Ian McCulloch to appear at Romford Horror Festival on 2 March 2024

An audience with Ian McCulloch at Romford Horror Festival on 2 March 2024

IAN McCULLOCH (Greg Preston, Survivors) will be appearing at the ‘Horrhiffic’ Romford Horror Festival on Saturday 2 March 2024, taking part in two separate talks as well as a signing session.

McCulloch will join a panel of actors from celebrated horror movies, discussing different aspects of screen horror and the work of horror writers and filmmakers. Later in the afternoon, he’ll be interviewed on stage in ‘an audience with Ian McCulloch’ .

McCulloch will also be present for the screening of some pre-release footage from the upcoming The Witches of the Sands film, in which he appears. Finally, McCulloch, along with other panel guests, will hold a signing session for attendees.

Ian will be with us to discuss his career and will be doing signings on Saturday and possibly Sunday. He’ll also be present for some sneaky footage from upcoming movie The Witches Of The Sands, in which he stars.

Romford Horror Festival

‘The afternoon show’ panel discussion (15:00)

A casual afternoon panel discussion with Ian McCulloch, Cinzia Monreale, Caroline Munro and Pauline Peart. Over the course of an hour we’ll discuss a wide range of topics in the world of horror. From the classic to the modern day indie.

Romford Horror Festival, 2024

An audience with Ian McCulloch (17:00)

Ian McCulloch found demand on both British Television and Italian Horror, from the chilling BBC Sci-Fi drama Survivors in which he played the leading man for the first two seasons, Italian Horror where he starred in three controversial movies Contamination, Zombie Flesh Eaters and Zombie Holocaust and even a stint in Doctor Who. It’s sure to be a quirky hour of chat.

Romford Horror Festival, 2024

Tickets for these events (and all-day passes to all events) can be purchased in advance from the Romford Horror Festival web site.

The Romford Horror Festival takes place at Premiere Cinemas, Level 3, The Mercury Mall, Mercury Gardens, Romford RM1 3EE, between 29 February and 3 March 2024.

Full programme details can be found on the festival web site: https://www.romfordhorrorfestival.com/

Ian McCulloch as Captain Horst Markway in The Witches of the Sands - close-up

Ian McCulloch as Captain Horst Markway in The Witches of the Sands 

Ian McCulloch as Captain Horst Markway in The Witches of the Sands - close-up with sword

Ian McCulloch to appear at the Popcorn con in Sheffield in September

Ian McCulloch will appear as a guest at the Popcorn convention in Sheffield on 10 September 2023

IAN MCCULLOCH HAS today been confirmed as a guest at the Popcorn convention in Sheffield on 10 September 2023.

Ian McCulloch starred as Greg Preston in the BBC’s cult post apocalyptic 70’s TV series Survivors and most recently in Big Finish’s popular audio productions of the series. He had leading roles in the Italian horror films Zombie Flesh Eaters AKA Zombi II (1979) by Lucio Fulci, Zombie Holocaust (1980) by Marino Girolami, and Contamination (1980) by Luigi Cozzi. Zombie Flesh Eaters was originally banned in the UK as part of the 1980s campaign against “Video Nasties”. McCulloch has had supporting roles in studio films such as “Where Eagles Dare (1968) with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and Cromwell (1970) with Alec Guinness and Richard Harris. In addition, he has appeared in successful independent films, most notably The Ghoul (1975) with Peter Cushing and John Hurt. Ian has also guest starred in many TV series, including: Colditz (1974), Return of the Saint (1978); Hammer House of Horror’s episode “Witching Time” with Patricia Quinn (1980); The Professionals (1980), episode “Mixed Doubles”, in which he played the physical fitness and close quarters combat instructor of Bodie and Doyle; and as Nilson in the Doctor Who, serial “Warriors of the Deep” with Peter Davison (1984).

Popcorn convention

Also confirmed as Popcorn guests are Sarah Sutton, Peter Davison, Clare Higgins, Kenneth Cranham, Madeline Smith, Patricia Quinn and Michael Carter.

