Brendan Coyle- Actor of the Week

Brendan Coyle

An obvious choice for actor of the week (thanks for the suggestion sis!) is Brendan Coyle, as we have been enjoying him so much recently as Mr. Bates in Downton Abbey. And yet, he has done so much more period drama than just Downton Abbey.

Brendan Coyle as Nicholas Higgins and Richard Armitage as Mr. Thornton in North and South

If you haven't yet seen North and South, then you have a real treat in store for you. Brendan Coyle plays a working man in the North of England, a "hand" in a cotton mill and Richard Armitage plays the sexy Mr. Thornton, a mill owner. There is romance, politics, romance, strife and...romance? OK, Mrs. Gaskell does kill off a few too many of her characters, but otherwise this is the perfect book/miniseries combo.

Claudie Blakely and Brendan Coyle as Emma and Robert Timmins in Lark Rise to Candleford

In Lark Rise to Candleford, Brendan Coyle plays the intelligent but sometimes opinionated and difficult stonemason Robert Timmins. Again, he brings this working class man to life with a tempestuous but loving relationship with his wife Emma, played by the always brilliant Claudie Blakely.

Brendan Coyle as Mr. Bates in Downton Abbey

Brendan Coyle seems quite bewildered by the sex symbol status he has achieved with his Mr. Bates, the valet to the Earl of Grantham. We got attached to his character in the first series as he struggled with his injury from the Boer War and his new position at Downton. Now we are cheering on his romance with Anna. Go Bates!

Brendan Coyle as Manuel Mendoza from The Glass Virgin 1995

Mmmmm...this is one miniseries I have got to get my hands on. Based on a Catherine Cookson book, The Glass Virgin is a 1995 miniseries (1995 again-what a great year for period drama!), IMDb gives this description:

"Set in 1870s England, the story tells of Annabella Lagrange and the terrible secret her wealthy parents have kept from her. When she finally learns the truth, she runs away and eventually finds solace in the company of her family's former groom, a young Irishman with the very Spanish name of Manuel Mendoza. Together they travel the Northumbria countryside from job to job in his horse and caravan, Annabella trapped in limbo between her upper class upbringing which has rejected her, and the working class who are sometimes suspicious of her, only Manuel understanding her situation."

Apparently there are a whole slew of Catherine Cookson's novels which were dramatized in the last 20 years by the BBC. Sounds like another order from Amazon for me!!!!

Lately Brendan has been working on a Victorian thriller called The Raven, "a fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet pursues a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories."    He is also working on a new TV series called Starlings, about a typical working class family in Derbyshire.

Brendan Coyle. Small baby or big hands?

And to leave you with, here is a photo which may give you baby lust (if not Brendan Coyle lust). The infant he is holding is, I believe, the offspring of one of his colleagues on Starlings. And by the way ladies, he is straight and he is single!