Kiell Smith-Bynoe is the man in the house who cannot see what everyone else is laughing at, and he has made that thankless job funny for five series. Whether anyone will write him something bigger is the open question.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Mike Cooper in Ghosts (2019) when the dead are shouting at him. He hears nothing. Smith-Bynoe plays the pause before he decides Alison is being odd again, then the small decision to let it go, then the walk back to the boiler. It is a reaction, but it is not a reaction shot: the joke is in his shoulders and in the half-second where he weighs up whether asking will help. Most actors given the part of the person who cannot see the ghosts would fade into the wallpaper. He does not, quite.
The career so far is an ensemble career. He came up through improv, in the Joan Littlewood style at Theatre Royal Stratford East and then at East 15, and it shows in how he listens. Early parts in Whitechapel (2012), Enterprice and Man Like Mobeen led to Dean in Jamie Demetriou's Stath Lets Flats (2018–2021), alongside Natasia Demetriou, and then to Mike, which is the role most people know him for. Since Ghosts ended he has done Taskmaster, presented The Great British Sewing Bee, written and produced shorts of his own and toured improv. The Ghosts film followed in 2026.
What works is the partnership. With Charlotte Ritchie he has the easy, faintly exhausted rhythm of a couple who have been through it, and the sitcom leans on that more than it lets on: Alison carries the plot and Mike carries the marriage. What does not work is not his fault. For five series the writers gave him the bank statements and the boiler, and the hotel plan never moved. We said so in our review, and we said he was funny with what he had. Both things are true. Somewhere in the middle of the run we caught ourselves laughing at Mike listening hard to nothing at all and, at the same time, wishing someone would hand him a story of his own.
The honest reservation is that a straight man is only as good as the chaos he is set against, and he has not yet been asked to be the chaos himself. Nothing written about him is unkind; the one note that recurs is that the everyman parts hide whatever else he can do. Taskmaster and the improv stages suggest a quicker, stranger performer than the sitcoms have needed. Someone should write him the part where he is the one nobody else can see. Until they do, watch Ghosts for Ritchie, and stay for what Smith-Bynoe does when the camera cuts to him and nothing is supposed to happen.
Biography
Kiell Smith-Bynoe is an English actor, comedian and presenter. He trained in improvisation at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and East 15 Acting School.
He is known for playing Dean in the Channel 4 sitcom Stath Lets Flats (2018–2021) and Michael 'Mike' Cooper in the BBC sitcom Ghosts (2019–2023). Other television roles include appearances in Death in Paradise (2011), Friday Night Dinner (2011), Man Like Mobeen and Enterprice. He has also featured on panel shows including Taskmaster and Would I Lie to You? and presented The Great British Sewing Bee.
Smith-Bynoe is credited as an actor in the 2026 film Wicker.
