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After The Sandbaggers: Where to See Ray Lonnen

ByDavid

Ray Lonnen
Ray Lonnen

Ray Lonnen's crime career is bookended by intelligence work. In The Sandbaggers, he played Willie Caine, Head of Operations and Burnside's most reliable instrument across three series.

Harry's Game supplied another intelligence lead, while Yellowthread Street gave him his own series at the decade's end. His guest record shows the work between regular jobs.

Task Force cast him as a beaten PC at the centre of a procedural failure. The Gentle Touch gave him a steady love interest across two episodes.

Other appearances include an antiques con in Lovejoy and a Midsomer family firm. He plays decent men under institutional pressure without ornament.

Softly Softly: Task Force · S02E10

Who Wants Pride...?

First broadcast 1970-11-18 · Ray Lonnen as Jim O'Donnell

Dynamite missing from a quarry, in the hands of an explosives expert blowing open armoured cars — and Barlow cannot wait to catch them at it, he has to work out where the next job will be before the gang get there. Lonnen is Jim O'Donnell in the quieter kind of episode, where every guess Barlow makes has a price.

Softly Softly: Task Force · S05E02

Signed Off

First broadcast 1973-09-19 · Ray Lonnen as PC Felly

The performance that carries the episode: PC Felly finds a robbery in progress, is badly beaten, and nobody realises for hours — the story built on that delay, hour by hour, as Felly lies hurt while the police machine goes about its ordinary business. Lonnen is the man at the centre of a procedural failure the show is honest enough to look at rather than tidy away.

The Gentle Touch · S02E07

Loyalties

First broadcast 1980-10-17 · Ray Lonnen as Alan Lawson

A masked man corners Mrs Beresford with a knife, makes his point, and runs off leaving her unharmed — and that care is the clue, a threat that lands without following through being a message aimed at her husband, a wealthy businessman with a reputation to protect. Lonnen is Alan Lawson as Maggie is handed the question of who profits from fear.

The Gentle Touch · S02E08

Maggie's Luck

First broadcast 1980-10-24 · Ray Lonnen as Alan Lawson

Maggie has earned a weekend off with Alan Lawson, the sort of escape she doesn't get often — and between a teenage son who wants the house to himself and a job that never lets go, the title's irony plays out straight. Lonnen's Lawson is the steady, decent presence Maggie's life rarely allows her, in an episode that enjoys the joke and plays it without winking.

Lovejoy · S01E07

The Real Thing

First broadcast 1986-02-21 · Ray Lonnen as Palmer

Jane has gone into partnership with an entrepreneur converting a warehouse into an Art Nouveau antiques centre, and Lovejoy is convinced the venture is built on sand. Lonnen is Palmer in an hour with two frauds running at once — a Norwich antiques market whose boss is a con-man, and a fake-painting crook — plus one workplace romance gone sour.

Midsomer Murders · S10E03

King's Crystal

First broadcast 2007-01-26 · Ray Lonnen as Peter Baxter

The King family glass firm has shattered and its accountant is found stabbed among the pieces — a business matter that turns out to be a blood matter. Lonnen is Peter Baxter in a classic double-track investigation, Barnaby unravelling commercial and family rivalries while Jones takes the road into the secret Masonic rites the community would rather pretend do not exist.