Barbara Flynn makes restraint count in company that might easily drown it out. We value her most in television ensembles, where a forceful lead can absorb all the attention and she gives us reason to look elsewhere.
Fi1m perspective
In Cracker (1993), Barbara Flynn’s Judith Fitzgerald does not try to match Robbie Coltrane’s force as Fitz. We were relieved by her restraint: here was someone we could attend to without having to withstand another performance pitched at his level. Coltrane gives the drama its difficult, compelling centre, but Flynn helps keep our interest from settling permanently on him. We rate her for making a supporting character matter without treating the other actors as competition.
She began as a lead, playing Freda Ashton in A Family at War (1970), before gaining wider notice as the milk woman in Open All Hours (1976). Jill Swinburne in Alan Plater’s The Beiderbecke Trilogy (1985) was another central role. She is frequently cast as no-nonsense women, across comedy and drama. That description tells us too little about how she works with the actors around her.
A Very Peculiar Practice (1986), Andrew Davies’s campus medical comedy, gives us the better explanation. Flynn’s Dr Rose Marie is part of an ensemble centred on Peter Davison’s Dr Stephen Daker. Graham Crowden’s Dr Jock McCannon and David Troughton’s Dr Bob Buzzard provide distinctly different comic company, and the pleasure is in watching them share a professional setting. Flynn belongs in that company without seeming to exist simply to supply Davison with difficulties. The series is sharp and strange, though its appetite for eccentricity sometimes keeps us from caring as much as we would like.
Her later ensemble work includes Mrs Jamieson in Cranford (2007). Repeated casting as the no-nonsense woman can narrow what an actor is asked to do; we would not want that label to become the limit of Flynn’s parts. Cracker sometimes presses too hard in its writing, but the quieter performance alongside Coltrane shows how much she can do within that familiar casting. Start with A Very Peculiar Practice for the company; choose Cracker when an evening of discomfort appeals.
Biography
Barbara Flynn (born Barbara Joy McMurray) is an English actress. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before beginning her career in repertory theatre.
She first came to prominence playing Freda Ashton in the ITV drama series A Family at War (1970–1972). Subsequent roles include the milk woman in Open All Hours (1976–1985), Jill Swinburne in The Beiderbecke Trilogy (1985–1988), Dr Rose Marie in A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–1988) and Judith Fitzgerald in the ITV drama Cracker (1993–1995). She later appeared as Mrs Jamieson in Cranford (2007–2009).
Flynn has worked extensively in British television. In her own words, she tends to play "feisty, strong women".
