Enrico Colantoni

Watch Keith Mars at the end of a working day in Veronica Mars (2004). He and his daughter sit in a small flat eating out of cartons over case files. He is worried about her, she is lying to him for his own good, and both of them know it. Colantoni does almost nothing with his face. He lets the worry sit there and does not ask us to notice it, and those evenings got to us far more than we expected, because neither he nor Kristen Bell plays for sympathy. He underplays, she deflects, and it is the deflecting that hurts.

He came up through American sitcoms, seven years on Just Shoot Me (1997 to 2003), and he has said that "Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience." The part most people remember from that period is not a sitcom at all. In Galaxy Quest (1999) he is Mathesar, an alien who has mistaken a cancelled television series for history, and he plays him in a high, careful, sing-song voice with total sincerity. He never winks. It is the same trick as Keith Mars from the other direction: everyone else is doing the comedy, and he is simply believing.

After Veronica Mars, which ran from 2004 to 2007 and came back in 2014 and 2019, the sergeants arrived. Flashpoint (2008 to 2012) put him in charge of a police tactical unit as Sergeant Greg Parker, and he led it the way he fathers, with authority that is not sure of itself. Person of Interest (2011 to 2016) gave him Carl Elias, a crime lord, the one recurring part of the last twenty years that asked him to be frightening rather than reassuring, and he was. Rob Thomas, who created Veronica Mars, has cast him three times and is the collaborator who has got the most out of him.

The smaller work is smaller. In Full Frontal (2002) he is Arty, who has written a play called The Sound and the Führer in which Nicky Katt plays Hitler; it is a few scenes in a film we did not care for, and Soderbergh gave nobody in it much to do. The honest criticism of Colantoni is that casting directors decided he was a dad and a policeman around 2004 and he has mostly let them. He has described building a character as "my heart in a different costume," and the costumes have not varied much.

He has lately begun directing episodes as well as appearing in them. We would like someone to hand him another Elias, or another Mathesar, before the sergeants close in for good.