Acting
Ray Ashcroft
Born
1952-06-28 (74)
Place of birth
Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, UK
Known for
Acting
Credits
24 titles
Raymond John Ashcroft is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as DS Geoff Daly in The Bill from 1996 to 2000, and Ronnie Marsden on Emmerdale from March to December 2003. In the late 1970s Ashcroft was the frontman of The Push, a Sheffield band. He started acting in repertory theatre before working in television and film productions. He played Ringo Starr in the biopic TV film Birth of the Beatles (1979),and he has also appeared in various television productions including Coronation Street. Ashcroft played DS Geoff Daly in The Bill from 1996 to 2000 before portraying Ronnie Madsen in Emmerdale (2003). In 2018, he portrayed Tom Jackson, a Yorkshire miner, in the play On Behalf…
Known for
4.3The lives of several families in the Yorkshire Dales revolve around a farm and the nearby village. With murders, affairs, lies, deceit, laughter and tears, it's all there in the village.
Emmerdale
1972
7.1Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
Heartbeat
1992
6.8The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
The Bill
1984
7.6The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.
The Professionals
1977
7.8The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.
All Creatures Great and Small
1978
6.4In the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton, the unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-China-shop-copper DS Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick DS, later DI, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining down-to-Earth wit and humour.
Dalziel and Pascoe
1996
Film credits
2020s · 1 titles
1990s · 3 titles
Clarence Flamer hosts a late-night talk show on regional radio station North Star Sound. A phone call he takes one night leads to his discovering a mortgage scam being run by a group of estate agents. His attempts to delve deeper have tragic consequences.
Night Voice
1990
NRShoot to Kill is a four-hour drama documentary reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), allegedly without warning (the so-called shoot-to-kill policy); the organised fabrication of false accounts of the events; and the difficulties created for the inquiry team in their investigation.
Shoot to Kill
1990
9.0Simon Willerton's suicide in 1990 brought to six the number of young prisoners who hanged themselves in British prisons in just over six months, prompting public debate over conditions in remand prisons like Armley where overcrowding was so severe that no new inmates could be admitted. Simon faced a burglary charge over the theft of a hot-water bottle from an unoccupied flat. Less a hardened criminal than an immature, gawky teenager who never fitted in, Simon and his tragic death inspired this teleplay.
Criminal
1994
Series credits
4.3The lives of several families in the Yorkshire Dales revolve around a farm and the nearby village. With murders, affairs, lies, deceit, laughter and tears, it's all there in the village.
Emmerdale
1972
7.1Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
Heartbeat
1992
7.1Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
Heartbeat
1992
7.1Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
Heartbeat
1992
6.8The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
The Bill
1984
7.6The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.
The Professionals
1977
7.8The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.
All Creatures Great and Small
1978
6.4In the fictional Yorkshire town of Wetherton, the unlikely duo of politically incorrect elephant-in-a-China-shop-copper DS Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and his more sensitive and university educated sidekick DS, later DI, Peter Pascoe is always on hand to solve the classic murder mystery, while maintaining down-to-Earth wit and humour.
Dalziel and Pascoe
1996
7.8Highly skilled Detective Inspector Jane Tennison battles to prove herself in a male dominated world.
Prime Suspect
1991
7.3Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
1996
7.0The Chief is a British crime drama transmitted on ITV from 20 April 1990 to 16 June 1995. Produced by Anglia Television, it centred on the politics at the top of a typical English police force in its continual battle to solve the problems the times, in this case the fictional Eastland of East Anglia.
The Chief
1990
7.5Dramatizing one of the most infamously notorious and shocking serial killer cases in the world, the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, commonly dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, between October 1975 and January 1981, South Yorkshire police undertook the biggest manhunt in British criminal history. The search for Sutcliffe lasted five years, involved over a thousand officers and changed the way the British police worked forever.
The Long Shadow
2023
8.0Chandler and Co is a British television programme written by Paula Milne and produced by Ann Skinner for the BBC. Aired with two series from 1994 to 1995, it follows private detective Elly Chandler, alongside her sister-in-law Dee Tate. In the second series, Tate is replaced by Kate Phillips, a former client turned employee.
Chandler & Co
1994
7.1When a deadly virus wipes out most of the world's population, a handful of survivors struggle to stay alive.
Survivors
2008
The Squad is a 1980 ITV children's TV series about the fictional exploits of a group of Police Cadets. The character of Cadet Alan Martin was played by actor Mark Botham who later went on to play PC Danny Sparkes in the TV series Juliet Bravo.
The Squad
1980
6.0Funny, moving and at times painful - Truckers tells stories of real life, ordinary people pushed to extremes. In each episode, one character undertakes a journey and we are along for the ride. In an age when technology would make us seem ever more connected, the series uses the truck driver, alone in his cab, as a way to explore how isolated we can become within modern society and the importance of real human connection. These are powerful, moving stories, but the tone is always joyous and each story is one of redemption.
Truckers
2013
7.8Follows the staff and patients of a Yorkshire cottage hospital in the 60s, embroiled in tangled love lives and bitter power struggles.
The Royal
2003




