
David Neilson
Acting
Biography
David Neilson is an English actor best known for portraying cafe owner Roy Cropper in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street from 1995 onwards. In a break from the show in 2016, Neilson starred in a stage production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at Home in Manchester. Prior to taking up the role of Roy Cropper, Neilson appeared in several TV shows including Boys from The Blackstuff, Resnick, Secret Army, Once Upon a Time in the North, Blue Heaven, Bergerac, Casualty and EastEnders, and in the Mike Leigh films Life is Sweet and Secrets and Lies.
Known For

The residents of Coronation Street are ordinary, working-class people, and the show follows them through regular social and family interactions at home, in the workplace, and in their local pub, the Rovers Return Inn. Britain's longest-running soap.
Coronation Street

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

Jim Bergerac is a detective sergeant in The Foreigners Office who likes to do things his own way. While dealing with his own personal demons Bergerac has a knack of finding trouble, and sometimes causing it.
Bergerac

World War II drama about covert organisation Lifeline helping allied airmen escape after being shot down in occupied Europe, working with the Resistance and hiding from the Gestapo.
Secret Army

Strangers is a 1978–82 ITV police procedural created and principally written by Murray Smith, based on characters created by Kenneth Royce in his novel series and subsequent 1977–78 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

Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.
Boys from the Blackstuff

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
Secrets & Lies
Frank Sandford has big hopes for his pop duo, Blue Heaven, but his home life is less than satisfactory. His father, Jim, is a local hard man whose favourite son is in prison, while his mother can only be described as the perfect match. Despite the lack of parental support he is determined that he should succeed as a pop star and that his favourite football team, West Bromwich Albion, will win the cup!
Blue Heaven
Whimsical tales of the Tollit family, who live in the picturesque Northern town of Sutton Moor. The husband, Len, is a soft-hearted, well-meaning chap who holds strong views on certain subjects and is fiercely proud of his working-class roots. But his determination to prove himself the equal of those who may consider themselves his betters often leads to confrontation and infuriates his wife, Pat. They have two children, the pre-teen Sean and the sexually-maturing Siobhan, who, at 15, is at that 'awkward age'. Living in the granny flat in their yard is Mr Bebbington, who had been Len's late mother's boyfriend but has remained with them for six months since her death. Pat constantly cajoles Len into getting Bebbington out but he is quite content to let him stay and treats him as one of the family. Len's brother, Morris, who lives nearby, is a spiritual man who comes across as half-hippy and half-witted.
Once Upon A Time In The North

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they interact and play out family, conflict and love.
Life Is Sweet

One man's view of the British Army in Germany - the social life, discipline, drink, women and, occasionally, the defence of the West.
Soldiers Talking, Cleanly

An adaptation for television by Trevor Griffiths of DH Lawrence's classic novel
Sons and Lovers

What could be better? A footballer's wedding, a week in the sun, a luxury villa in historic Transylvania. It’s the trip of a lifetime for Coronation Street's favourite café owners Roy and Hayley Cropper, until the brash Glen and Verity appear... Opposites don't attract in this chaotic comic caper as the unlikely foursome embark on an adventure neither couple will ever forget. And when Weatherfield hell-raiser Becky McDonald jets in from her honeymoon, the stage is set for mountain mayhem deep in the heart of Dracula Country.
Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday
Shirley Peters is dead. Murdered. Her body is found twelve hours later in her own home. Just one of the many sordid domestic crimes hitting the city. Tony Macliesh, her rejected boyfriend, is the obvious prime suspect and he’s just been picked off the Aberdeen train and put straight into custody. But then another woman is sexually abused and throttled to death. And suddenly there appears to be one too many connections between these seemingly unrelated crimes. Detective Inspector Resnick is sure that the two murders are the work of one sadistic killer – two lonely hearts broken by one maniac. And it’s up to Resnick to put the record straight – and put the bastard where he belongs
Resnick: Lonely Hearts
A kilo of cocaine. Hardly what two small-time crooks were expecting to find when they broke into TV director Harold Roy's shabby mansion. But nor was Harold's frustrated wife expecting to fall in love with one of the intruders. Now she's going to make a deal with him - for both her husband and the drugs. But the precious powder belongs to someone else. And he wants it back. So if he feels he's been double-crossed, there's no telling what might happen. Detective Inspector Resnick has a hunch that there's more to this story than meets the eye. And as his investigations lead him down the mean streets of the TV industry and an inner-city drugs ring, it's obvious that more than one person is dancing on thin ice.
Resnick: Rough Treatment

A white boy lives in a racially divided town. The only thing he cares about is playing his drums. A popular black band from school needs a drummer and he joins them, but being colour blind in this town makes life very difficult.
Knights & Emeralds

Lily travels to Scotland with her mother and reconnects with Logan, a childhood family friend. Unbeknownst to Lily and Logan, their meddling mothers have come up with a plan to set them up.
A Scottish Love Scheme

Single mother and immigrant Sonia Diaconescu works at a sheltered accommodation scheme. A resident of the scheme has made an official complaint against her, rousing the elderly community into a mob of angry and fearful citizens whose intolerance is palpable.