Ian Burfield
Ian Burfield is an actor, born 1964.
If you have watched British television at any point in the last thirty years, you have seen Burfield show a warrant card. He has played police officers and detectives so often that the pattern is the first thing his own biography mentions: twelve episodes of The Bill, thirty nine episodes of EastEnders, and a recurring run there since September 2018 as Detective Inspector, later Detective Chief Inspector, Peter Arthurs.
The typecasting is earned rather than lazy. He has the flat, unimpressed London delivery that makes procedural dialogue sound like work instead of exposition, and he can hold a scene without ever appearing to want it. On the other side of his career he is a company member of the National Theatre, and two of his stage productions were broadcast to cinemas across the UK through National Theatre Live, which is the part of the resume that explains the discipline.
His film appearances tend to be brief and well chosen. He is the Tweed Coat Fingerman in V for Vendetta, Whip in The Krays, Thomas Schumer in The International, and Mick Brazil in The Selfish Giant, easily the best film on his list. Recent television has given him more to do: John Bailey-Brown in Hijack, Lance in Big Boys, Ymor in The Colour of Magic, and Sid Fillery in The Hack.
Movies (5)
TV (7)
Where to start with Ian Burfield
Watch The Selfish Giant first and forget the police work entirely. It is a hard, beautifully made British film about two boys and a scrap dealer, and it gives him the most fully written part he has had on screen.
Then take Hijack, where the tension is procedural and he is one of the moving pieces, and The Hack, which is recent and puts him inside a story about the press and the police at the same time.
V for Vendetta is the credit with the widest reach even though the role is small, The Krays is the early one, and The Colour of Magic is the outlier: fantasy comedy, and he is playing a crime boss in it rather than the man investigating one. Big Boys shows a warmth the procedurals never ask for.
British crime and police drama
The register he has worked in for thirty years, from long-running procedurals to the recent prestige thrillers. Hijack is the most substantial of them and The Hack is the newest.
The films worth finding
A short, unexpected list. The Selfish Giant is a genuinely great British film about two boys and a scrap dealer, V for Vendetta is the one everyone has seen without registering him, and The Krays is where it started.