Nicola Walker - the least starry of stars

In little over two decades, Nicola Walker has crawled deftly and diligently under the radar up into the Premier League of TV drama. To have done so without flashy starring roles, a parallel career in the movies, hackneyed fashion shoots or the spotlight of tabloid celeb columns is quite remarkable. But it is thoroughly deserved. Researching this, I hadn’t realised how many of her series I had missed – from Chalk to Babylon, River to Torn – but luckily there are so many I have been privileged to watch. 

Probably the first time Nicola came to my attention was in 1999 when she had a major role as an MoD scientist trapped in a railway tunnel with cryogenic gas and a miscellaneous bunch of passengers in The Last Train. I won’t deny I was initially hooked by the idea of a mystery set aboard a train but this apocalyptic sci-fi serial proved an entertaining mix of drama and fantasy. A year later she was another young mystery woman in a Dalziel and Pascoe episode: is she who she says she is, and will her past come back to haunt her?  I forget the answer to the first but am pretty sure the second can be answered in the affirmative. 

Around the same period, Nicola also began to win roles as police officers, and this particular career thread continues to this day. Fortunately she has specialised not as a stereotypical all-action, bed-hopping maverick but as a competent but angst-ridden detective with recognisable human frailties. I doubt there was much to sink her canines into as a WPC (that’s what they were still called back then) in a 1998 Jonathan Creek but in Paul Abbott’s excellent Touching Evil she was swiftly raised to a plain-clothed Inspector alongside Robson Green. In 2004 she was transferred to the army as an unglamorous horsey Major in the BBC’s Red Cap before a police promotion to DCI beckoned in Prisoners’ Wives, a hard-hitting drama a far cry from other, more salacious series featuring the ‘Wives’ moniker. 

Only last month, she was back in hometown London for the fourth series of ITV’s ever-watchable Unforgotten. While the budget is clearly substantial enough to attract superb supporting casts, and Sanjeev Bhaskar as a sidekick, the programme’s heartbeat is Nicola Walker as DCI Cassie Stuart. She doesn’t get to smile much, unsurprising given the often gruesome scenes she witnesses or the mental anguish arising out of family problems such as her dad’s descent into dementia. However, we are treated to her full array of subtle facial tics, nervous smiles and gestures, as she carries us on her journey with Bhaskar’s ‘Sunny’ to solving a cold case. Regarding the latest series conclusion I won’t risk a spoiler…. 

Her best roles are those when her character is torn between the job and family or personal relationships, and they don’t have to involve the police force. Another recent hit drama is BBC One’s The Split. It’s not a thriller, there are no bodies. Instead, Nicola portrays a fair-haired divorce lawyer who sometimes finds herself brokering reconciliations while her own marriage to the oh-so-nice Stephen Mangan goes down the tubes. Such family dramas don’t always hold my attention for long, but even I have been enthralled by its two series, and I’d expect there to be more. 

So far, so standard middle-class fare. But very occasionally, Walker steps into left-field territory. In 2018’s Collateral, a convoluted thriller featuring the likes of Carey Mulligan, John Simm and Billie Piper, she played a lesbian vicar. Best of all, when I finally caught up on the first series of Luther, I was delighted, shocked even, to find her in the role of working-class wife whose bloke turns out to be a murderer. Blimey! 

Nevertheless if there is one character which has defined Nicola Walker more than any other, it’s probably Ruth Evershed in Spooks. She joined the cast in series two way back in 2003, making an ignominious entrance into MI5 as a bit of a clumsy hippy-dippy transfer from GCHQ but went on to become one of the best loved characters. Ruth was not one of the good-looking stars running around shooting suspected terrorists but harvested the intelligence for our heroes to act upon, an ideal part for Walker’s unflashy style.

Occasionally Ruth was allowed out into the real world, even managing to let her hair down and find herself in a spot of bother then, following Nicola’s real-life maternity break, she made a popular return to ‘The Grid’ in series eight. Hardcore Spooks fans seem more fixated on her ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ relationship with boss Harry, equally shy and inept in matters of expressing feelings. However, for me Spooks was never supposed to be romantic fiction but, in my view, the professional v personal quandary enabled Nicola Walker to turn in some of her finest acting.

