Robert Glenister plays the men the system runs on: the con-artist, the minister, the policeman who was there in 1984. In Sherwood he shows what the job costs the man doing it, and it is the work of his we would send you to.
Fi1m perspective
DI Kevin Salisbury walks back into a Nottinghamshire village that remembers him. He was a Metropolitan officer bussed into the coalfields in 1984, and in Sherwood (2022) Robert Glenister plays him as a man who knows exactly why nobody will shake his hand, and does not argue the point. That is the Glenister part in one figure: a servant of the system, competent and tired, standing in a room where his job has made him unwelcome.
He has been playing men like that for a long time, though not always this soberly. He began in the early 1980s in the BBC sitcom Sink or Swim and in supporting television parts. From 2004 to 2012 he was Ash Morgan in Hustle, one of the con-artist team, in every episode, a man whose trade was disguise and who could be anyone the job required. From 2006 to 2010 he was Nicholas Blake in Spooks, the Home Secretary in a drama about spies. On stage there was Glengarry Glen Ross, a demanding ensemble of salesmen. Films have been occasional: Albert White in Live by Night (2016), Ned Chambers in The Aeronauts (2019). The constant is authority, worn from the inside.
What he does well, on the evidence of Sherwood, is show the cost. David Morrissey's St Clair is the local boy who got out and came back; Glenister's Salisbury is the outsider who should never have been there the first time, and the friction between them is the best of the police strand. We minded for Salisbury more than we expected to, given what he stood for, because Glenister lets us see that the man agrees with the people who will not look at him. He carries the guilt as a fact, not a plea.
The caveat is the one we gave the series. The police strand is thinner than the domestic one; it moves by discovery and confrontation, the way television investigations move, while the street around it moves the way life does. Glenister is good in it, but he is good inside a mechanism, and it is Lesley Manville's story. Much of his career has been in long-running ensembles rather than at the front of them, and he has said himself that the parts thin out for actors past 45. "Many men of a certain age feel let down by the system," he said, speaking of Sherwood and The Night Caller (2024), and it is hard not to hear Salisbury in it.
If the parts are thinning, someone should write him another one this good. Until then, Sherwood is where to start.
Biography
Robert Glenister is an English actor. Born on 11 March 1960 in Watford, Hertfordshire, he is the son of television director John Glenister and the brother of actor Philip Glenister. He began his career in theatre before making his television debut in the BBC sitcom Sink or Swim (1980–1982).
Glenister is best known for his role as con-man Ash Morgan in the BBC series Hustle (2004–2012), appearing in every episode, and as Nicholas Blake in Spooks (2006–2010). He has appeared in Doctor Who on two occasions, as Salateen in 1984 and Thomas Edison in 2020. His film credits include Live by Night (2016), The Aeronauts (2019) and Journey's End (2017). In 2022 he played DI Kevin Salisbury in the BBC series Sherwood.