Autographs and photo opportunities can be purchased with all guests appearing on the day.

Popcorn describes itself as:

a pop culture festival that gets its geek on for the world of TV, Film, Comics, Literature, Sci-Fi, Horror, Cosplay & Art all under one roof! As well as Special Guests, Q & A panels, there will be autographsselfiescostume groups, cosplay, a busy marketplace filled with memorabillia & merch!  Meet fellow geeks!

Popcorn 2023

Popcorn takes places at the Magna Science Adventure Centre, Magna Way, Templeborough, Sheffield S60 1FD on Sunday 10 September 2023.

Find out more and buy tickets from the Popcorncon.com site.

Big Finish confirm full cast details for New Dawn 3 audio

BIG FINISH HAVE confirmed the full cast details for the upcoming Survivors: New Dawn 3 audio boxset, due for release next month.

The cast for the three episodes in the set is as follows:

  • Carolyn Seymour (Abby Grant)
  • Lucy Fleming (Jenny Richards)
  • Tom Alexander (Former-Ranger / Cleric)
  • Daisy Badger (Debra Adams)
  • Sean Connolly (Mike Ferguson / Groom)
  • Mark Elstob (Andrew / Terry Matthews)
  • Jonathan Keeble (Mark Osborne)
  • Belinda Lang (Celia Tate)
  • Hannah Raymond-Cox (Boo / Judy Lawson)
  • Enzo Squillino Jnr (Phil Harris)
  • Sam Stafford (Robin Page)

Survivors: New Dawn 3 will be released in April 2023 and is still available to pre-order, as both a collector’s edition three-disc CD and digital download combo or as a digital download only, from the Big Finish site.

Carolyn Seymour to appear at MCM Comic Con, Birmingham, 11-13 November 2022

Carolyn Seymour - Abby Grant, Survivors

CAROLYN SEYMOUR (ABBY Grant, Survivors) will appear at the MCM Comic Con convention taking place in Birmingham, UK between 11-13 November 2022.

Seymour will be taking part in the convention from Friday to Sunday, and will be offering autograph and photo sessions across all three days.

At 16:15 on Saturday 12 November, Seymour will appear on a Live Stage session.

An iconic actor in British TV as well as a popular voice actor – Carloyn Seymour has done it all! Join the legend as she discusses her time on and behind the screen and answers fan questions!

MCM Comicon, Birmingham

Seymour’s involvement with MCM Comic Con, Birmingham follows on from her appearance, alongside Survivors‘ Ian McCulloch (Greg Preston), at the London Film Fair earlier this month.

A limited number of advance tickets are still available for MCM Comic Con, Birmingham (no tickets are sold on the door).

MCM Comic Con
11-13 November 2022
National Exhibition Centre (NEC)
North Ave, Marston Green, Birmingham B40 1NT

Carolyn Seymour - MCM Comicon, Birmingham 2022

Ian McCulloch to appear at Connecticut Horrorfest

CT Horrorfest 2022

IAN MCCULLOCH (GREG Preston, Survivors) will appear at the CT Horrorfest 2022 Convention in Connecticut this weekend (16-17 September 2022).

McCulloch is best know in horror circles for his three post-Survivors roles in Italian horror movies, and outlines his interest in meeting fans of his work in a brief promotional video for the event.

Scottish born actor Ian McCulloch rose to fame playing Greg Preston on the 1970s’ British Sci-Fi television show Survivors about a genetically engineered germ that wipes out almost the entire population of Earth.

His popularity there caught the attention of Italian filmmakers as he went on to star in a handful of the classics – including his role as Peter West in Lucio Fulci’s 1979 masterpiece Zombie (aka Zombi 2)!

Please join us in welcoming Ian McCulloch to CT HorrorFest 2022!

