15 Unlikely British TV Shows To Spawn Hollywood Stars

15. This Life/Teachers €“ Andrew Lincoln

Andrew Lincoln, better known as the zombie killing Rick Grimes in HBO's The Walking Dead is effectively a household name internationally amongst fans of the show and pretty much in general these days. He's a British actor, having been born in London and has a string of British credits to his name before he made his big break in TWD. He first came to my attention in the BBC2 series This Life. You couldn't really get a more different story than The Walking Dead €“ This Life was a drama story about several law graduates who shared a house and about how their lives intertwined. Other actors you might know who also appeared in the show included Jack Davenport €“ better known as James Norrington in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and Ramon Tikaram who had a blink-and-miss-it appearance in the last season of Game of Thrones. Because I liked Lincoln so much in This Life, I watched Teachers on Channel Four when that started to air. Again, very unlike his American breakthrough series, this one was a drama which (as per the name) followed the teachers at a school. Lincoln played the main character in the first season, which became a more ensemble piece over time €“ and Lincoln left the main cast following the second year. But it gave him a position of a lead in a character-driven drama for the first time. But This Life and Teachers both had one thing in common €“ despite them being rather well written (in my opinion), which were they were both intrinsically British. One was about life split between South London and the city, while another is simply one of several in a long line of teacher based series €“ for example, Waterloo Road is a similar concept currently on BBC One. So you wouldn't normally except an actor from fairly typical concepts to manage to make it big internationally. But the difference is the strength of Lincoln's performances and he manages to repeat on his new show.