Theatre Actors on the Telly

There's some tasty stuff coming up - the first China Mieville screen adaptation The City and the City with David Morrissey and Lara Pulver (and partly filmed just up the road from me!), more Dirk Gently on Netflix, more Top of the Lake, more Peaky Blinders etc..

On the BBC, there are couple of series with, alongside the star names, some emerging actors I'm looking forward to seeing more of - The Woman in White with Jessie Buckley, who was captivating in Taboo, a really promising screen presence (reminds me a bit of Billie Piper), and a new adaptation of Howards End with Joseph Quinn as Leonard Bast - he's an excellent young actor (and really nice with it!) so it'll be great to see him in a major role in a flagship drama.

I just really love that moment when you've turned up or tuned in to see someone famous and find yourself unexpectedly captivated by an unknown newcomer - and then the curiosity to see what else they can do, what they're going to bring to future roles. With established actors you do lose that element of surprise.

I haven't caught up with that yet (waiting for some more seasonably wintry weather to watch it on Netflix). I didn't watch it at the time because the BBC scheduled it alongside Dickensian, and having some of the same actors (Stephen Rea, Tuppence Middleton) in two 19thc costume dramas at once was a bit odd!

Btw, another young-ish actor, Mark Stanley (also Dickensian and Game of Thrones) was excellent in BBC1's Broken - episodes centred around individual characters, rather like Boys from the Blackstuff, and there have been some really powerful performances in it. Well worth catching if you missed it while it's still on iplayer, but it's pretty gruelling.

Oh, and Billy Howle - he was in this Christmas-just-gone's Agatha Christie, 'Witness for the Prosecution', and was great in the Young Vic's Life of Galileo, a really moving performance. I was wondering where I'd seen him before, then came out of the theatre and saw him on a film poster on the underground, too.

Btw, I thought George Blagden was much more impressive in The Pitchfork Disney than he comes across on TV in Versailles (where his role seems to involve a lot of wide-eyed staring into the middle distance).

How could I forget? Rory Kinnear in Count Arthur Strong!

Well, it's got my Mum watching, and she wouldn't otherwise!

He's very sweet in it - it's an old-fashioned sitcom but has its moments, though it's not of Father Ted standards (and I've sat through a lot worse to see actors I like...Doctor Thorne...!). The second series is showing at the moment so should all still be on iplayer.

The wonderful Durrells?

Some fantastic young actors in that.  (Not to mention Dame-to-be Keeley.)

There have been 2 series - 2nd series finished recently on a Sunday night, ITV, Downton slot..Series 3 in the can.  Set in Corfu.  Daft as a box of frogs.

Yep! Granted, I love Greece to begin with and I've always wanted to see good old Empress Sisi's summer hut here on Corfu but the Durrells and the splendid camera work catching Corfu's beauty was the last nudge I needed to actually book a flight. There are (fairly ugly) memorials to Larry and Gerry in the park by the old Venetian fortress in the city, that made me smile...

Not *quite* the Downton slot. That was at 9. Durrells plays at 8. I'll see myself out.

Sounds like my idea of haven.