the awe I felt sitting in the Circle watching ‘Peter’ flying above the Scala Theatre stage. Yes, flying! And who was in that green pixie costume? Yes, Wendy Craig. 

A little research reveals that her co-star – presumably as Captain Hook - was the great Alastair Sim, but it’s only the title character’s aerial exploits I remember from that matinee performance. Even at such a tender age I knew Craig very well from the telly. While most of the situation comedies on British TV at the time seemed to be awful American imports, one exception was the BBC’s Not In Front of the Children. Watching this clip more than five decades later, the memories all come flooding back: Wendy’s Sixties hairdo, Ronald Hines as her hubby and the two young daughters. Suddenly I’m transported back to 54 The Meadows on a Friday evening, ‘Cinderella Rockafella’ at number one and facing bedtime before The Troubleshooters comes on. 

Not… ran for four series before Wendy Craig switched to ITV in 1971 for another Richard Waring suburban family sitcom And Mother Makes Three. She was once more in harassed mum mode, which she subsequently reprised, now remarried, for the sequel And Mother Makes Five, although I don’t think that series was in the Smith household’s repertoire. Not only could she probably play that role in her sleep but she wrote a number of episodes, too. 

Wendy’s pseudonymous scripts were also in evidence later in her career but I’m pretty sure writing responsibilities for her next major role, possibly the one for which she is best remembered, was Carla Lane. As with much of her work I have mixed memories of Butterflies. There were some lovely lines but nothing much ever happened and there was a tad too much rambling philosophising for my liking. However, it got off to a good start. 

Craig portrayed Ria, yet another slightly ditsy but devoted housewife, this time in leafy Cheltenham. Husband Ben was a likeable but conservative dentist played in inimitable style by Geoffrey Palmer, happy with his lot. Ria, however, was not, and strayed into the arms of suave, wealthy Leonard. I know that the adultery was a crucial part of the set-up but this old-fashioned eighteen year-old felt sorry for Ben and hated Ria’s businessman bit on the side. Ben was not entirely happy with everything; his wife’s consistently disastrous cooking was a constant bone of contention and hilarity, not only with Ben but also their adolescent sons. It was notable that the male family members were rarely moved to use the oven themselves, but of course the microwave had yet to be invented! I also quite liked the scenes where Wendy’s Ria lost the plot, taking revenge on the kitchen and her tedious existence, much to the amusement of Nicholas Lyndhurst and Andrew Hall. 

She co-wrote and starred in another sitcom, Laura and Disorder, in the late Eighties. Her name was enough to attract my attention but based on the series opener, for all Wendy’s efforts, I considered it dreadful. I wasn’t alone. Her following dramatic roles were in series more suited to Mum’s tastes than mine. I think I saw the occasional episode of Nanny when at home from uni but never watched her in the Noughties Heartbeat spin-off The Royal. The closest I came was on a September break to Scarborough when I almost had an altercation with a giant cherrypicker used to film the panoramic North Bay opening sequence. 

In 2010 I was willing to give the BBC revival of Reggie Perrin a go. It wasn’t a patch on the David Nobbs original but Martin Clunes made a fair fist of playing the grumpy Reggie, careful not to try and emulate the wonderful Leonard Rossiter. One new character was Reggie’s mother, who it transpired was none other than Wendy Craig whose comedy timing was as ever impeccable. 

In the last decade, it’s been a pleasure just finding her cropping up in unlikely places. I’m no aficionado of Emmerdale but even I pricked up my ears when in 2018, aged 82, she made an entrance in the soap as love interest for the even older Freddie Jones. Sadly it wasn’t destined for an extended run. In any case, Freddie himself died the following year. Wendy also popped up in the second series of ITV’s superior cold case crime drama Unforgotten. 

I don’t remember whether or not she, or even her daughter Holly Aird, was a murderer but hers was a welcome addition to the cast, even if the days of playing stressed-out mums in domestic sitcoms are well behind her.