Geoff Bell

Geoff Bell’s hard men often keep their voices down and hold the other person’s gaze. Someone is being watched closely, and it does not feel friendly. We rate that restraint: he can make a confrontation uncomfortable without announcing how dangerous it might become. The risk is that another gangster part merely repeats what we already know he can do.

Supporting parts in Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001) and Mean Machine (2001) preceded the mid-2000s hard-man roles. In The Business (2005), he was Sammy; in Green Street Hooligans (2005), football-firm leader Tommy Hatcher. The detail of Sammy drew on his observations of south London criminals, giving the threat a basis in behaviour he had actually seen. Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla (2008) put his Fred the Head into an ensemble, before their television work together on MobLand (2025).

As Richie Stevenson in MobLand, Bell has one of his more prominent gangster roles, but the series is only a qualified recommendation for crime-drama regulars. Its broad performances can entertain, while the slow opening asks the cast to keep us occupied between developments. Cinematographers David Katznelson, Si Bell, Baz Irvine and Stephan Pehrsson sometimes leave faces too dark to study, an especially frustrating choice around an actor who works through eye contact. The editing team, which includes James Barham and Danny Salas, could have cut some of that waiting.

Chris Columbus’s The Thursday Murder Club (2025) gives him Tony Curran, the business partner of David Tennant’s Ian. We stopped caring who had done it because the club’s succession of interviews, with tea between, never made anyone seem in danger. The leading cast is pleasant company, but the screenplay by Suzanne Heathcote and Katy Brand gives that company too little urgency. Bell’s reputation for menace cannot do the writers’ work for them. For Bell, start with The Business; approach MobLand with patience for its familiar gangster plotting.