Cyril Luckham

Who was Cyril Luckham?

Cyril Luckham was a British film, television and theatre actor.

Luckham played the White Guardian in the long running science fiction television series Doctor Who. He appeared in The Ribos Operation, the first serial in The Key to Time season, and Enlightenment. In the 1967 BBC serialisation of The Forsyte Saga, Luckham played Sir Lawrence Mont, father-in-law of Fleur Forsyte. He appeared in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk, as the villain. Luckham was a familiar face as a character actor in the 1970s: he appeared the 1978 TV series based on The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, as the evil psychic Edward Drexel in the 1979 supernatural thriller series The Omega Factor, and as the equitable Chair of the school board of Bamfylde in the 1980 Andrew Davies adaptation of To Serve Them All My Days. He also portrayed Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the film adaptation of A Man for All Seasons and the long-suffering Father O'Hara in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.

Perhaps his most significant role was as the paternalist puppet prime minister in 1971's dialectical dystopian drama The Guardians in which Britain is plunged into a tacit Fascist state policed by the ubiquitous Guardians or 'G's' as they are referred to with disturbing familiarity. This series was recently released on DVD by Network.