Sorcha Cusack is the woman in the parish office or on the ward who knows more than the script lets her say. For fifty years television has used her as ballast, and she has made the ballast interesting more often than the writing deserved.
Fi1m perspective
Watch her listen. In Father Brown (2013–2022) Mrs McCarthy stands to one side while the priest does the thinking, and Cusack gives her a face that has already formed an opinion and is deciding whether to share it. She usually shares it. Nine series of that, and the part never curdles into a joke: the parish secretary is practical, opinionated and loyal, in that order, and she supplies the local knowledge the plot needs without once looking like a device for supplying it.
The career started higher up the cast list. She was Jane Eyre for the BBC in 1973, the title role, and the stage work that ran alongside the television was Chekhov, Friel, Synge and Ibsen for the RSC, the National, the Abbey and the Gate. Then came Casualty (1994–1997) as Kate Wilson, the nurse who stood for the old caring face of the NHS. Cusack has said of her: "I wanted her to be a bit ratty, but they insisted she had to be ‘comforting’." That sentence explains most of what has followed. Producers see her and think comfort. She thinks ratty, and plays comfort with the rattiness kept just under the surface, which is why her nurses and housekeepers and mothers are worth watching when the people around them are not.
The two things we have reviewed show the limits of that bargain. In Mrs Brown's Boys (2011) her Hilary Nicholson is the snob, deflated once an episode with good grace, in a show that hands its supporting cast functions rather than parts. We felt for her a little each time it happened: an actor who had played Jane Eyre being set up to be knocked down by a stage act in a studio, and taking it with more poise than the scene had earned. In Onwards and Sideways (2026) she is Mary, in support of Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney, who carry the film; we did not single her out, and the film did not ask us to. A brief turn as the Traveller matriarch Mum O'Neil in Snatch (2000) suggests what she can do when a script wants her sharp rather than soft, but it is a few minutes.
So the honest position is that the best of Cusack is in places we have not yet been: nine series of a detective show, and a theatre career we can only name. What we have seen is an actor who does exactly what is asked and quietly indicates she could do more. If someone would write her the ratty part she asked for thirty years ago, we would like to see it.
Biography
Sorcha Cusack is an Irish television and stage actress. She was born on 9 April 1949 in Dublin.
She is the daughter of actors Cyril Cusack and Maureen Cusack, and the sister of actresses Sinéad Cusack and Niamh Cusack. Her television credits include the title role in Jane Eyre (1973), Casualty (1994–1997), Helen Connor in Coronation Street (2008) and Mrs McCarthy in Father Brown (2013–2026). Film roles include Mum O'Neil in Snatch (2000) and Mary in Onwards and Sideways (2026). She is married to actor Nigel Cooke and they have two children.
