Keith Barron obit

Keith Barron: from coppers to adulterers, a star of hit TV to the end

The prolific actor, who died this week, kept viewers coming back to shows such as Duty Free and Haggard with his charm, vocal clarity and sharp comic timing

 

He was not on the list.

Whereas many frontline actors conduct parallel careers in television, stage and film, Keith Barron, who has died aged 83, was essentially a peak-time TV specialist.

His small-screen career stretched a remarkable 55 years, from the 1961 BBC comedy A Chance of Thunder to the ITV police series DCI Banks, in which, as recently as last year, he played the main character’s elderly dad. This Christmas, he will be seen posthumously in the seasonal special of the BBC1 sitcom Not Going Out, his final performance.

Barron’s CV ranged from serious and bold pieces – he was first noticed in the work of Dennis Potter, then the medium’s most radical dramatist, in the mid-60s – to the most frivolously populist, including ITV’s Spanish holiday sitcom Duty Free, which ran from 1984 to 1986.

The actor’s loyalty to TV – and the medium’s to him – was helped by the fact that the peak of his career coincided with a period in which a hit show could expect to be watched by up to half of the UK population at the same time on the same night. Barron was seen weekly by 18 million people in Duty Free, a sitcom audience unimaginable in the fragmented digital world.

It is a testimony to Barron’s rapport with mass TV audiences that most of his biggest successes came on ITV, where shows live and die almost entirely by their ratings, with little possibility of claiming, as at the BBC, public service or succès d’estime. What brought viewers back every week, and to each new series, was the performer’s charm, vocal clarity and sharp comic timing.

His prime assets as an actor were a deep Yorkshire-accented voice and a natural look of broad-faced, wide-blue-eyed innocence. Both face and delivery were able to move from rectitude through reticence to shiftiness, with interesting cross-shadings along the way. This spectrum led to Barron most recurrently being cast as police officers or philanderers.

His long blue line of coppers started with DS John Swift in The Odd Man (ITV, 1964) and a spin-off, building on the impact of his character, It’s Dark Outside (1964-65). Barron later wielded a warrant card again in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries (ITV, 1996) and NCS: Manhunt (BBC1, 2001-02).

As the adultery interest, Barron impressed as a rogue in Brian Clarke’s 10-parter Telford’s Change (BBC1, 1979), tempting Hannah Gordon as the wife of Peter Barkworth’s workaholic businessman. In Tony Marchant’s Take Me Home (BBC1, 1989), he again found himself on the dark side of the sheets, as a long-married taxi-driver who begins an affair with a passenger (in a drama that, curiously, was filmed in the Shropshire new town after which Barkworth’s character had been named in the earlier infidelity series).

Bed-hopping played for comedy drove Barron’s role in Haggard (ITV, 1990-92). In a relatively rare lead and title role, the actor played a libidinous squire in 18th-century England. But the standout part among his many guilty lovers was David, constantly trying to pursue an affair with fellow hotel guest Linda, in Duty Free. Even by the standards of sitcom, this show required considerable suspension of disbelief – the first two series supposedly took place over the same fortnight package holiday in Marbella – but Barron understood that, to the characters in a sex farce, their desires and desperations are as serious as those in a Greek tragedy.

He had honed these comic skills in the 1950s, while – as was standard for actors in a period when British TV had barely begun and there was no UK film industry – serving an apprenticeship in theatre, starting in his native Sheffield, where he met and married Mary Pickard, a stage designer. They remained together until his death.

A wide face and striking eyes register well on television, and so the young Barron came to the attention of casting directors in the then modish medium, soon landing his breakthrough role in two linked plays by Dennis Potter: Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton. These stories of a miner’s son who was alienated from his family by going to university and then stood as a Labour candidate were based on Potter’s own experience, but Barron, as a Yorkshire lad who had taken an unexpected route into showbiz, could identify viscerally with many of the lines.

At the time, there were only three TV channels in Britain (with the second BBC network only a year old) and so, broadcast on consecutive Wednesdays in December 1965, the plays made a huge impact, helped by transmission being delayed by a fuss over political content. The role made Barron an always-recognisable and always-reliable TV actor, which he remained until the end, always in demand as dads and grandads when the supply of lovers and police chiefs dried up.

Most people will remember him for Duty Free, but this well-liked and versatile actor, with a golden touch in populist TV, should perhaps be most cherished for the Barton plays, Take Me Home and Haggard.