Huw Edwards - the most reassuring voice on TV

I’ve mentioned before the significant contribution made to my TV education by news correspondents but even more fundamental are the men and women who front the bulletins. As a young child, I hated the News. There’s only so many starving children in Biafra, grainy shots of US troops in Vietnam, Budget debates or Industrial Relations Acts a boy can take, let alone understand. And the presentation format hardly helped. 

The Beeb’s main newsreaders were Richard Baker, Kenneth Kendall and Robert Dougall, each oozing trust and authority but with impeccably private education speaking voices honed in the Reithian Corporation since the early Fifties, they weren’t exactly lively. And they were firmly rooted behind a desk. Fortunately, like society generally, the news broadcaster’s role has changed substantially in my lifetime.

For starters, the personnel became more diverse. Some must have thought the world was ending in the Seventies when women were introduced. Yet for all their femininity Anna Ford, Angela Rippon and Jan Leeming perpetuated the old-school sound of TV news, still sounding cloyingly posh. ITN’s Trevor MacDonald signalled a further change in the Nineties, bringing a Caribbean lilt to proceedings and fellow former foreign correspondents like John Humphrys, Michael Buerk, Peter Sissons and Mark Austin have stepped out of the firing line and into the relative safety of a studio with great success. 

Technological advances have also changed the whole purpose of TV News. Satellites, video and digital editing have turned the bulletin from the staid and static into a fast-moving mosaic of live ‘two-ways’ with reporters on the spot all over the globe, studio interviews and recorded filmed reports. Consequently, the evening News has become a much more engaging programme and the presenter’s role has become much more complex. Bringing the autocue words to life was a skill in itself but now there are complicated, time-constrained conversations, writing links, and the increasing importance to engage with the viewer, and that requires the presenter to show some personality, be more like us. Headlines are everywhere these days, so broadcasts need to explain and place those headlines into context. I do despair that ITV bulletin scripts have been dumbed down to an embarrassing degree but the past year’s stranglehold on the agenda of Brexit and Covid-19 have further demonstrated to me the value of a news presenter – and Huw Edwards ticks every single box. 

With his trademark oblique stance and slightly upturned corner of the mouth, you know there’s always a slight twinkle in the eye awaiting its opportunity to shine. However, there’s a time and place. Twenty years ago he had some pretty serious subjects to handle on the Six o’Clock News, from the catastrophic Foot & Mouth outbreak to the horrors of 9/11. I think I was watching when Edwards brokered a live discussion from Westminster with two jovial Labour politicians who nonetheless harboured opposite opinions on electoral reform. Despite Alan Johnson’s use of the word ‘Bullshit” (shock, horror!) he entered into the spirit and handled it delightfully. 

Huw has fronted coverage of elections everywhere, from the Wales devolution and EU membership referenda to local authority polls, General elections (of which there have been a plethora in recent years) and those abroad including the calamitous US presidential vote of 2020. David Dimbleby’s ownership of the microphone for the major solemn events has also come under a serious challenge from Mr Edwards. Whether reporting from the State Opening of Parliament, royal weddings or funerals, I’d rather hear the lyrical Welsh lilt to public school English.

He’s even an accomplished location broadcaster, handy when a major story demands that the primetime news presenter is actually on the spot, such as after the Grenfell Tower fire. Edwards is not just about News either. Paxman and Humphrys have exploited their reputation as interrogators in quiz shows, while the boy from Bridgend has also mastered the art of documentary-making, specially related to the nation of his birth. Whether addressing the camera standing heroically on clifftops, striding through meadows or rowing across lakes, he was the ideal multi-tasker to front The History of Wales. It also demonstrated his proud bilingualism.

Huw’s flair for languages is matched by his creative talent, and several Christmases ago he even accompanied Tom Jones on piano in a BBC trail. Beat that, Fiona Bruce! He’s also an entertainer, as illustrated by his 2012 turn on Would I Lie To You?  Check out the clip to see if he would! Lately he has probably priced himself out of BBC Wales roles but Huw Edwards, now a silver fox (only six weeks younger than me!), is always a welcome, trusty, reassuring presence on my telly.

