 The theatre and the musical stage have been far more perceptive in employing
the talents of Robert Lindsay than has British television. One of the great
underused TV actors, he has spread himself across various small screen genres
with only a handful of peaks-of-performance to mark his passing. The bafflingly
popular domestic sitcom My Family (BBC, 2002-) may be seen as something of
triumph etched on a tombstone.
The Thames TV sitcom Get Some In! (ITV, 1975-78) was his big break in TV. In
the vein of brash service comedies like Carry On Sergeant (d. Gerald Thomas,
1958) and ITV's The Army Game (1957-61), its setting was an RAF training camp
during the post-war period of national service, and it provided Lindsay with an
opportunity to excel as a cockney wide boy with a persuasive line of patter.
He left in 1977 to become the inept urban revolutionary Wolfie Smith in
John Sullivan's well-liked Citizen Smith (BBC, 1977-80). Played with touching
exuberance, the role allowed him to perfect a character with fragile
self-confidence masquerading as bravado while seducing the audience with
deranged charm. His timing here was impeccable, and he sometimes scored with
lines that were a good deal less than witty.
Wolfie's popularity opened other avenues, too. Producer Cedric Messina's
ambitious and hugely rewarding presentations of BBC Television Shakespeare
productions (spanning 1978 to 1985) saw Lindsay's RADA study finally come to
fruition in adaptations of Twelfth Night (tx. 6/1/1980), All's Well That Ends
Well (tx. 4/1/1981), Cymbeline (tx. 10/7/1983) and Much Ado About Nothing (tx.
22/12/1984). In 1983 he played the villainous Edmund opposite Olivier in Granada
TV's King Lear (Channel 4, tx. 3/4/1983).
That he won the BAFTA best actor award for his megalomaniac left-wing council
leader in Alan Bleasdale's surreal political drama G.B.H. (Channel 4, 1991) should have
been of little surprise. He played with all the stops out, creating an
extraordinary, unrealistic, chimerical figure as Michael Murray; prancing,
twitching, anarchic and unrepressed. In the end, a tragic, corrupt figure
destroyed by his own past, Murray succumbed to a writhing, wailing mental
disintegration as events around him spiralled out of control. This may well have
been Lindsay at his television finest.
The irregular role of the old seadog Captain Pellew, grimacing with
telescope-to-eye, in the often exciting Hornblower (ITV, 1998-2003) gave him too
little to do. On the other hand, the short-run Jericho (ITV, 2005), a police
detective drama set in an unglamorous 1950s London with Lindsay as the
psychologically overburdened film noir hero, over-reached the character's
possibilities. From the grainy immediacy of the streets, cars, shop windows to
the off-focus shots of Jericho's panic in his personal life, touching off the
details of fear and guilt, there was always a thread of colour that kept one
watching.
In its early days, the seemingly perennial comedy series My Family (BBC,
2002-) used his talent for nervous confidence mixed with resigned defeat to
great effect, even while its production team of think-tank writers strained for
a new twist in the US-style sitcom formula. Lindsay, an
anything-for-an-easy-life dentist, and co-star Zoë Wanamaker as his screwball
wife had their work cut out for them. This exceptionally unfunny comedy makes it
very hard to understand what, on any level, has contributed to its popularity. A
formal dinner party episode, not by any means devoid of farcical possibilities,
was so appallingly mishandled that it emerged as an almost classic example of
how not to amuse while apparently trying. It is Wanamaker who, even with her
boisterous characterisation, steals the show through sheer personality and an
ability to make a mediocre line sound like a pearl of humour.
It is interesting that his singular skill for portraying controlled panic
created two amusing roles as Prime Minister Tony Blair: in A Very Social
Secretary (Channel 4, tx.20/10/2005) and The Trial of Tony Blair (More4, tx.
15/1/2007). Made by the team behind the 2005 programme, The Trial of Tony Blair
was a satire that speculated whether the former Prime Minister, at some future
date, could end up being tried for war crimes in Iraq. In spite of the enormous
odds against it, all the old jokes come off again quite well (Alexander
Armstrong's testy David Cameron, Peter Mullan's dour Gordon Brown, Phoebe
Nicholls' airhead Cherie), while Lindsay is forced to give a relatively sedate
performance because he is given no opportunity for invention.
Tise Vahimagi
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FILM & TV CREDITS
