Barry Evans (actor)

With his mop of dark hair and easy, grinning charm, Barry Evans became a fixture of British living rooms in the 1970s. He shot to fame as the hapless medical student Michael Upton in 'Doctor in the House,' a role that perfectly captured the cheerful anarchy of youth. That success led to the even broader comedy of 'Mind Your Language,' where he played the earnest teacher Mr. Brown in a classroom of stereotyped foreign students. For a time, Evans was a quintessential light-comedy leading man, his persona synonymous with amiable confusion. However, typecasting proved a cage. As the shows' popularity waned, substantial roles dried up. He eventually left acting, moving to rural Scotland and working as a taxi driver. His death in 1997, alone and under circumstances that remain unclear, cast a sad shadow over the cheerful, remembered image of the actor who once embodied a particular kind of British television innocence.