Dennis Waterman has the distinction of being well known to the British television public, somewhat known in Australia, and almost completely unknown to the North American audience. As a screen character, Waterman is heavily dependent on a strong partner: in comedy, especially, he usually acts as a straight figure to the comic excesses of his counterparts. When he does play solo, as in the thriller Circle of Deceit (Independent Television, 1993, 1995-97), he shows himself to lack color and charisma.

     Born in London in 1947, Waterman became a child actor, appearing in the feature film Night Train for Inverness (1960) and in a West End production of the musical The Music Man. In 1961 he landed the title role in the children's television series William, produced by the BBC. This series of 13 half-hour episodes was based on the very popular children's books by Richmal Crompton, adapted by writer C.E. Webber.

     Waterman spent the following year in Hollywood working on the CBS situation comedy Fair Exchange. He was one of four British actors imported for the series, which concerned two families, one from New York and the other from London, who arranged to swap teenage daughters. Waterman played a younger boy in the London family who suddenly had to contend with a teenage American "sister." The series was unusual only because it extended the situation comedy format to hour-long episodes. However, it provoked only lukewarm interest and was dropped after three months. It was briefly revived in half-hour episodes but fared no better.

     Waterman's voice broke; his appearance changed; and the child actor faded. In 1976 he landed the role of Detective Sergeant George Carter in the British police crime series The Sweeney, produced by Thames Tele­ vision's Euston Films. The Sweeney was premised on a fictional version of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, a police car unit concerned with major crimes such as armed robberies. (The series title came from Cockney rhyming slang: Sweeney Todd / The Flying Squad.) The Sweeney was well made, characterized by excellent action scenes, good stories, and fine acting from leads John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan, Waterman as his assistant, and Garfield Morgan as their boss, Detective Chief Inspector Hoskins.

     The Sweeney offered Waterman not only considerable fame but also a second career. As a child actor, his accent had been middle-class and he had projected sensitivity and vulnerability. In The Sweeney he conveyed energy, toughness, and a gritty Cockney sense of how the world really worked. Although his character played second fiddle to Jack Regan, Waterman still managed to infuse Carter with considerable color and guts.

     Waterman's career was boosted even further by his next series, the enormously popular Minder. This program, which introduced the character of Arthur Daley, a shady London car dealer, and Terry McCann, his ex­ convict bodyguard and partner, has been described as a perfect blend of dark humor and colorful characterization. Minder was built around the inspired casting of George Cole as Arthur and Waterman as Terry. Cole was a veteran of British cinema, who had created a memorable forerunner to Arthur Daley in the figure of the Cockney Flash Harry, in three very funny St. Trinian films in the I 950s and 1960s. Drawing partly from the figure of Carter in The Sweeney, Waterman's Terry was tough and Cockney streetwise. What was new was that Waterman was playing comic straight man as the often hapless Terry, who was usually no match for Arthur. Although Minder was named after the figure of Terry, it was Arthur who was the mainstay of the series, a fact underlined by its revival in 1991, some six years after Waterman's departure, with Gary Webster filling the minder role.

     In 1986 Waterman's on-screen woman troubles began with BBC 2's four-hour miniseries The Life and Loves of a She Devil. A gruesome black comedy that combined outrageous fantasy with close-to-the-bone social commentary, She Devil was an enormous popular success. The series concerned an unfaithful husband (Waterman) whose' ex-wife, the figure of the title, wreaks a truly memorable set of punishments on her hapless m.tte. In portraying Waterman as a womanizer who is finally unable to control the feminine forces that he has unleashed, She Devil added an interesting new dimension to the actor's screen persona.

     In 1989 Waterman returned to comedy-drama with the series Stay Lucky for Yorkshire Television. The ti­tle, which referred to nothing in particular, was somewhat indicative of the series' problems as a whole. Like The Sweeney and Minder. Stay Lucky concerned a partnership, although in this instance one that was ro­mantic as well as professional. Set aboard a houseboat, the series concerned a set of predictable oppositions between male and female leads, with Waterman as Thomas and Kay Francis as Sally. As a Cockney, he was streetwise and realistic; as a northerner, she was glamorous, sophisticated, and headstrong.

     Stay  Lucky  attempted  to  mix  the  comedy  of the sexes with the darker world of London crime and poverty,  but the mixture did  not quite gel.  However, the series was at its strongest  when it gravitated to the former theme, with Waterman usually generating solid comic exasperation, not at the outrageous schemes of an Arthur Daley, but at the outlandish stratagems of a willful, attractive woman.

     Waterman was also featured in the BBC 1 situation comedy serial On the Up. Eighteen half-hour episodes were  made between  1990 and 1992, and the comedy­ drama blend was much more successful than in Stay Lucky. The series concerned a Cockney self-made millionaire, Tony (Waterman), who was less successful running both his marriage (to a beautiful, headstrong, upper-class woman) and a household of servants and friends. Waterman's appearances on television in the 1990s were otherwise somewhat limited: five times in the mid- I 990s, he played John Neil, the lead in the occasional thriller series Circle of Deceit, and in 2001 he appeared on the small screen in a BBC  2 broadcast of My Fair Lady staged at the Royal National Theatre.