Films: Zombie (aka Zombi 2), Zombie Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.), Contamination, Moonlighting, Where Eagles Dare, It!, Cromwell

Television: Survivors, Hammer House of Horror, Doctor Who, High Road, Taggart

CT Horrorfest 2022

Ian McCulloch - CT Horrorfest 2022

CT HorrorFest 2022
16-17 September 2022
Naugatuck Event Center
Naugatuck, CT, USA
http://www.horrornewsnetwork.net/ct-horror/

Keith Jayne (Mick, Corn Dolly) to appear at Whooverville 2022

Keith Jayne - Survivors - Corn Dolly

KEITH JAYNE, WHO memorably played the role of Mick in the first series Survivors episode Corn Dolly, will be one of the guests at the Whooverville convention in Derby on 3 September 2022.

Whooverville 13 is, as the name suggests, a Doctor Who themed event, celebrating all the different eras of the show. Keith played the role of Will Chandler in the Fifth Doctor story The Awakening (alongside Denis Lill), but is probably best known in genre circles for playing the title role in the 1981 television adaptation of the much-loved children’s story Stig of the Dump.

Advance tickets for Whooverville 13, which proudly promotes itself as “the East Midland’s biggest annual get-together for fans of the BBC TV series Doctor Who” can be purchased online.

Keith has fond memories of his time working on Corn Dolly. “I remember it being a very friendly cast,” he told the Survivors: A World Away site. “As the youngest of them I used to enjoy the cuddles from Annie Hayes [Lorraine] – especially when it was so cold. Lucy and Carolyn were also kind to me. However, of them all, Denis was really helpful.”

Keith did have some concerns about taking on the part of Mick so early in his acting career. “I felt the part was too big for me at that stage,” he concedes. “But with [director] Pennant [Roberts]’s constant encouragement and the kindness afforded me by the other cast members, I got through it.”

Whooverville 13
3 September 2022
QUAD, Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, Derby DE1 3AS

June Brown (Susan, Manhunt) dies aged 95

June Brown as Susan in Manhunt, the opening episode of the third and final series of Survivors

JUNE BROWN, WHO appeared in the opening episode of the third and final series of Survivors, has died at the age of 95.

Brown appears in the role of Susan in ‘Manhunt’, the only episode in the series written by producer Terry Dudley. Susan is a survivor who shares a small settlement with the blacksmith Seth (Dan Meaden) who finds the ill and delirious Jack after he narrowly escapes a wild dog pack on his return from Norway with Greg and Agnes. While Seth makes contact with Charles Vaughan at Challenor, Susan tends to the injured traveller as best she can. The pair then play host to Charles and Jenny, before their two visitors head off in pursuit of Greg Preston hoping to make sense of Jack’s confused account of what awaits them at Wellingham.

Born in Needham Market, Suffolk in 1927, Brown served with the Wrens during World War Two. After the war she was accepted at the Old Vic School in London and subsequently joined the Old Vic company, appearing in touring shows and in productions at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Birmingham Rep. 

WAYMARKER

By the time she was cast in the small guest role in Survivors, Brown had already established a career on the small screen as well as on stage. On TV, she’d appeared in Armchair Mystery Theatre (1964), Z-Cars (1964-72), Dixon of Dock Green (1965-69), The Prince and the Pauper (1976) and many other series.

Amongst fans of genre TV of the period, Brown is especially well-known for playing the role of Lady Eleanor in the Doctor Who story ‘The Time Warrior’ (shown between December 1973 and January 1984).

In 1977, the same year that she featured in Survivors, she also secured guest roles in Crown Court and The Duchess of Duke Street and appeared in a television adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Her role in one episode of Survivors was a minor waymarker in her long career, and was not something that drew much attention (outside of the ranks of Survivors fans) in the years that followed.

Brown continued to win supporting and guest roles in TV series of all kinds, and appeared in numerous stage productions. But it was her audition in 1985 for the role of Dot Cotton in the BBC soap Eastenders that completely transformed Brown’s career.

