Brendan Cowell makes troubled men understandable, and we value his willingness to work as part of an ensemble. The risk is repetition: there should be more for him to do than explain why another difficult man behaves badly.
Fi1m perspective
In Last Seen (2026), Brendan Cowell's Henry Reid belongs to a family whose relationships receive proper attention while the investigation goes on. Alongside Maxine Peake as Jenna Reid and Daniel Henshall as Donald Reid, he helps make that family worth following. We cared about them because Mrksa's writing lets the disappearance affect people beyond the person leading the search. This is good ensemble work in a series whose coincidences and predictable turns would otherwise make it harder to recommend.
That ability to make troubled men understandable runs through Cowell's work, alongside his involvement in writing. His breakthrough, Love My Way (2004), gave him Tom Jackson to play and episodes to write. He took the lead as Constable Graham McGahan in Noise (2007), and later starred as retired rugby league player Peter Lum in Plum (2024), adapting his own novel. These credits suggest an actor interested in how a character is built across a whole story, although writing experience alone cannot account for a persuasive performance.
The international work includes Harrag in Game of Thrones (2017) and Mick Scoresby in James Cameron's Avatar: The Way of Water (2022). Those parts have taken him beyond Australian drama, but the recurring invitation to make difficult men accessible carries a risk of repetition. Understanding why a man behaves badly can be worthwhile drama; it can also become a familiar assignment. We would welcome more parts that did not arrive with quite so much trouble already attached.
For now, Last Seen offers a good reason to value his work within a cast. Patrick Brammall's grieving father is central, but the supporting characters have enough life to hold our attention beyond the search itself. Cowell's contribution belongs to that wider success, and we would not mistake it for a solo achievement. There is a limit to what any cast can repair when a mystery relies on coincidence, and the performances cannot conceal every weakness here. Go to it for the family drama, and allow the investigation a little patience.
Biography
Brendan Cowell is an Australian actor, screenwriter and playwright. Born on 16 August 1976 in Cronulla, Sydney, he grew up in the beachside suburb and studied for a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Media at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.
He began acting in television as a teenager and gained recognition for his role as Tom Jackson in the series Love My Way (2004–2007), for which he also wrote episodes. His film credits include Noise (2007), Beneath Hill 60 (2010), Last Cab to Darwin (2015) and the role of Mick Scoresby in Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). He appeared as Harrag in season 7 of Game of Thrones (2017) and has worked extensively in theatre, including productions at the Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir and the Young Vic in London.
Cowell has also written plays, including Ruben Guthrie (which he later directed as a 2015 feature film), novels such as Plum (2021, adapted into a 2024 television series in which he starred), and other television work.