Tim McInnerny - the biggest, baddest forehead in the business

Tim McInnerny, like many actors, is on record as saying “It’s always nice to play a bastard”. This is just as well because in recent years the hard-hearted sod has been meat and drink to this Oxford-educated Cheshire lad. His distinctive piggy eyes deep set beneath an unfeasibly high forehead don’t scream ‘leading man’ but as a character actor par excellence he’s always in demand.

Despite this twenty-first century specialisation as unpleasant Establishment types, he is probably best known for portraying pompous, upper-class idiots in the Blackadder series. His debut was in the disappointing pre-Ben Elton medieval The Black Adder but with the rest of the cast, he hit his stride as the sycophantic Lord Percy Percy in Blackadder II. A few years later he switched personalities in Blackadder Goes Forth to play Captain Darling. The name was a comedy gift which kept on giving as his officious staff officer constantly found himself engaged in confusing conversations with his barmy boss (Stephen Fry) and unwinnable tussles with Rowan Atkinson’s cruel and bitter titular anti-hero. And yet, come the emotional finale, Darling becomes more human and sympathetic in the face of certain death as a result of going ‘over the top’ and he is present and correct for the climactic scene. 

The nomenclature followed him into subsequent one-off revivals like 1999’s Blackadder Back and Forth, notably in an amusing, albeit politically incorrect, Napoleonic scene stuffed full of French stereotyping like a factory of foie gras. That wasn’t it for Tim the comedy star. Casting aside his part in Westlife’s ‘Uptown Girl’ video (if only I could do the same for the Irish stool-perchers), he also appeared in a few Channel 4 Comic Strip mini-films broadcast in 1990. They were darker in tone than most, and not Peter Richardson’s finest works, but quite amusing nonetheless. In one, Tim was playing an inept hit-man and in Les Dogs played the groom’s father in a wedding reception which degenerated into a blood-soaked gun battle. I was wary of attending family do’s for years! In 2012 he was back in period costume as the starchy and mysterious Harmswell Grimstone in BBC2 Dickens spoof The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, but by then he’d become a staple of yer proper drama. 

Indeed, McInnerny’s IMDB listing reads as What’s What of some of the best series I’ve watched in the past four decades. It seems faintly ludicrous that he should have played the boyfriend and suspected killer of Bob Peck’s daughter in the superb plutonium conspiracy thriller Edge of Darkness, but then 1985 was an awfully long time ago. That luminous expanse between eyebrows and hairline was already in evidence, though and it had almost completely taken over his head by the time Tim’s oily Ood slave owner merited one of the most gruesome transformations in the long history of Doctor Who, courtesy of what the character believed to be hair replacement medication. 

In between there were roles as an MI5 anti-Left conspirator in Channel 4’s A Very British Coup and as another arrogant and even more senior British Intelligence boss, with a very wayward moral compass, in early series of Spooks. As antagonist-in-chief to our hero Harry, Tim’s Oliver Mace was as nasty a bureaucratic creep you’d ever meet on screen, but he had rivals to the crown. In 2009 he was both a corrupt judge targeted by the Robin Hood-ish conmen in Hustle and a dodgy mill owner and politician in the sights of Inspector George Gently. Two years later he was a civil servant in the most-watched episode in the New Tricks canon and only last year the Tory government Chief Whip in The Trial of Christine Keeler. 

Before the onset of middle-age paunch, he portrayed a creep of a different sort in The Vice, as a porn film producer with a rarely-used London accent, a deranged new partner of the lead’s ex-wife in Lynda La Plante’s 2002 Trial and Retribution crime thriller and a seventeenth-century inventor in the star-studded adaptation of Longitude and in the past five years there have been many more roles in my kind of TV. From Sherlock to Strike, National Treasure (opposite Julie Walters) to the crazily bloodthirsty Gangs of London, McInnerny has been a sterling support.