PANTHEON

Dot was the “chainsmoking, hypochondriac launderette manager of Albert Square”, a role that presented Brown with “a great Dickensian character of detail, humanity and colour” that over time saw Dot secure her place in the “the long-running soap’s female pantheon” (Guardian, 4 April 2022).

Brown would go on to appear in more than 2,300 Eastenders episodes as her character became one of the most fondly-regarded of the show’s ensemble, featuring in any number of major soap storylines. The role won her several industry awards, and Brown was also awarded an MBE in 2008, and an OBE in 2022. Brown retired from the cast of Eastenders in early 2020 at the age of 93.

June Brown: 16 February 1927 – 3 April 2022

Peter Bowles (David Grant, The Fourth Horseman) dies aged 85

Peter Bowles (as David Grant) - The Fourth Horseman - at the Grants home

PETER BOWLES, who played the role of Abby Grant’s husband David in the very first Survivors episode The Fourth Horseman, has died of cancer at the age of 85.

“He was lovely,” Carolyn Seymour (Abby Grant) recalled on the episode commentary for the DD Video release of the first series of Survivors on DVD. “He was just wonderful as my husband.”

By the time he was casting for The Fourth Horseman, director Pennant Roberts had been aware of Bowles’ rising stage and screen career for many years. The pair had first met while Bowles had been working at the Bristol Vic in the early 1960s.

Audience expectation

By 1974, when Roberts was looking to cast the role of the home-counties businessman David Grant, he knew he needed an actor with real presence; someone that – despite his character’s privileged social status – TV audiences would identify with. By that time, Bowles “had established himself”, Roberts recalled in 2003. He was “not as established as he became subsequently” but he was an actor that, in 1975, many TV viewers would have recognised.

That was an important consideration, because Terry Nation’s script for The Fourth Horseman deliberately confounds audience expectation about David Grant’s likely fate. The plotline strongly suggests that the ailing Abby might die, while her as-yet unaffected husband could survive the outbreak.

What Bowles captures so well is the sense of displacement that David Grant feels

“To make the story work you had to feel that [he] was another lead actor” on a par with Seymour, Roberts explained. Someone who could become a series’ regular. So when David Grant subsequently dies, his unexpected death “has a real effect on the viewer,” Roberts reflected.

The character of David Grant only appears in a few pivotal scenes before he succumbs to the virus, but Bowles’ performance leaves a memorable impression. As the virus reaches his commuter-belt village, Bowles brilliantly captures David’s rising panic – as his world comes apart, and Abby falls ill. What begins as irritation at a difficult journey home from a disrupted office, ends with David’s desperate attempts to save Abby’s life and his recognition of the full, terrible reality of the pandemic.

INNER-ALARM

What Bowles captures so well is the sense of displacement that David Grant feels. In conversation with Abby at their dinner table, it’s clear he’s attempting to silence his inner-alarm about the worsening situation in the country through denial. By the time he races off into the night to find Doctor Gordon, the businessman – who’s used to being in charge of every aspect of his life – is now struggling in a world in which nothing is any longer under his control. The fact that David dies alone (and unseen) on his living room couch, while Abby battles through the virus upstairs, only adds to the poignancy – and indeed the shock – of his passing.

Born in London in 1936, Bowles would begin his sixty-year acting career by securing a scholarship for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), going on to join The Old Vic Company. It was the start of a lengthy and diverse stage career, which saw Bowles appear in more than 40 productions over the years.

Finely judged comedic performances were balanced by serious dramatic roles

His interest in theatre never diminished, even as he secured success and recognition for his TV roles. One of his final theatrical performances, at the age of 81, was as Father Merrin in a stage version of The Exorcist.

Whilst he enjoyed a low-key career as a movie actor, appearing in films such as The Offence (1972), Try This One For Size (1989) and The Steal (1995), it was his work in television that secured him the most attention.

Good life

Famously turning down the role of Jerry Leadbetter in The Good Life in favour of some more theatre work, Bowles later found fame in TV sit-coms including Only When I Laugh (1979-82), The Bounder (1982-83) and Executive Stress (1987-88). He drew most plaudits for his role as the self-made businessman Richard DeVere in To The Manor Born (1979-2007), alongside Penelope Keith. It remained a hugely popular show throughout its run, consistently attracting huge viewing figures.

