
Peter Armitage
Acting
Biography
Peter Armitage (1940-2018) was perhaps best known for playing builder Bill Webster, father of Kevin, in Coronation Street, a role he first played in 1984, before returning to the show for a second stint in 1995 to 1997, and for a final time in 2006 to 2011. He also played a bicycle-buying father in a memorable 1980s advert for Yellow Pages. His TV career stretched back to 1970 and his many credits included roles in Ken Loach's Days of Hope, Alan Bleasdale's GBH, Jimmy McGovern's Hearts and Minds and Dockers, and Russell T Davies' The Second Coming, in which he played the father of Christopher Eccleston's modern day Christ. He also starred in the Steve Coogan film The Parole Officer in 2001, played Sergeant Kerby alongside Michael Caine in 1988's Jack the Ripper and appeared as David Jason's older, more confident brother in the 1970s sitcom Lucky Feller. He made guest appearances in programmes such as The Sweeney, The Professionals Softly Softly, Strangers, Bulman, Rockliffe's Babies, Crown Court, Casualty, Holby City, The Royal, Heartbeat, Peak Practice, Medics, and The Bill. His last TV appearance was in an episode of Doctors in 2013.
Known For

Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
Casualty

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

Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale β a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District β and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. Cardale was based on the Staffordshire village of Longnor for the final series, but was previously based in the Derbyshire village of Crich, although certain scenes were filmed at other nearby Derbyshire towns and villages, most notably Matlock, Belper and Ashover.
Peak Practice

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

Jack Regan, an unethical officer of the Flying Squad, uses unorthodox methods to pursue criminals with the help of his partner, George Carter.
The Sweeney

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse

The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a βdivvieβ, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.
Lovejoy

Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton.
Justice

Churchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.
Churchill's People

Strangers is a 1978β82 ITV police procedural created and principally written by Murray Smith, based on characters created by Kenneth Royce in his novel series and subsequent 1977β78 television adaptation The XYY Man. Don Henderson and Dennis Blanch reprise their roles, respectively, of Detective Sergeant (DS) George Bulman and Detective Constable (DC) Derek Willis. A group of police officers are brought together from across the country to the north of England. There, the fact that they're not well-known gives them the advantage to infiltrate where a more familiar local detective could not. Despite being based around a comparatively small team of detectives, a regular feature in its early years is that few episodes feature the entire team, with most using just two or three regulars in any major role.
Strangers

Anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.
Centre Play
Harry is a television drama series produced by Union Pictures for the BBC, and shown on BBC1 between 18 September 1993 and 12 April 1995. The programme follows a journalist called Harry Salter, who ran a news agency in the English town of Darlington.
Harry

Jack the Ripper is a 1988 two-part television film/miniseries portraying a fictionalized account of the hunt for Jack the Ripper, the unidentified serial killer responsible for the Whitechapel murders of 1888. The series coincided with the 100th anniversary of the murders.
Jack the Ripper
Magic Grandad was an educational programme which originally aired on BBC Two under the title 'Switch On, Switch Off' during Schools section of 1993. The show saw 'Magic' Grandad take his young grandchildren back in time, many of the adventures are about comparing the past and the present and seeing how evidence of what happened in the olden days still survives. The show was said to make learning about history "fun for youngsters" and was aimed at children aged 5-7 years. The series was introduced to support the History National Curriculum at Key Stage 1. New seasons have been made periodically to support new areas of the infant history curriculum such as seaside holidays and toys. The early season have a companion booklet of teacher's notes with descriptions of the episodes, various suggestions for follow-up work and photocopiable worksheets.
Magic Grandad

GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray, the Militant tendency-supporting Labour leader of a city council in the North of England and Jim Nelson, the headmaster of a school for disturbed children. The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council β in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale's intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is "handsome". In normal parlance, the initials "GBH" refer to the criminal charge of grievous bodily harm - however, the actual intent of the letters is that it is supposed to stand for Great British Holiday.
G.B.H.

Rockliffe's Babies is a British television police procedural devised by Richard O'Keefe, and starring Ian Hogg as maverick Detective Sergeant Alan Rockliffe, who is assigned to train seven young recruits to the CID, all fresh out of uniform. Under his irascible guidance, it is hoped that they will blossom into full-blown detectives. But Rockliffe is human β so human that he makes more mistakes than the 'Babies' he's supposed to be training. A follow-up series, Rockliffe's Folly, follows Rockliffe through his relocation to Wessex, dealing with rural crimes as part of a new team of investigators. The seven episode third series proved to be the last, with many citing a change in the programme's formula for the heavy ratings decline. Many viewers stated that the success of the two Babies series came not from Rockliffe himself, but from the popular ensemble cast.
Rockliffe's Babies

Introduced by renowned English actor Edward Woodward, In Suspicious Circumstances is an anthology of reenactments depicting real-life murder mysteries, some famous and some obscure, exploring cases with elements of miscarriage of justice, unsolved mysteries, and unusual circumstances, often spanning different historical periods.
In Suspicious Circumstances

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
After surviving a series of attempts on his life, successful businessman Lew Burnett decides to remain "dead" after the most recent one so he can go undercover and find out which of his close friends and business associates want him dead.
The Hanged Man

A young teacher begins work at a tough Liverpool comprehensive, where he has to deal with racism, homophobia and his students' poor backgrounds.