By the mid-90s, every creative industry in this country was being touched, it seemed, with a bit of the magic of Cool Britannia. If music had Blur and Oasis, art had Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin, and cinema had Trainspotting, it was BBC Two’s This Life that was the small screen’s contribution to the national, flag-waving zeitgeist.
There were few more talked-about, or timely, TV shows of the era than Amy Jenkins’ short-lived drama — it ran from 1996 to 1997 — about a pair of trainee lawyers in London. And of course it made real stars of its twenty-something cast, most of whom were unknown at the time of the series’ March 18, 1996 premiere.
But what happened to the cast of this culture shock TV show? As you can see, it’s a tale of mixed fortunes, with a few cast members eclipsing their This Life fame with even greater successes across the Atlantic…
Jack Davenport – Miles Stewart
This Life may have been Jack Davenport’s first TV job, but as the son of Jack Davenport (Howard’s Way) and Maria Atiken (A Fish Called Wanda), performing was clearly in his blood.
Read more: Nostalgia
Immediately following This Life, Davenport was cast in the lead role in Channel 4’s vampire drama Ultraviolet (1998) and was cast by Anthony Minghella in the film adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). He also appeared as Commodore James Norrington in three Pirates of the Caribbean films and was a regular on Steven Moffat’s relationship sitcom Coupling (2000–04).
Like most of his This Life castmates, Davenport returned for a one-off reunion special, titled +10, in 2007, but the bulk of his work over the past 20 years has been stateside, including stints on series like FlashForward, Breathless and Swingtown. He can currently be seen as the ex-husband of Jennifer Aniston’s character on Apple TV+’s The Morning Show.
Daniela Nardini – Anna Forbes
Daniela Nardini played the brash, man-eating Anna Forbes and was one of the big stars of This Life, winning a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in 1998. After the series ended, she starred in the Amy Jenkins-written film Elephant Juice (1999) and in 2012 she joined the cast of Waterloo Road on BBC One for a four-episode role.
She has appeared in films such as Festival (2005), Sunshine on Leith (2013) and Terence Davies’ Sunset Song (2015). Nardini took a break from acting in 2019 after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since made a full recovery.
“I think it’s great that people still enjoy the show,” she told the Daily Mail at the time, “but This Life feels like a different life now. It was very exciting and intoxicating at the time. We all became famous very quickly because of it, which was a shock and a little bit scary.”
Jason Hughes – Warren Jones
In 1996, it was still rare to see an openly gay character on TV. This Life’s Warren Jones was, in its own way, as groundbreaking in representation as Queer as Folk would be just three years later.
It wasn’t Jason Hughes’ first TV role, but it was the actor’s big break and opened the door to roles in prestigious dramas such as Waking The Dead and Russell T Davies’ Mine All Mine. Hughes’ most famous role, however, came in 2005 when he was cast opposite John Nettles in ITV’s ever-popular Midsomer Murders, where he played DS Ben Jones on the show for eight seasons.
Since then he has appeared in series such as Death in Paradise, The Pact, Marcella and, most recently, McDonald & Dodds.
Amita Dhiri – Djamila ‘Milly’ Nassim
Amita Dhiri won the role of Milly (aka ‘the sensible one’) in This Life just three years after graduating from drama school. After the final regular episode, she was cast as one of the leads in ITV’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last Train (1998).
Her other notable regular role came in 2007 when she made her debut as DC Grace Dasari in ITV’s The Bill, remaining with the show until its final episode in 2010. Her most recent TV appearance was as the Kent estate’s housekeeper, Mrs Khanna, in Netflix’s Bridgerton.
Andrew Lincoln – Edgar ‘Egg’ Cooke
Andrew Lincoln, 23, had only had a few television roles when he was cast as Milly’s boyfriend Egg in This Life.
After the series ended, the actor landed a lead role in Richard Curtis’ Love Actually (2003) and starred as university lecturer Robert Bridge in ITV’s supernatural drama Afterlife (2005–6). In 2010, he made his acting debut as police officer Rick Grimes in the first episode of AMC’s zombie behemoth The Walking Dead, a role he now reprises in the spin-off series The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
Along the way, he has starred in films including Human Traffic (1999), Enduring Love (2004) and Penguin Bloom (2020). He will soon be seen in the ITV thriller Cold Water, in which he stars opposite fellow Australian Indira Varma.
Ramon Tikaram – Ferdinand ‘Ferdy’ Garcia
Since his role as motorcycle courier Ferdy in This Life, Ramon Tikaram (brother, fan of 80s singer-songwriter Tanita) has built a prolific career on television (Game of Thrones, Death in Paradise, Brassic, Fortitude), in films (Dean Spanley, Mischief Night, Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love) and on stage (he played the role of the King of Siam in a UK tour of The King and I).
He has also made quite a name for himself in video games, voicing characters in RPGs such as James Bond 007: Blood Stone, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie and League of Legends. One of Tikaram’s most notable roles in recent years was as Yorkshire’s Police District Commander in BBC One’s Happy Valley.
He was one of the few regular characters from This Life who did not appear in the 2007 special, as the episode revolved around his character’s funeral.
This Life is available to stream on ITVX Premium.