But those finely judged comedic performances were also balanced by serious dramatic roles. Building on one-off appearances in a wide variety of TV series in the 1960s, including The Baron, Softly Softly and Take Three Girls (in which Seymour starred), Bowles would go on to take more substantive roles in series such as Rumpole of the Bailey (1979-82), The Irish R.M. (1983-85), Lytton’s Diary (1985-86) and many others. His last major small-screen role was as the Duke of Wellington in Victoria (2016-2019).

Bowles’ impressive acting career saw him take on a varied and contrasting roles over course of six decades, allowing him to showcase his talents in both comedy and straight drama. He was often cast in the guise of the dapper gentleman or the charming professional rogue, but he was always keen to avoid typecasting.

Without in any sense discounting his impressive corpus of work, for enthusiasts of Survivors Peter Bowles will always be indelibly associated with the role of the doomed David Grant. David’s abrupt death comes as a body-blow to Abby Grant, confirming that her former life has gone forever. Like the passing of Jenny Richards’ flatmate Pat, this intimate, personal loss is a potent on-screen metaphor for what is, by the closing credits of The Fourth Horseman, confirmed to be a global human catastrophe.

The final image of the episode shows Abby driving away from the flames consuming the Grants’ home – an improvised funeral pyre for David Grant- and towards whatever life now awaits her.

Bowles’ death was widely covered in the British press, with obituaries appearing in The Guardian, The Mail, The Independent, The Mirror and many other publications.

Peter Bowles: 16 October 1936 – 17 March 2022

Peter Bowles (David Grant) - The Fourth Horseman - meeting Abby at Brimpsfield station.png
Peter Bowles (David Grant) - The Fourth Horseman - meeting Dr Joe Gordon
Peter Bowles - framed image at The Ferry Boat Inn, Riverside, Stoke Bardolph, Nottinghamshire NG14 5HX
Peter Bowles – framed image at The Ferry Boat Inn, Riverside, Stoke Bardolph, Nottinghamshire NG14 5HX – celebrating the actor’s local connections

Robert Gillespie launches new book of reminiscences

ROBERT GILLESPIE, WHO appeared in two separate roles in Survivors, is about to publish his second book of reminiscences about “a life in sitcom, TV, film and theatre”.

Gillespie’s first role in Survivors came in 1975 in the third episode Gone Away, when he featured as John Milner – a reluctant member of Wormley’s militia, who is disarmed by Jenny Richards at the Cash-and-Carry stand-off, and who later enables Abby, Greg and Jenny to escape after the gang track down their centre of operations at the church.

Gillespie returned to Survivors in 1977, featuring in three episodes of the third series as Sam Meade, a recovering heroin addict who is determined to prevent the return of power and industry in post-Death Britain. As Charles’ group works to bring the first Scottish hydroelectric station online, would-be saboteur Meade falls to his death in the plant’s inlet turbines.

Two roles

No other actor in the original Survivors appeared in two completely distinct and unconnected roles.

Gillespie’s new book Are You Going to do That Little Jump?, is a sequel to a first volume of recollections from a supporting and character actor’s life and career published in 2017. “Robert was pleased enough with sales to launch part two which picks up where part one left off,” his publicist explains. “Part one was mostly about theatre, but part two has more of a focus on TV and film” and in particular his career in sitcom.

This new volume does include a “passing reference” to Gillespie’s work on Survivors and a photo of him as Sam Meade. “His memories of the production are hazy”, the publicist concedes, “but he does talk about going down a live mine shaft whilst on location.” That would have been during the production of The Enemy, the first episode in which Meade’s character appears.

Book launch

As part of the promotional campaign, Gillespie is hosting a “big bash book launch” featuring “chats, clips and Q&As” at 19:00 on 6 October 2021. Advanced registration for the event is available online.