We’ve only just finished seeing BBC One’s slow-burning often confusing eight-parter The Serpent, which featured Tim in a minor but important role as a world-weary Belgian consul in Bangkok. His Paul turned out to be a more three-dimensional character than most but I love it when the actor delivers the perfect turn as an imperious, oily Whitehall baddie. Nobody does it better!

Jools Holland - Too Cool for Cats

I was in the sixth form when Squeeze appeared on Top of the Pops early in 1979 miming along to ‘Cool For Cats’. We bunch of teenage boys loved lyrics such as “Funny how their misses always look the bleedin’ same” and, living in Essex, it wasn’t difficult to imitate Chris Difford’s South London deadpan delivery. But who was that weird bloke with hat and cigar on the toy keyboards? We didn’t know at the time but the comic character turned out to be a certain Jools Holland. 

From ‘Cool for Cats’ to ‘Up the Junction’ and ‘Another Nail in My Heart’, in studio or on video, the 21 year-old Jools would always add some joyful humour to proceedings. Yet I could never imagine him hosting a much-respected music show in the future. 

Suddenly he vanished from the Squeeze line-up, apparently leaving his old mates to go solo. But the next time I saw him was not fronting another quirky New Wave band but fronting an engaging documentary on tour with another group, broadcast as The Police: Around the World. It was a revelation for me. I already liked The Police, then one of the biggest bands on the planet, but it was Holland’s energy, enthusiasm and convention-defying interviewing style which made it such an entertaining programme. Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland played along, of course, and the latter has since become one of my favourite music documentary presenters in his own right. 

All this larking about with other pop stars served as a successful trial for is subsequent presenter gig, on Channel 4’s inaugural ‘yoof’ show The Tube from 1982. Its Friday early evening slot made regular viewing problematic for a London commuter like me but I made a special effort if there was one of my favourite bands due to perform. It was broadcast live so boasted the potential for chaos. Co-host Paula Yates just seemed to be stoned all the time but Jools just goofed about with a mere modicum of professionalism but his laid-back charisma] carried him through. There were some memorable live music performances but, having been groomed by Top of the Pops, the contrast in format was probably too great for me. 

In the Eighties, Jools was certainly one of the hippest guys on the box, a key figure on trendy new Channel 4. He also made a few cameo appearances on the Beeb’s The Young Ones and French and Saunders. However, by the Nineties, he was cultivating a more mature image. His Squeeze years were put behind him and he was now the maestro of boogie-woogie piano, with his hugely popular Rhythm and Blues Orchestra founded in 1994. 

This shift ran in parallel with the arrival of BBC2’s Friday night show Later… with Jools Holland. While the host was very much in charge, despite that deliberately disorderly manner, the programmes were very much focussed on music. Living on my own, Later… became a regular for me, the opening act determining whether or not I stayed up, knowing they would be back at the end. The middle-of-the-bill performers often strained my powers of loyalty to the limit; there’s only so much bluegrass slide guitar or Botswanan nose flute I could stomach but there was, and still is, no doubting the impressive eclectic mix of music genres booked. 

The opening ‘jam’ and introductions in each episode of Later… , encompassing the circular studio layout set the scene. It wasn’t live but was sufficiently unpredictable in tone to feel like it – in a good way. The live music would be punctuated by less-than-polished interviews with musicians or celebs in the audience and Holland would always have the opportunity to tickle the ivories. While I liked the notion of being introduced to new acts, it was the familiar faces which appealed the most. I have fond memories of golden oldies like Ian Dury  and also the still-relevant legends including those notoriously wary of interviews, including Morrissey in 2004. 

Jools Holland’s Hootenanny has also become a staple of BBC2’s New Year’s Eve schedule. I no longer watch every year, but I do remember venturing into a Television Centre studio observation gallery one late November afternoon and witnessing Jools rehearsing (yes, he rehearsed!) a setpiece for the Hootenanny. What? The show was recorded? Ah, the wonders of TV! 

These days he may be a more portly sixty-something but he can still illuminate an otherwise dull programme. Only a few months ago my attention was drawn to the screen during the otherwise tedious Celebrity Gogglebox when he shared a witty observant with viewing partner Vic Reeves. Ah, he’s still got it.