Daniel Mays

In The Thursday Murder Club (2025), Daniel Mays’s DCI Chris Hudson is being bypassed while the retirees put PC Donna De Freitas to work. It is familiar casting for an actor who has repeatedly made troubled men in authority believable. Here, though, the case gives him little to work against. We stopped caring who had done it because nobody seemed in danger, and the film’s excellent company could not supply the missing concern.

The care in his work owes much to Mike Leigh. All or Nothing (2002), his first major film role, led to a second collaboration on Vera Drake (2004). Leigh’s research-heavy improvisation suits an actor whose strength is making working-class characters feel particular and believable. The troubled authority of Sergeant Danny Waldron in the third series of Line of Duty (2016) gave that care a more forceful outlet. By Des (2020), he was back investigating as DCI Peter Jay, a casting habit that risks making the next appearance too easy to predict.

The comic assignment in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) is a useful change. Mays voices Fetcher, one of the rats supplying the kit for the break-in, alongside Romesh Ranganathan’s Nick. Editor Stephen Perkins cuts between the teams inside and outside, while composer Harry Gregson-Williams supplies muted brass and a ticking rhythm. The pleasure comes from watching the team solve practical problems, with Mays among the voices helping it along. The sequel is too often merely pleasant, but the break-in has a purpose and a pace the murder club could use.

A Thousand Blows (2025), in which he plays William ‘Punch’ Lewis, is our strongest recommendation among these recent ensemble pieces. Erin Doherty, Malachi Kirby and Stephen Graham provide its chief pleasures, though the crowded plotting sometimes keeps the actors waiting. For a closer look at Mays making authority uncomfortable, start with the third series of Line of Duty.