Ordering details for Are You Going to do That Little Jump? will be available shortly. “Robert is launching a new website very soon,” the publicist explains. It is anticipated that the book will be available for sale direct from Gillespie’s site. The new website will also offer “extensive archive material” from across the actor’s decades’ long career.

Morris Perry – an actor’s life

THE RESPECTED CHARACTER actor Morris Perry, who died on 19 September 2021 at the age of 96, enjoyed a long and diverse career on television and on the stage.

Fans of Survivors are likely to know Perry best from his extraordinarily well-judged performance in the third series episode Mad Dog as the misanthrope former academic Dr Richard Fenton. But this kind of exemplary character acting was the signature of a small-screen career that spanned several decades.

On TV, Perry was rarely – if ever – awarded “leading man” status. But he excelled in those supporting and guest roles that required presence, substance and intellectual or emotional intelligence – and, when the script required it, a sense of controlled menace.

Television remained a perennial feature of Perry’s working life. But while TV acting gave him the most national exposure, it was love of the theatre that shaped Perry’s career more significantly. “There’s no doubt the theatre is much more interesting, most of the time,” he reflected later.

Stage and screen

Born on 28 March 1925 in Bromley, Kent (as Frank Morris Perry), as a young man he learnt his acting craft at The Old Vic Theatre School, “one of the most successful and well-respected conservatoire drama schools in the UK”. In 1953, Perry married the British actress Margaret Ashcroft. The couple had four children, and remained together until Ashcroft’s death in 2016.

After graduating from The Old Vic, Perry began a career that combined work on stage and screen. In the theatre, Perry pursued his deep interest in the writings of Shakespeare, appearing in numerous productions of The Bard’s work.

He excelled in those supporting and guest roles that required presence, substance and intellectual or emotional intelligence

In the late 1950s, Perry appeared in minor and supporting roles in a number of TV productions, including The Man Who Was Two (1956), Charlesworth at Large (1958) and The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1959). During the 1960s, Perry continued to feature in similar one-off appearances in TV shows, including Sergeant Cork (1964) and The Protectors (1964).

But he had also begun to secure more substantial small-screen commissions. In 1964, he appeared as Baron Danglars, the instigator of the plot to frame Dantès for treason, in a BBC serialisation of The Count of Monte Cristo, adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ novel. He took the role of Dr. Heddle in the 1966 BBC serial Lord Raingo, an adaptation of Arnold Bennett’s fictionalised account his wartime government service, which starred Kenneth Moore; and in 1967 appeared as the Reverend Philip Nyren in the serial Witch Hunt, a story of pastoral isolation threatened by the spectre of the black arts.

Recurring TV roles

During the 1970s, Perry’s TV career reached a new peak, with substantial and recurring roles in shows such as the police serial Special Branch (1969-1970), Doctor Who (“Colony in Space”, 1971), The Sweeney (1975-1976), and Secret Army (1979). “Around that period I did quite a lot of telly,” he remembered later. “So you’re sort of ‘known’ by people”, he suggested – most usefully by television producers and directors.

One such TV director Michael Briant, who hired Perry to appear in “Colony in Space”, said of his passing: “he was such a powerful man both physically and mentally. I liked and admired him greatly.”

Morris Perry was 52 when director Tristan de Vere Cole hired him to appear in one of the three episodes of the third series of Survivors he had been commissioned by producer Terry Dudley to deliver. The world-weary, cynical and dismissive former academic Doctor Richard Fenton, instrumental to every strand of the fabric of Mad Dog, was a first-class creation. A superbly crafted role, Fenton was gifted with finely honed dialogue throughout what was arguably writer Don Shaw‘s most accomplished script for the show. Yet it was Perry’s acutely observed portrayal of this most cynical of hermits that made his single appearance in Survivors so memorable and so impactful.

“At the time I hadn’t seen any episodes of the series”, he recalled many years afterwards. “I watched some later and it appealed to me. It’s a rich theme – humanity released from its usual restraints in a melancholy English landscape.”

