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Ray Ashcroft

Acting

Biography

Raymond John Ashcroft is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as DS Geoff Daly in The Bill from 1996 to 2000, and Ronnie Marsden on Emmerdale from March to December 2003. In the late 1970s Ashcroft was the frontman of The Push, a Sheffield band. He started acting in repertory theatre before working in television and film productions. He played Ringo Starr in the biopic TV film Birth of the Beatles (1979),and he has also appeared in various television productions including Coronation Street. Ashcroft played DS Geoff Daly in The Bill from 1996 to 2000 before portraying Ronnie Madsen in Emmerdale (2003). In 2018, he portrayed Tom Jackson, a Yorkshire miner, in the play On Behalf of The People. In 2021, he played the lead role of Horace in the short film Mr Wong's Lullaby.

Known For

Heartbeat
7.2

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

Heartbeat

1992
Emmerdale
4.3

The lives of several families in the Yorkshire Dales revolve around a farm and the nearby village. With murders, affairs, lies, deceit, laughter and tears, it's all there in the village.

Emmerdale

1972
The Bill
6.8

The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.

The Bill

1984
The Professionals
7.5

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

The Professionals

1977
Prime Suspect
7.8

Highly skilled Detective Inspector Jane Tennison battles to prove herself in a male dominated world.

Prime Suspect

1991
All Creatures Great and Small
7.8

The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.

All Creatures Great and Small

1978
The Chief
7.0

The Chief is a British crime drama transmitted on ITV from 20 April 1990 to 16 June 1995. Produced by Anglia Television, it centred on the politics at the top of a typical English police force in its continual battle to solve the problems the times, in this case the fictional Eastland of East Anglia.

The Chief

1990
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
7.3

Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

1996
The Long Shadow
7.5

Dramatizing one of the most infamously notorious and shocking serial killer cases in the world, the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, commonly dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, between October 1975 and January 1981, South Yorkshire police undertook the biggest manhunt in British criminal history. The search for Sutcliffe lasted five years, involved over a thousand officers and changed the way the British police worked forever.

The Long Shadow

2023
Survivors
7.1

When a deadly virus wipes out most of the world's population, a handful of survivors struggle to stay alive.

Survivors

2008
Truckers
6.0

Funny, moving and at times painful - Truckers tells stories of real life, ordinary people pushed to extremes. In each episode, one character undertakes a journey and we are along for the ride. In an age when technology would make us seem ever more connected, the series uses the truck driver, alone in his cab, as a way to explore how isolated we can become within modern society and the importance of real human connection. These are powerful, moving stories, but the tone is always joyous and each story is one of redemption.

Truckers

2013
Chandler & Co
8.0

Chandler and Co is a British television programme written by Paula Milne and produced by Ann Skinner for the BBC. Aired with two series from 1994 to 1995, it follows private detective Elly Chandler, alongside her sister-in-law Dee Tate. In the second series, Tate is replaced by Kate Phillips, a former client turned employee.

Chandler & Co

1994
The Royal
7.8

Follows the staff and patients of a Yorkshire cottage hospital in the 60s, embroiled in tangled love lives and bitter power struggles.

The Royal

2003
No image
9.0

The Squad is a 1980 ITV children's TV series about the fictional exploits of a group of Police Cadets. The character of Cadet Alan Martin was played by actor Mark Botham who later went on to play PC Danny Sparkes in the TV series Juliet Bravo.

The Squad

1980
Birth of the Beatles
6.5

The early days of the Fab Four are traced from their bleakest hours as unknowns on Penny Lane in Liverpool to their triumph on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Birth of the Beatles

1979
Shoot to Kill
N/A

Shoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning (the so-called shoot-to-kill policy); the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.

Shoot to Kill

1990
The Four Minute Mile
7.5

For two brilliant young athletes - Roger Bannister of England and John Landy of Australia - the 1952 Helsinki Olympics present an exciting challenge. But events help set them on the path to something even more memorable than an Olympic gold medal - the race to break the four-minute mile....

The Four Minute Mile

1988
No image
10.0

Clarence Flamer hosts a late-night talk show on regional radio station North Star Sound. A phone call he takes one night leads to his discovering a mortgage scam being run by a group of estate agents. His attempts to delve deeper have tragic consequences.

Night Voice

1990
Criminal
9.0

Simon Willerton's suicide in 1990 brought to six the number of young prisoners who hanged themselves in British prisons in just over six months, prompting public debate over conditions in remand prisons like Armley where overcrowding was so severe that no new inmates could be admitted. Simon faced a burglary charge over the theft of a hot-water bottle from an unoccupied flat. Less a hardened criminal than an immature, gawky teenager who never fitted in, Simon and his tragic death inspired this teleplay.

Criminal

1994
New Mars
7.3

Earth has been destroyed and the survivors have retreated to an underground city on Mars, preparing to head off to a new planet they hope to colonise.

New Mars

2019