George Costigan

George Costigan:


With a winning smile, tempered by a knack for portraying sarcasm and sleaziness, character actor George Costigan has a huge body of interesting work stretching back to the mid-'70s.

As the sinister Mr Kemp in an episode of the excellent Granada series
 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' starring Jeremy Brett 

As 'Philip the Bastard' in the 1984 TV version of 'King John'. A dispute over inheritance is
judged by the king (Leonard Rossiter). His half brother (Edward Hibbert, right) loses out. 

A favourite for me might be his cheerfully caustic copper from Alan Plater's 'The Biederbecke Connection', and he sticks in the mind as the randy lead in the (now probably unwatchable) 'Rita Sue and Bob Too', that jolly comedy look at grooming impressionable teenagers for sex.  

Different times indeed. With Michelle Holmes and Siobhan Finneran in the
Bradford-based schoolgirl sex comedy 'Rita Sue & Bob Too' (1987).   

He has also enjoyed a longish run in several shows including 'Emmerdale', 'Happy Valley', 'Holby City' and 'City Central'. Police roles have been usefully forthcoming, in the likes of 'Ruth Rendell Mysteries', 'The Long Firm' and 'See No Evil: The Moors Murderers'. Other popular primetimers have included 'Hetty Wainthrop Investigates', 'Bergerac', 'Inspector Morse', 2nd-generation 'Minder', Tennant-era 'Doctor Who', and dear old 'Midsomer Murders'. He's also in the movie 'Calendar Girls' (2003) as Penelope Wilton's husband Eddie. 

In the Christmas Day episode of 'Doctor Who' from 2007,
'Voyage Of The Damned' as Max Capricorn

Comedy has included 'The Riff Raff Element', 'Coogan's Run', 'Murder Most Horrid' and the rather antiquated ghost comedy, 'So Haunt Me', in which he played the harassed dad of a family pestered by Miriam Karlin as a spectral Jewish grandmother.
 

With Sean Scanlon, as the cynically comedic coppers on an
overtime-generating stake out in 'The Beiderbecke Connection'  

George Costigan-imdb