Everyone involved with the (wholly location based) production of Mad Dog acknowledges that it was a tough and demanding shoot – with cast and crew required to work on day and night shoots in the wilds of the Derbyshire Peak District in the depths of a freezing winter. Leading man Denis Lill (Charles Vaughan) later recalled that the episode was “one of the most exhausting jobs I have ever done” with physical demands that were akin to “living on an assault course”.

Perry’s acutely observed portrayal of this most cynical of hermits made his single appearance in Survivors so memorable

But alongside Lill, Perry had an especially demanding time of it – required to depict the suffering of a rabies carrier in the full throes of contagion; to be bound and dragged prone through slush and snow; to be drenched in icy water; and finally to collapse to the freezing mud after Fenton is shot and killed.

When Shaw visited the shoot at Monsal Dale and Ilam, he was deeply impressed by Perry’s uncomplaining commitment to the demands of the role. When he met him again, during one of Perry’s appearance in a production of Shakespeare at Stratford, he reminded him of the challenges of the shoot. “My god, you were hours being dragged around by a horse in the snow… supposed to be suffering from rabies – you must have been absolutely frozen.” Shaw remembers that Perry was sanguine. “‘Well’, he said, ‘it comes with the job – you do it.'”

An agreeable shoot

When talking to fans, Perry was keen to downplay any sense that the actors suffered the privations of the cold on Mad Dog. “They usually have blankets standing by for that kind of thing,” he explained. “There are members of the crew who dash after you as soon as you’ve stopped filming and throw things over you – and your horse! And then take them away again before you’re on to the next take.” While he did accept that “it was good to get back to the hotel where I remember low rafters and real blazing fires”, his abiding memory of working on Mad Dog was that he “found it very agreeable.”

In August 2005, at the age of eighty Morris Perry was reunited with director Tristan de Vere Cole at a sound studio in London to record an audio commentary for Mad Dog, for inclusion in the special features of the DDHE DVD release of the third series of Survivors. The following day, Perry joined the cast of his next London-based theatrical production to continue working.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to moderate that Mad Dog commentary session, and was greatly impressed by the detailed reminiscences of both these Survivors‘ alumni of a one-week shoot that they were involved with some 28 years earlier. It was such a pleasure to be able to contribute, in a small way, to the creation of a ‘time capsule’ of memories of what, for many fans of Survivors, is one of the most highly regarded episodes of the show’s three year run.

Perry’s theatre work continued unabated in the decades following Survivors, over time eclipsing his more infrequent TV appearances. “I haven’t done much telly lately,” he noted in a letter from the late 1990s. “I seemed to be into priests and judges for a bit but that’s dried up.” At the same time, theatrical roles, large and small, continued to draw his interest. “I did my second King Lear recently at The Tabard,” he explained in the same correspondence. “Currently, I’m doing a butler in An Ideal Husband at The Old Vic.”

Perry was keen to downplay any sense that the actors suffered the privations of the cold on Mad Dog

Throughout this, his close attention to the nature of the actor’s craft remained keenly in focus. Reflecting on roles in The Merchant of Venice and The Honest Whore at the signature Globe Theatre in 1998, he observed: “It’s important to get really prepared to go on stage, getting the mind right. It means getting your imagination into a state that is responsive. You probably need to be much more alert than usual.” 

Perry’s intellectual curiosity, and in particular his fascination with words and language, continued through his eighties and into his nineties. “He’s the kind of chap who is… learning Latin and Ancient Greek in his spare time”, Toby Hadoke noted, when promoting a podcast interview with Perry in 2016.

Those who worked with Morris Perry are most likely to recall a gregarious actor possessed of talent, quiet professionalism and a warm and self-effacing demeanour. To return to the words of Don Shaw, Morris Perry can quite properly be remembered as a: “Great trooper, wonderful actor, and a delight to work with.”

Morris Perry (28 March 1925 – 19 September 2021)