Peter Bowles, British actor in 'To the Manor Born,' dies at 85

[peppertree]

Peter Bowles, a dapper British character actor who was best known for his role as an arriviste in the popular British television sitcom “To the Manor Born,” died on Thursday. He was 85.

In a six-decade career, Mr. Bowles, who was the son of servants and grew up without indoor plumbing, appeared in a merry-go-round of productions in television, film and onstage, alternating between comedy and drama, hapless heroes and villains.

Whatever character he played, he often projected the air of what his agent called “the archetypal English gent.”

Mr. Bowles’s well-known television credits included roles in “Rumpole of the Bailey,” “The Bounder,” “Only When I Laugh” and the recent series “Victoria.”

He wrote and starred in “Lytton’s Diary,” about the life of a newspaper gossip columnist. And he achieved success in “The Irish R.M.,” in which he played a British Army officer sent to Ireland as a resident magistrate.

The New York Times called the 1985 show “devilishly hilarious.”

At: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/arts/television/peter-bowles-dead.html

Prolific British stage and film actor Peter Bowles, 1936-2022.