
Robin Ellis
Acting
Biography
Anthony Robin Ellis (born 8 January 1942) is a British actor and cookery book writer best known for his role as Captain Ross Poldark in the 29 episodes of the 1975 BBC classic series Poldark, adapted from a series of books by the British author Winston Graham. He also appeared in Fawlty Towers, Cluedo, The Good Soldier (an adaptation of the Ford Madox Ford novel), Elizabeth R (playing Essex), The Moonstone, Bel Ami, Sense and Sensibility (which also featured Clive Francis), The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, She Loves Me (in which he sings) and Blue Remembered Hills (written by Dennis Potter). In 2015–17 and 2019 he appeared in the Poldark series remake as Reverend Halse.
Known For

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Play for Today

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

Sherlock Holmes uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve, along with his friend Dr. Watson.
Sherlock Holmes

Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession... falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest - only the bankers are smiling. It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.
Poldark

Wallander is a Swedish television series adapted from Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels and starring Krister Henriksson in the title role. The 1st series of 13 films was produced in 2005 and 2006, with one taken directly from a novel and the remainder with new storylines suggested by Mankell. The 2nd series of 13 films was shown between 2009 and 2010. The stories are set in Ystad near the southern tip of Sweden. The three films Before the Frost, Mastermind, and The Secret were premiered in cinemas, with the rest first released as direct-to-DVD movies. The first episode of the second series, Hämnden, was released in Swedish cinemas in January 2009; the rest of the series was made for television. The BBC aired all 26 episodes of the Swedish television versions on BBC Four. A third and final season, containing six 90 minute episodes, will air in 2013 with Charlotta Jonsson as Linda Wallander. The first episode, adapted from the novel The Troubled Man, was released in cinemas in January 2013.
Wallander

Timewatch is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29 September 1982 and is produced by the BBC, the Timewatch brandname is used as a banner title in the UK, but many of the individual documentaries can be found on US cable channels without the branding.
Timewatch

An anthology series produced by Thames Television, comprised of short mystery, suspense or crime adaptations featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

Detective Superintendent Tony Clark is an ambitious member of the Complaints Investigation Bureau, an internal organisation that investigates claims of corruption inside the police in England and Wales. Along the way Clark overcomes strong influence from his superiors and problems in his private life, most notably the break-up of his marriage following an affair with WPC Jenny Dean.
Between the Lines

Owner Basil Fawlty, his wife Sybil, a chambermaid Polly, and Spanish waiter Manuel attempt to run their hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding guests.
Fawlty Towers

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

Poldark is a television drama based on Winston Graham's novels of the same title. It was first transmitted on BBC Two across two seasons between 1975 and 1977. The adaptation covered all seven novels (of the eventual twelve) published up to the time. In late 18th-century Cornwall, Ross Poldark loses his fiancée, well-bred beauty Elizabeth, to his cousin Francis. He ends up marrying his servant, Demelza Carne, but his passion for Elizabeth simmers on for years. Meanwhile, he strives to make his derelict copper mines a success. Life is hard, smuggling is rife, and Ross finds himself taking the side of the underclass against the ruthless behaviour of his enemies, the greedy Warleggan clan.
Poldark

The Main Chance was a British television series which first aired on ITV between 1969,1970,1972 and 1975. A drama, it depicts the sudden transformation in the life of solicitor David Main who relocates from London to Leeds.
The Main Chance

Cluedo was a UK television game show based on the board game of the same name. Each week, a reenactment of the murder at the stately home Arlington Grange of a visiting guest was played and, through a combination of interrogating the suspects and deduction, celebrity guests had to discover who committed the murder, which of six weapons and in which room it was committed, whilst viewers were invited to play along at home.
Cluedo

New Scotland Yard is a police drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV from 1972 and 1974. It features the activities of two officers from the Criminal Investigations Department in the Metropolitan Police force headquarters at New Scotland Yard, as they dealt with the assorted villains of the day.
New Scotland Yard

This historical mini-series documents the reign of Elizabeth I with each episode focusing on one dramatic period in the lengthy reign of the Virgin Queen, including her ascension to the throne, her various marital intrigues, her problems with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, and the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada.
Elizabeth R

A horror anthology series, with each episode featuring a different eerie tale.
The Frighteners

In a near-future 1980s, England is under autocratic rule by a government that uses a paramilitary force known as The Guardians to maintain control, while a fragmented resistance group tries to provoke the state into revealing its true brutality.
The Guardians

Anthology series in which characters find themselves in weird and scary situations. Not evoked by the supernatural but by other people.
Shadows of Fear

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.
Armchair Theatre

A story of two sisters attempting to find happiness in the tightly structured society of 18th century England. Elinor, disciplined, restrained and very conscious of the manners of the day, represents sense. Outspoken, impetuous, emotional Marianne represents sensibility.