{"id":3101,"date":"2010-07-12T22:46:50","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T05:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3101"},"modified":"2010-07-12T22:46:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T05:46:50","slug":"those-versatile-british-actors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/07\/12\/those-versatile-british-actors\/","title":{"rendered":"Those versatile British actors"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just watched Anthony Horowitz<\/a>‘s most recent Foyle’s War<\/a> episodes (supposedly these three in Series Seven<\/a> are the last, full stop – but that’s what they said the last time around, and then Foyle was resurrected: so there’s still hope for more). It’s an arresting series; I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n

What always strikes me when I watch British TV is the regular recurrence of actors I recognize from many other shows: the longevity of character actors (versus “stars”) is astonishing. And so is their versatility.<\/p>\n

Take Anastasia Hille<\/a>, who appears as Jane Devereaux in The Hide<\/a>, the final episode (#22) of Series Seven. She plays a supporting role as the second wife of Sir Charles Devereaux, whose son is on trial for treason against England (he joined the British Free Corps<\/a>, a pro-Nazi group). There are some pretty loopy plot twists in this episode, but it’s played dead straight. On the other hand, Hille has also acted in completely over-the-top episodes of Jeeves and Wooster<\/a>, as well as in a recent Inspector Lewis<\/a> (the follow-up series to Inspector Morse<\/a>, which was [imo] better): there, she believably played a wholly unbelievable psychopath cut from full hysterical cloth.<\/p>\n

Hille’s colleague on the set of Foyle’s War was Will Keen<\/a>, whom I’ve also seen in a few popular British TV shows. Like the others in this episode, Keen gets around, and none of these actors seem to mind playing in some pretty silly shows<\/em> (Midsomer Murders<\/a>, anyone?). Maybe it’s because they’re professionals and they just know that they’re really good.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here’s a photo of Keen and Hille on stage together, in a production of Macbeth. (See The Guardian review<\/a>; photo by Tristram Kenton.)<\/p>\n

Yes, opposite Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie on the set of Jeeves and Wooster one day, on the boards in front of a live audience doing Shakespeare the next. Not bad.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, there’s a long tradition here: Diana Rigg<\/a>‘s Emma Peel<\/a> could knock ’em dead on The Avengers<\/a>, and she was no slouch when it came to the classics, either.<\/p>\n

That’s versatile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just watched Anthony Horowitz‘s most recent Foyle’s War episodes (supposedly these three in Series Seven are the last, full stop – but that’s what they said the last time around, and then Foyle was resurrected: so there’s still hope for more). It’s an arresting series; I highly recommend it. What always strikes me when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1823,1242],"tags":[16363,16362],"class_list":["post-3101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-canada","category-just_so","tag-acting","tag-british_tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3101"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3106,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3101\/revisions\/3106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}