The TV shows starring Hollywood royalty

Ageing screen siren Norma Desmond’s lament that ‘it’s the pictures that got small’ in Billy Wilder’s classic black comedy doesn’t appear to apply to the Hollywood stars of today, who only a decade or so ago saw acting on TV as the sign of a career in box office free fall.

The warning signs were there for all to see; when oldsters Charlton Heston and Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1980s Dynasty spin-off The Colbys, no-one imagined they were doing it for anything other than pecuniary reasons.

More recently there has been a rash of US actors appearing in British shows, although admittedly not quite the stature of Chuck and Babs.

Christopher Walken rocked up recently in Stephen Merchant’s misfire Outlaws (BBC1), Rob Lowe graced our screens as a fish-out-of-water US cop in Lincolnshire-set Wild Bill (ITV), Don ‘Crockett’ Johnson was in Sky’s Sick Note and Lorraine Bracco of Sopranos and Goodfellas fame co-starred in Tim Renko’s well received comedy Jerk (BBC3).