Hans Matheson has a face that belongs in a frock coat, and he has spent a career being handed one. He is at his best when the writing gives the brooding somewhere to go; too often, as in Jericho, it does not.
Fi1m perspective
Put Hans Matheson in a costume and something in the face settles. He has the long, watchful look that period casting has wanted since the mid-1990s, and it does a good deal of work before he opens his mouth: here is a man with something behind him, not yet said. In Jericho (2016) he plays Johnny Jackson, the navvy with a past, and for two episodes that look is the most interesting thing in the shanty town. Then Stephen Thompson's script asks him to keep looking, and gives him nothing to add.
The career has been in costume almost from the start. He originated Silver Johnny in Jez Butterworth's Mojo at the Royal Court and took the part into Butterworth's 1997 film; a year later he was Marius in Bille August's Les Misérables (1998). The leads that fixed his type followed: Yuri Zhivago in Granada's 2002 miniseries, the Earl of Essex in The Virgin Queen (2006). After that the parts darkened. Alec d'Urberville in Tess of the d'Urbervilles (2008) and Thomas Cranmer in The Tudors (2008) are men whose charm is up to something, and by his own account he went looking for what Alec believed about himself rather than playing the cad.
The studio work is smaller. Lord Coward in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009), parts in Clash of the Titans (2010) and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014): all costumed, all competent, all easy to lose among bigger names. He does not push in an ensemble, which is a virtue on set and a limit on a career.
Jericho was his chance to carry a series, and we wanted it to work. Clarke Peters and Lorraine Ashbourne had the good lines around him and Jessica Raine had the lead; Matheson was left to stand in the mud and look as if he knew something. We admired the look for two hours and then grew impatient with it, because a brood is a promise, and week after week the writing declined to pay up. The series was not renewed. He once told an interviewer that the hardest thing about acting is 'trying to make bad writing work', and Jericho is where you can watch him try.
What he needs is what he has had before: a novelist's character and a director who trusts a viewer to notice a man thinking. Give him Hardy or Pasternak and the stillness fills up. Give him a secret the writers are saving for episode six and it simply waits. He is still worth casting. Somebody should also take the trouble to write for him.
Biography
Hans Matheson is a Scottish actor and musician. He was born on 7 August 1975 in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London. His screen debut came in an episode of The Bill in 1995, followed by early film roles including Johnny Silver in Mojo (1997) and Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables (1998).
He has appeared in lead and supporting roles across film and television, including Yury Zhivago in the 2002 adaptation of Doctor Zhivago, Thomas Cranmer in The Tudors (2008), Lord Coward in Sherlock Holmes (2009), Ixas in Clash of the Titans (2010), Aeschylus in 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) and Johnny Jackson in the series Jericho (2016). Matheson also plays guitar, violin and harmonica; he released the album Sail the Sea in 2019.
