Caroline Quentin
Caroline Quentin is an actor, born 1960.
Quentin spent the nineties being the sane person in other people's chaos, and got extremely good at it. She turned up first in bit parts across the comedy of the period, a traffic warden in Mr. Bean, sketch work in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, before landing Dorothy in Men Behaving Badly, the role that made her.
Dorothy is the hardest job in that sitcom. Everybody else gets to be an idiot; she has to react to idiots for the show's whole run without curdling into a scold. Quentin plays her low, dry and faintly amused, and that delivery is what gives the series its floor. She carried the same quality into Jonathan Creek as Maddy Magellan, the journalist supplying nerve and cheek while the detective supplies solutions, and again as Kate Salinger in Kiss Me Kate.
Then she started leading her own things. DCI Janine Lewis in Blue Murder ran from 2003 to 2009 and handed her a lead in a genre that rarely gave one to a comic actress. Alongside it she built a second career as a broadcaster and presenter, fronting The World's Most Extraordinary Homes and appearing steadily on panel and reality formats.
The recent work is character parts, and she has got funnier and odder with age: Mrs. Bumble in Dickensian, Dawn in The Other One, and Elizabeth 'Wes' Wesley in The Lazarus Project, where she plays the person in charge and is the best thing in it.
Movies (3)
TV (15)
- Mr. Bean (1990)
- Doc Martin (2004)
- Jonathan Creek (1997)
- Men Behaving Badly (1992)
- Room 101 (1994)
- The Lazarus Project (2022)
- The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer (2018)
- Blue Murder (2003)
- Dancing on the Edge (2013)
- A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989)
- Dickensian (2015)
- Life Begins (2004)
- The World's Most Extraordinary Homes (2017)
- The Other One (2020)
- Sooty (2011)
Where to start with Caroline Quentin
Men Behaving Badly is the starting point and it survives better than its reputation suggests, largely on her account. Watch a mid-run episode rather than the first: the show takes a while to work out that Dorothy is its sharpest weapon.
Jonathan Creek is the next stop and the one to pick if you only want one thing. The Maddy years are the best years of that series, and the double act does most of the lifting. Blue Murder is the straight drama, competent rather than remarkable, and useful mainly as proof she could carry a lead.
For recent Quentin, The Lazarus Project is far and away the best use of her, and Dickensian hands her a broad Dickens grotesque to enjoy. The Other One is the funniest of the late sitcoms. Doc Martin and Mr. Bean are minor appearances worth noting rather than seeking out.