David Jason's career can be viewed in many respects as that of the archetypal modern television actor in Britain. Although he made forays into the theater in the 1970s and 1980s, and made occasional appearances on film, these fade into relative insignificance when compared to the steady stream of eye-catching and increasingly high-profile roles he created for television. As a result, his acting persona is circumscribed by the tele­ visual medium. Nevertheless, such exposure, while making him a British "household name," did not make him into a celebrity, for Jason has largely eschewed the paraphernalia of television fame.

     Jason’s histrionic instincts are basically comic, and the majority of his roles have been in the situation comedy format. His earliest major television role was an elderly professor doing battle against the evil Mrs. Black and her gadgets in the surreal Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967), a comedy show whose ideas and personnel later fed into Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But Jason first achieved note through his association with comic actor-writer Ronnie Barker, by supporting performances in the prison comedy Porridge and corner-shop comedy Open All Hours, both starring Barker. In the former, Jason played the dour wife­ murderer Blanco; in the latter, and to great effect, he acted the boyish, downtrodden delivery man and assistant to Barker's parsimonious storekeeper. Open All Hours cast Jason as a kind of embryonic hero-in­ waiting, constantly dreaming of ways of escaping the provincial narrowness and boredom of his north­ country life.  The role provided the actor with an opportunity to develop his acting trademark-a scrupulous and detailed portrayal of protean ordinariness, some­times straining against a desire to be something else. 

A later series, The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs, toyed with the sense of ordinariness by having Jason as a Secret Service agent ineptly trying  to combine his profession with suburban home life. But Jason’s greatest success has been with several series of the comedy Only Fools and Horses, in which he played Del Trotter, the small-time, tax-evading “entrepreneur” salesman, living and working in the working-class council estates and street markets of inner-city London. Deftly written by John Sullivan–the series is regarded by some as a model for this kind of sitcom writing–the series cast Jason in a domestic situation in which he is quasi-head of an all-male family, responsible for both his younger brother and an elderly uncle. In the role, Jason cleverly trod a path between pathos and the quick-wittedness necessary to someone operating on the borderlines of legality. The character was, in many respects, a parody of the Thatcherite working-class self-motivator, complete with many of the tacky and vulgar accouterments and aspirations of the (not-quite-yet) nouveau-riche. At the local pub, while others order pints of beer, Del seeks to distinguish himself from his milieu by drinking elaborate and luridly colored cocktails. The undertone, though, is salt-of-the-earth humanity and selflessness, called out in his paternal role to his younger brother, who eventually leaves the communal flat to pursue a life of marriage and a proper career. Jason's character is hemmed in by both the essential poverty of his situation but also by a deep-rooted sense of responsibility: though the plots of the individual episodes invariably revolve around one or either of Del's minor get-rich­ quick or get-something-for-nothing schemes, the failure of these ventures often owes much to the character's inability to be sufficiently ruthless. Jason's skill was to interweave the opposing forces of selflessness and selfishness, working-class background and pseudo-middle-class tastes, brotherly condescension and "paternal" devotion into a successful balance. The character Del, exuding a deeper humanity as expressed in his ability to imbue the everyday with a well-judged emotional resonance and believability, ultimately embodied a rejection of aggressive materialism. The ultimate financial success of Del (he becomes a millionaire, ironically by accident rather than through one of his schemes) gave viewers a satisfying payoff. This comedy series has achieved a unique level of popularity in British television--0ne probably unrepeatable in the now-fragmented digital age-making Jason one of the most sought-after television actors.

     Since Only Fools and Horses, Jason made moves away from overtly comic vehicles, pursuing variations on this rootedness in the everyday. In the adaptation of the satirical novel on Cambridge University life by Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue, he played the sternly traditional porter Skullion, the acutely status­ conscious servant of the college, dismayed by the lib­eralizing tendencies of the new master, and making determined efforts to turn back time. In The DarlingBuds of May, his other great ratings success, he took the role of Pa ("Pop") Larkin, in these adaptations of the rural short stories of H.E. Bates. Such roles al­lowed him to develop the range and craftsmanship of his character performances.

     In 1992 Jason ventured out of comedy altogether into the crime genre, as the eponymous Inspector Frost in A Touch of Frost. In this series, Jason's Frost is a disgruntled, middle-aged, loner detective, whose fractious, down-to-earth nature has not entirely endeared him to his superiors and therefore-we infer-has hindered his career prospects. In such respects the series is in the mold of the immensely successful adaptations of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels. But whereas Morse's cantankerousness, as played by Jol:n Thaw, was epitomized by a certain snobbishness-his love of classical music, his vintage car, his instinctive aloofness-in the Oxford environment of Dreamir:g Spires, Frost's gradually unfolding history reveals a lower middle-class resentfulness of those with money, fortune, pretensions, and easily gained happiness. His own life has-as we find out gradually-rendered him:increasingly a victim of misfortune (his wife has died,1, his house has burned down). While Morse, in effect, creates a world of evil-doing amid soft-toned college greens, country pubs, and semi-rural Englishness, the Frost series is nearer to the subgenre of the detective soaps, its principal character a distinctly unglamorous malcontent, whose ideas and experience are entirely provincial and suburban. The series, now achieving very large audiences, has witnessed an increasing sur.!­ ness of touch in this respect by Jason. As the actor mixes, it could well be that he is becoming one of tho:,e to make the successful transition from comic-oriented younger work to a memorable body of serious roles. Inspector Frost, along with his moving portrayal of a doomed World War I officer in All the King's Men, suggests he has the capacity to do just that.