Career: Following a spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Parker made his TV debut in 1988's Piece of Cake. He has worked constantly ever since, including a four-year stint abroad during which he appeared in Hollywood films Hamlet and The Bodyguard, although he didn't become a well-known face until ITV's 1998 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. Since then he's starred in the BBC's Vanity Fair, and took over from John Hannah in McCallum. Other notable projects include Othello (directed by his brother), Wide Sargasso Sea, The Haunted Mansion, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Stardust. More recently, he has starred in Merlin.

Career: Guest parts followed in a number of TV shows until Small landed a lead role in BBC comedy drama Sunburn. This lasted for two series and she followed it up with the six-part drama Glasgow Kiss. She went on to star in About a Boy (2002) and Dear Frankie (2004) and had guest parts in Cutting It and Rebus before landing a lead role as DS Barbara Havers in BBC crime drama The Inspector Lynley Mysteries alongside Nathaniel Parker. The series ran from 2001 until 2008. More recently, the in-demand actress has starred in Murderland, Mistresses, Downton Abbey, Kidnap and Ransom, New Tricks, Silent Witness, Call the Midwife, Death in Paradise and Midsomer Murders.

Career: He attended RADA in the late 1970s, studying alongside Kenneth Branagh. His debut film was 1982's The Sender, a horror feature in which he played a patient. Two years later he appeared opposite Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty. In the late 1980s he played Lionel Zipser in Porterhouse Blue, appeared regularly on Whose Line is it Anyway? and starred in his own one-man TV show, simply titled John Sessions. He has also appeared in Henry V and In the Bleak Midwinter, both directed by old friend Branagh. He scored a major hit in spoof soap opera Stella Street for which he characterised a variety of middle-aged actors, alongside Phil Cornwell. Other projects include Skins, Outnumbered and The Iron Lady.

Career: Nighy honed his craft at Liverpool's Everyman Theatre in the 1970s. He made his TV debut in 1980 in sitcom Agony. His first film, Eye of the Needle, came a year later. He has juggled acclaimed stage appearances with TV and film work. His role as a randy lecturer in 1991's The Men's Room made him a heart-throb, but he didn't become familiar to audiences until a string of hits beginning with 1998's Still Crazy, followed by Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, State of Play, and Love Actually. He also starred in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, Stormbreaker and Underworld: Evolution. Other projects include Valkyrie, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Boat That Rocked, G-Force, Wild Target. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and playwright David Hare's Worricker trilogy.