Patrick Robinson makes composure look like hard work, and his restraint can be deeply moving. Sitting in Limbo gives the familiar television authority figure room to show fear and anger together, without asking us to admire him for either.
Fi1m perspective
In Sitting in Limbo (2020), Patrick Robinson makes staying composed look exhausting. Anthony has to deal with bureaucracy while trying to contain both fear and anger. We found his effort to stay reasonable distressing, because Robinson lets us register what he must suppress before he can carry on. The weariness is especially persuasive: keeping calm costs him, and Robinson does not let us forget it.
Before that leading role, television had repeatedly cast Robinson as someone expected to know what to do. He began playing nurse Martin ‘Ash’ Ashford in Casualty in 1990, returning as a consultant in 2013–14. DC Jacob Banks in The Bill, a role he took in 2008, continued the pattern of professional authority. These parts make useful context for Anthony, who must keep dealing with official decisions he cannot control.
Director Stella Corradi and writer Stephen S. Thompson trust Robinson to make Anthony’s anger understood without explaining it away. Rina Yang’s cinematography and Stephen Campbell’s production design keep attention on the actors, though the film can look too discreet for the feelings Robinson brings to it. Editors Kristina Hetherington and Lee Mckarkiel keep the account clear even when Anthony’s situation is bewildering. Neil Davidge’s music leaves less of an impression than Robinson’s performance, which is the right emphasis here.
The film gives its supporting characters too little space, and its concentration on Anthony can feel limiting. There is also a risk in making so much of a man’s dignity that his treatment seems wrong chiefly because he has behaved well. Robinson’s anger resists that simplification. It gives Anthony feelings that are inconvenient, and keeps the performance from settling into admirable suffering.
His later work includes Father Benedict in The Last Kingdom (2022), another part in a career regularly drawn towards professional or spiritual authority. That casting makes sense, but we would welcome more leading roles willing to put his composure under pressure. Start with Sitting in Limbo for an actor who makes staying reasonable look exhausting.
Biography
Patrick Robinson is a British actor born on 6 November 1963 in London. He trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and began his career in theatre, including two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Robinson is best known for playing Martin "Ash" Ashford in the BBC medical drama Casualty, appearing from 1990 to 1996 and returning in later years as a consultant. He has also appeared in The Bill as DC Jacob Banks, the 2003 film Belly of the Beast, and series including The Last Kingdom, Death in Paradise, Shetland, Vera and The Outlaws. In 2020 he played Anthony Bryan in the BBC factual drama Sitting in Limbo.
He is the cousin of footballer and broadcaster Ian Wright.
