The Price · S01E01
Episode 1
First broadcast 1985-01-10 · Adrian Dunbar as Willy
Geoffrey Carr's marriage is on the rocks because Frances has worked out she married him for his money, and his answer — buying back the Irish mansion she grew up in — is a grand gesture both generous and slightly mad. Dunbar is Willy, on the kidnapper side of the story the serial is building toward, opposite Harriet Walter's Frances and Derek Thompson's Frank Crossan. One of his earliest screen jobs, six years before Hear My Song.
The Price · S01E03
Episode 3
First broadcast 1985-01-24 · Adrian Dunbar as Willy
The ransom is a precise three million pounds, and the episode runs two struggles in parallel, neither going well: Geoffrey scrambling between banks and contacts, learning that raising a fortune quickly is a different skill from having one, and the officers coaxing a boy eyewitness toward a testimony that may or may not come. Dunbar's Willy sits on the wrong side of the money as suspicion spreads through every interaction and the sum sits in the room like a third character.
The Price · S01E04
Episode 4
First broadcast 1985-01-31 · Adrian Dunbar as Willy
Inside the kidnappers' group, things come apart: Kate's paranoia rises and the forced cooperation starts eating through its seams. The episode's sharpest observation is that the people holding Frances are not a disciplined unit but frightened people with guns, which is worse. Dunbar's Willy is among them as the plan stops being a plan and every interaction loads up with suspicion or with information better left alone.
Inspector Morse · S06E01
Dead on Time
First broadcast 1992-02-26 · Adrian Dunbar as John Marriat
The sixth series opens by dragging Morse back into a relationship he had put behind him: Henry Fallon, an Oxford Fellow slowly dying of a degenerative disease, is found shot, and the widow is Morse's former fiancée. Dunbar is John Marriat, the dead man's own doctor, who cuts short a holiday to insist Fallon could never have held the gun — a courtesy that widens the circle of suspects rather than closing it.
Cracker · S01E02
The Mad Woman in the Attic (2)
First broadcast 1993-10-04 · Adrian Dunbar as Kelly
The second half of the story that opened the series: another murdered woman, Fitz ordered off the case — the one thing guaranteed to make him want in — and Kelly, the amnesiac who cannot remember the murder he is supposed to have committed, increasingly hard to believe in as a killer. Dunbar plays him with the vacant terror the premise needs; when a man claiming to be Kelly's priest produces a confession, Fitz believes it less, not more, and takes Kelly into his own custody.
A Touch of Frost · S15E01
If Dogs Run Free (1)
First broadcast 2010-04-04 · Adrian Dunbar as Gerry Berland
The final two-parter opens with Frost helping an RSPCA inspector dismantle a dog-fighting ring, and with a raid that is a success which fails: the ring's organiser arrives after the police have gone, tipped off by a delay. Dunbar is Gerry Berland, the wealthy businessman with his fingers in drug money and laundering, untouchable and knowing it — and over two hours he becomes the series' most personal villain.
A Touch of Frost · S15E02
If Dogs Run Free (2)
First broadcast 2010-04-05 · Adrian Dunbar as Gerry Berland
The empire collapses piece by piece: the overdose of his own thug, a stolen car full of cocaine, a solicitor turned informant, the raid on the farm where the drugs, the money and the dogs are kept. His son Sean, drowning in guilt over the boy he stabbed, hangs himself; his long-abused wife leaves; and Berland surrenders to Frost, understanding at last what the dead boy's parents must have felt. Dunbar plays the unmaking of an untouchable man with the same stillness that made Hastings credible — authority meeting consequences.
Scott & Bailey · S02E03
Pipe Dreams
First broadcast 2012-03-26 · Adrian Dunbar as DSU Rick Wallis
Rachel travels to Bristol with Gill on a rape and murder carrying echoes of a case Rachel worked thirteen years ago, while back home the charges against Nick are being dropped and there is no quiet corner left for anyone. Dunbar is DSU Rick Wallis in the squad around Suranne Jones and Amelia Bullmore, in an hour Sally Wainwright wrote that the episode's own verdict rates the best of the series so far.