Career: Davison's first professional role was in Love's Labour's Lost at Nottingham Playhouse in 1972 and his TV debut came in a 1975 episode of The Tomorrow People. A lean spell followed (during which he spent 18 months working in a tax office in Twickenham), but his big break came in 1978 when he landed the role of Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. In 1981, he took over from Tom Baker as the fifth Doctor Who, but quit three years later for fear of being typecast. Other career highlights include A Very Peculiar Practice, Campion, At Home with the Braithwaites, The Last Detective, The Complete Guide to Parenting, Distant Shores and Law & Order: UK. Throughout 2010, he starred in the West End production of Legally Blonde, and directed and wrote a spoof documentary called The Five(ish) Doctors to tie in with Doctor Who's 50th anniversary in 2013.

Career: The show A One Night Stand with Sean Hughes toured the UK and Australia, as well as performances in Los Angeles, Montreal and Toronto. In 1991 he made a brief but memorable appearance in Alan Parker's acclaimed movie The Commitments as a record label executive, before writing and appearing in the aptly titled Sean's Show for Channel 4 a year later. Other TV programmes followed, including Sean's Shorts, but it was his six-year stint as a team captain on the irreverent music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks that made him a household name. His dramatic acting has included roles in Murder Most Horrid, Gormenghast, Girl on a Cycle, The Last Detective, Coronation Street, Agatha Christie's Marple, and Round Ireland with a Fridge.

Career: Aside from a lean period at the back end of the 1990s, Threlfall has rarely been out of work. His small-screen work includes roles in Mike Leigh's Kiss of Death, a 1984 staging of King Lear (opposite Laurence Olivier), Conspiracy and The Queen's Sister. His most famous on-screen character is that of chain-smoking patriarch Frank Gallagher, a role he held in Channel 4 drama Shameless between 2004 and 2013. Other projects include The Russia House, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Housewife 49, Hot Fuzz, Nowhere Boy and The Ark. He was also made a surprisingly good Tommy Cooper in the ITV biopic Not Like That, Like This.