The Responder review: Final performance that shows Brendan Hill's powerful ... trends now
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What a way to take his final curtain. Bernard Hill, an actor of unmatched power, and celebrated by two generations for vastly different roles, died yesterday — hours before his final performance aired.
As fraught copper Chris Carson answered a call to a burgled house in The Responder, those who (like me) have been fans of Hill since the 1980s took one look at the geezer in the battered armchair with the walking frame and chorused: 'Gissa job!'
He might have been better known to the under-50s as the heroic King Theoden in The Lord Of The Rings. But at the start of the Thatcher years, Hill was Britain's best-known actor — the face of the recession — playing Yosser Hughes, a Scouse tarmac-layer who loses his job, in Boys From The Blackstuff.
Yosser was unemployable but desperate to work. His catchphrases — 'Gissa job!' and 'I can do that!' — became national slogans.
Bernard Hill, an actor of unmatched power, and celebrated by two generations for vastly different roles, died yesterday — hours before his final performance aired
As fraught copper Chris Carson (right) answered a call to a burgled house in The Responder, those who (like me) have been fans of Hill since the 1980s took one look at the geezer in the battered armchair with the walking frame and chorused: 'Gissa job!'
Hill, who was 79, worked little on telly in recent years, picking his jobs with clinical care.
