Mark Bonnar

Bonnar has the most useful face in British television: entirely plausible and never quite trustworthy. The Edinburgh-born actor is known for Max in Guilt, Duncan Hunter in Shetland, Bruno Jenkins in Casualty, Detective Finney in Psychoville, DCC Mike Dryden in Line of Duty, Colin Osborne in Unforgotten and Stephen Burns, the Lord Advocate, in Dept. Q. Written out like that it reads as a list of professional men, which is exactly the point.

What he does with them is the interesting part. Bonnar plays authority as something slightly too tight in the collar, a man who has rehearsed his answers, and he lets the viewer notice the rehearsal without ever signalling it. Line of Duty used that instinct precisely; so did Unforgotten, where a respectable life sits on top of an old question. Then he turns and does comedy with the same equipment, deadpan and faintly aggrieved in Catastrophe, PhoneShop and Psychoville, and it works because the seriousness is real.

He has voiced games as well, including Blackbeard in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Townsend in Battlefield 1, neither of which is among the credits listed here. In 2025 he appeared as a contestant on The Celebrity Traitors, a format whose entire premise is lying convincingly to a room. Hard to think of better casting.