Selected filmography

 

    Baby Love (1969) – Doctor Robert Quayle

    The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1970) – Jake Braid

    The Firechasers (1971) – Jim Maxwell

    She'll Follow You Anywhere (1971) – Alan Simpson

    Melody (1971) – Mr. Latimer – Daniel's father (uncredited)

    Freelance (1971) – Gary

    Nothing But The Night (1973) – Dr. Haynes

    The Land That Time Forgot (1974) – Bradley

    At the Earth's Core (1976) – Dowsett

    Voyage of the Damned (1976) – Purser Mueller

    God's Outlaw (1986) – Henry VIII

    La passione (1996) – Roy

    Police 2020 (1997) – Eddie Longshaw

    Lapland (2011, TV Movie) – Maurice

    In Love with Alma Cogan (2012) – Cedric

 

Television

 

    A Chance of Thunder (TV Series) (1961) – Bank Cashier

    The Night of the Match (TV Movie) (1961) – Bob

    The Avengers (TV Series) (1961) – Technician

    The Odd Man (1962–1963) – Det. Sgt. Swift

    It's Dark Outside (1964) – Det. Sgt. John Swift

    Crane (1965) – Rene Leclerc

    The Troubleshooters (1965) – Miles

    Stand Up, Nigel Barton The Wednesday Play (1965) – Nigel Barton

    Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton The Wednesday Play (1965) – Nigel Barton

    Spywatch (1967)

    Further Adventures of Lucky Jim (1967) – Jim Dixon [9]

    A Family at War (1972) Major Harkness

    Thinking Man as Hero (1973, TV Movie) – David Duncan

    Armchair_Theatre (1973, Red Riding Hood TV Movie) – Henry

    Upstairs, Downstairs (1974) – Gregory Wilmot

    No Strings (1974) – Derek

    The Foundation (1977) – Don Prince

    The Professionals (1977) "Private Madness, Public Danger" – Charles Nesbitt

    Telford's Change (1979) – Tim Hart

    Prince Regent (1979) – Charles James Fox

    Stay with Me Till Morning (1981) – Stephen Belgard

    Tales of the Unexpected (1982) "A Harmless Vanity" – George Hitchman

    De lachende scheerkwast (1982) - Mr Carrington

    Doctor Who (1983) "Enlightenment" – Striker

    Minder (1984) – Johnny Caine

    Leaving (1984–1985) – Daniel Ford

    Duty Free (1984–1986) – David Pearce / David

    Room at the Bottom (1986–1988) – Kevin Hughes

    Take Me Home (1989) – Tom

    Haggard (TV series) (1990–92) – Squire Amos Haggard

    The Good Guys (1992) – Guy Lofthouse

    Sherlock Holmes The Last Vampyre (1994) – Rob Ferguson

    Under the Hammer (1994) – Ned Nunelly

    Ruth Rendell Mysteries A Case of Coincidence (1996) – Inspector Masters

    Dalziel and Pascoe episode 6, 28 July 1997, – Dick Elgood.

    Pie in the Sky episode 34, series 5–6, July 1997 – Chairman of a Jury housed overnight in the Luxor Hotel

    Spywatch (1996) – Norman Starkey (adult)

    The Round Tower (Catherine Cookson), UK TV series (1998) – Jonathan Ratcliffe

    Peak Practice (2000) - Series 9 Episode 12 "Last Orders" - Jeff Barton

    NCS: Manhunt (2001–2002) – Detective Superintendent Bob Beausoleil

    Clocking Off (2003) – Roy Fletcher

    Where the Heart Is (2003) – Alan Boothe

    Midsomer Murders: "The Straw Woman" (2004) – Alan Clifford

    New Tricks (2005) – Ronnie Ross

    The Chase (2006–2007) – George Williams

    Pickles: The Dog Who Won the World Cup (2006, TV Movie) – Bernie

    Foyle's War:S4E1 "Invasion" (2007) – David Barrett

    Heartbeat series 18, episode 6 'Strike up the band' (2008) – Les Hepplewhite

    Benidorm (2009) – Deputy Mayor

    My Family Ben Behaving Badly (2010) - Harry

    Doctors (2011–2015) – Arthur Barrett / Ludo Jameson / Brian Olsen

    Being Eileen (2013) – Maurice

    Stella (2014) – The Captain

    DCI Banks (2015–2016) – Arthur Banks

    Not Going Out (2017) – Michael (final television appearance)[10] The BBC dedicated the episode in Barron's memory.

 

Radio

 

    Not as Far as Velma, as Commissaire Henri Castang (1990)[11]

    To the Manor Born, as Richard Devere (1997)

    My Turn to Make the Tea as Mr Pellet (2006)