Barbara Durkin
Barbara Durkin trained at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre and made her film debut as Valerie in Wish You Were Here in 1987, one of the more admired British films of that decade. What followed was a television career of the kind that rarely gets written about and constantly gets watched.
She was a regular presence in the strand of British comedy running from Chris Morris to Steve Coogan: a chat-show contestant in Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, a French woman in Brass Eye, Susan in I'm Alan Partridge. Elsewhere she took the small, exact parts that hold a scene together, in Boon, Midsomer Murders, Roger Roger, My Parents Are Aliens and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, and she turned up as a cafe waitress in The Counselor in 2013.
She has since stopped acting. What she left behind is a good argument for the value of the small-part specialist: most of British television is held up by people doing exactly what she did, and almost none of them are named on a poster.
Movies (2)
TV (8)
Where to start with Barbara Durkin
Begin with I'm Alan Partridge, which is both the best show on this list and the one where she has most to do. Susan is a small role in a series built almost entirely on one man's discomfort, and the comedy only functions because the people around him respond like normal human beings.
Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge is the earlier, stranger version of the same character, and her chat-show contestant is a neat demonstration of how much that format asks of its guest actors. Brass Eye is the harshest thing she was involved in and still the most startling British television of its era. For the dramatic register, Wish You Were Here is where to look, and Murder in Suburbia shows the workmanlike side of the same trade. The Counselor is a single scene in a film with an enormous cast, included here for completeness.