Trained and critically acclaimed in theater, a successful character actor in movies, Australian performer Leo McKern made his most indelible mark in television. In the mind of many audiences, he became irrevocably intertwined with the title character of Rumpole of the Bailey, the irascible British barrister created by author John Mortimer. Starring as the wily, overweight, jaded but dedicated defense attorney for seven seasons, McKern brought an intelligent, acerbic style to the character that was applauded by critics, audiences, and creator Mortimer. The actor’s performance thus ascribed qualities to the character just as the character was inscribed on McKern’s acting persona. More than once McKern vowed he would not return to the series because of the inevitable typecasting. Yet he was always persuaded otherwise by Mortimer, who himself vowed that no one but McKern would play the role of Horace Rumpole.

The program, which began in 1978 in the United Kingdom and was soon exported to the United States via the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS’s) Mystery! series, featured McKern as an attorney who profoundly believed in a presumption of innocence, the validity of the jury system, and the importance of a thorough defense. It was a position unabashedly in support of civil liberties. In the course of each show, Rumpole typically dissected the stodgy and inefficient machinations of fellow barristers, judges, and the legal system in Britain. His resourcefulness and unorthodoxy matched that of the title character in U.S. television’s Perry Mason, but with his askew bow tie and white wig, his sidelong looks and interior monologues, Rumpole was more colorful and complicated.

As the program was shown around the world through 1996, McKern could not escape what he called the “insatiable monster” of television, which blotted out memories of earlier performances. However, that did not stop the Australian periodical The Bulletin from naming McKern one of Australia’s top 55 “human assets” in 1990. And, in fact, television did offer McKern another distinctive, if more transitory, role much earlier than Rumpole. In The Prisoner, a British drama aired in the United Kingdom and the United States in the late 1960s, McKern was one of the first authority figures to repress the series’ hero.

The Prisoner, still a cult classic dissected on many websites and Internet chat groups, was created by the then enormously popular actor Patrick McGoohan and was intended as an indictment of authoritarian subjugation of the individual. In the title role, McGoohan was kept prisoner in a mysterious village by the state, represented most forcefully by the person in charge of the village, who was called Number 2. Engaging in a battle of wills and wits with Number 6 (McGoohan), Number 2 typically died at episode’s end, to be replaced by a new Number 2 in the next show. McKern played Number 2 in the series’ second program, “The Chimes of Big Ben,” and helped set the tone of serious banter and political conflict. His character, killed at the end of the episode, was resurrected the next season at the end of the series in two episodes, “Once upon a Time” and “Fallout,” to demonstrate a change of position in favor of the hero and opposed to the state. Not completely unlike Rumpole, McKern’s Number 2 was a system insider who understood principles better than the rest of the establishment (if only belatedly).

With its use of fantastic technology to keep Number 6 from escaping, The Prisoner was ostensibly a science fiction program. The science fiction motif also in formed a TV guest appearance McKern made some years later in the U.S. program Space: 1999, which aired in 1975. In that episode, “The Infernal Machine,” McKern was again part of a larger entity, this time not the “state” but a living spacecraft. As the companion of “Gwent,” McKern mediated with human beings (notably Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, recent Mission: Impossible veterans) on a lunar station. His character was slightly cynical, critical, bantering, and attached to the entity he served, like the later Rumpole. Among McKern’s decades of television experience, these roles were notable on three levels: their connection to general recurring themes; their development of a recognizable, familiar character function; and their demonstration of the actor’s particular talents. For instance, the “Companion” episode on Space 1999 evoked both the “Companion” episode on the original 1967 Star Trek, in which Glenn Corbet’s character was kept alive by fusion with an alien presence, and the Trill character of “a symbiotic fusion of two species” on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In addition, the threatening power of the state and of technology of The Prisoner prefigured a reliable theme of the popular 1990s program The X-Files.

The Rumpole role is the one most connected with a number of recurring character functions on television. The deep commitment covered by a veneer of cynicism is a staple of police officers and other investigators throughout U.S. television history. The belief in the civil liberties of the individual is the core of lawyer programs such as Perry Mason of the 1960s and Matlock of the 1990s. The rumpled insider, “only by virtue of superior competence,” was the essence of Columbo of the 1970s. The British Rumpole is a rather more complex example of a U.S. television perennial.

However well written it might be, the Rumpole role would not have the cachet it has among fans if not for the actor. Critics cited McKern’s intelligence, energy, and remarkably flexible baritone as the heart of the character. McKern’s varied, multimedia career—from movies such as the lightweight Beatles’ Help! to the epic Lawrence of Arabia to plays such as Othello— may not be remembered by most fans, but the depth of talent required for such diversity is critically acknowledged in reviews of Rumpole of the Bailey.