Nicholas Ball

Actor

April 11, 1946 (78 years)

† June 6, 2024

Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England

Biography

Nicholas Ball was an English actor best known for playing the title role of James Hazell in the television series Hazell. His film credits included roles in D-Day drama Overlord, Hobe Tooper's sci-fi horror Lifeforce and Mike Hodges' Croupier. In later years Ball played violent gangster Terry Bates in EastEnders between 2007 and 2009 and Garry Ryan in series five of Footballers' Wives and both series of its spin-off programme Footballers' Wives: Extra Time.

Filmography

6.6

Play for Today

John Arnott

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

7.2

Heartbeat

Charlie Fenton

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

6.8

Tales of the Unexpected

Ken Johnson

A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.

7.7

Hustle

Frank Rice

A motley group of London con artists pull of a series of daring and intricate stings.

5.3

BBC Play of the Month

James Vane

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

6.7

Bergerac

Hardaker

Jim Bergerac is a detective sergeant in The Foreigners Office who likes to do things his own way. While dealing with his own personal demons Bergerac has a knack of finding trouble, and sometimes causing it.

8.1

Red Dwarf

Simulant

The adventures of the last human alive and his friends, stranded three million years into deep space on the mining ship Red Dwarf.

7.9

The Young Ones

Dr. Jim Morrison

The misadventures of four lunatic students who live in a shared student house. There's Rick, the overblown political one addicted to Cliff Richard, Vyvyan the experimental scientific one/part-time anarchist, Neil the worried hippy, and Mike the ladies' man (at least he is in his mind).

7.0

ITV Playhouse

Philip

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

7.6

Jonathan Creek

Vincent Rees

Working from his home in a converted windmill, Jonathan Creek is a magician with a natural ability for solving puzzles. He soon puts this ability to the use of solving impossible crimes and mysterious murders.

8.3

Pie in the Sky

DCI Doggett

Pie in the Sky is a British offbeat police comedy drama programme starring Richard Griffiths and Maggie Steed, created by Andrew Payne and first broadcast in five series on BBC1 between 13 March 1994 and 17 August 1997 as well as being syndicated on other channels in other countries, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series departs slightly from other police dramas in that the protagonist, Henry Crabbe, while still being an on-duty policeman, is also the head chef of the title restaurant set in the fictional town of Middleton and county of Westershire.

5.3

Acapulco H.E.A.T.

Derek Perkins

Acapulco H.E.A.T. is a 1993 syndicated television series that followed the Hemisphere Emergency Action Team [H.E.A.T.], a group of top-secret agents based in Acapulco, Mexico and recruited by C-5, a secret government coalition, to fight terrorism and international crime. The team kept a low profile, by acting as models and photographers who represented a Beach Fashion enterprise.

5.3

Footballers' Wives

Garry Ryan

Footballers' Wives is a British television drama surrounding the fictional Premier League Association football club Earls Park F.C., its players, and their wives. It was broadcast on the ITV network from 8 January 2002 to 14 April 2006. The show began with a multi-lateral focus on a variety of different types of relationships explored; however, from the third series onward, the primary focus was on a complex love triangle between Tanya Turner, Amber Gates and Conrad Gates.

7.1

Hammer House of Horror

William

Each self-contained episode features a different kind of horror, varying from witches, werewolves, ghosts, devil worship and voodoo, but also includes non-supernatural themes such as cannibalism, confinement and serial killers.

6.2

Lifeforce

Roger Derebridge

A race of space vampires arrives in London and infects the populace, commencing an apocalyptic descent into chaos.

5.2

Hazell

James Hazell

Hazell is a British television drama based on the novel series by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams (collectively known as P.B. Yuill), and starring Nicholas Bell as James Hazell, a 'smart parody' of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. The program ran for 2 series, from January 1978 to July 1979.

5.4

A.D.

Römischer Offizier

A.D. is a 1985 television drama miniseries created and written by Vincenzo Labella and Anthony Burgess, based on Burgess' historical novel The Kingdom of the Wicked. The five-part serial is considered the third and final part of a trilogy, preceded by Moses the Lawgiver (1974) and Jesus of Nazareth (1977). Set just after Jesus' Crucifixion, the lives and adventures of His disciples are explored, and events in Rome during the reigns of Emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

6.8

Cluedo

Mr. Hall

Cluedo was a UK television game show based on the board game of the same name. Each week, a reenactment of the murder at the stately home Arlington Grange of a visiting guest was played and, through a combination of interrogating the suspects and deduction, celebrity guests had to discover who committed the murder, which of six weapons and in which room it was committed, whilst viewers were invited to play along at home.

4.8

Urban Gothic

Mr Dimes

Urban Gothic was a horror based series of short stories shown on Channel 5 running for two series between May 2000 and December 2001. Filmed on a low budget and broadcast in a later time-slot, it nonetheless acquired a following. It has also since been repeated on the Horror Channel. Set around London there is an underlying story thread that only becomes clear in the last episodes of each series. Each episode was different in style from the others, running the gamut of documentary-style independent film to spoof, to slick dramas similar in style to The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone.

6.4

The Commander

John Dawson

Clare Blake, a high-ranking, ambitious officer in the Metropolitan Police's Serious Crimes Unit, leads complex murder investigations that often blur the line between her professional and personal lives.