12 actors who are the unsung heroes of British TV - from The Night Manager stars to former Coronation Street femme fatale

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Whenever the board game Guess Who? came out of the cupboard on a rainy Sunday afternoon, my heart sank. Somehow, I always got Claire and often, after a single question – “Does your character wear glasses and a hat with a flower?” – the game was lost (Eric with his sailor’s hat was another non-starter).

Lucky was the player who got Herman – often overlooked, but invariably still standing long after others had gone by the wayside. Sometimes, looking ordinary is extraordinarily effective.

With this in mind, I invite you to cast your eye over the 12 actors pictured on this page; I bet you recognise them all, but how many can you name? They’re the Hermans of British TV: familiar faces, not household names. The list could be a lot longer, and excludes those who have deservedly graduated to the Premier League: Siobhan Finneran, Indira Varma, Mark Bonnar and the always wonderful Victoria Hamilton, who takes the title role in the new series of The Teacher this week on 5. For now, I salute this deserving dozen…

Patrick Baladi is probably best known as David Brent’s leather-jacketed nemesis, Neil. Amelia Bullmore has been everything from Alan Partridge’s Ukrainian girlfriend Sonja to Sherlock’s dodgy scientist. A relatively recent entry, Amir El-Masry broke through on TV in The Night Manager, before roles in McMafia, Industry and The Crown. The Missing actor Anastasia Hille’s TV career began in 1992 with Red Dwarf; she now also runs a ceramics studio. Another Night Manager alumnus is Sex Education’s Alistair Petrie.

Some have cornered the market in a particular kind of British bloke. For a ruffled Army colonel, look no further than Rupert Vansittart. If you’re after a dodgy geezer, Danny Webb is your man. For someone whose posh affability ill-hides a lack of moral compass, there’s Doctor Foster’s Adam James.

Three longtime favourites include Sylvestra Le Touzel, who made her debut, aged 10, in Doctor Who, and specialises in establishment figures like The Crown’s Lady Macmillan. Adrian Lukis has popped up in everything from Prime Suspect to Poldark, although he’ll never fully escape the shadow of the bounder Mr Wickham in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice.

Over a 50-year career, Angela Bruce has moved from Angels to Casualty to Doctors with dozens of roles besides, although, for some, she’ll always be Janice Stubbs, the Corrie femme fatale who broke up Deirdre Barlow’s first marriage.

Finally, Pip Torrens. At an awards lunch, I elbowed Oscar winners out of the way to get a selfie with the man who stole the first two series of The Crown, but could still walk into his local Sainsbury’s without causing a ripple. It’s a quality shared by all those on this list.

Unlike the superstars who stand apart, bathed but also bordered in a spotlight of scrutiny, these actors are our representatives on screen. One well-known TV actor reports fellow supermarket-shoppers regularly greeting her, thinking she must be a neighbour or a school mum.

Who would you rather be? We all know the tragic tales of what havoc fame can cause; equally, a reported 90 per cent of UK actors are out of work at any given time. What a sweet spot then, to be constantly employed, having people smile at you in shops but without someone bumping into you on the Tube and shouting, “I can’t believe it’s Ross Kemp.”

They can stay under the radar – that is, they could until I wrote this piece, my hymn to unsung heroes of the small screen, aka TV’s hopefully happy Hermans.

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