All at Big Finish were sad to learn about the death of actor Michael Keating.
Born in Edmonton, north London on 10 February 1947, Michael began his acting career in 1966 and went on to become one of the most recognisable and best-loved faces in British science fiction.
His first professional role was at Nottingham Playhouse under the artistic directorship of the classical actor John Neville. After two and a half years at Nottingham, he went on to perform in theatres across the United Kingdom, including the Library Theatre Manchester, the Pitlochry Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and the Lyric Theatre Belfast, as well as numerous repertory and touring productions throughout England.
As Vila Restal in the BBC's Blake's 7, Michael appeared across all four series of the show, from 1978 to 1981 – the only cast member to appear in all 52 episodes. Vila was nominally the gang's thief and self-declared coward, though Michael always preferred a more precise description: cautious, not cowardly. In his hands, Vila was something richer than comic relief. He was warm, wily, honest about his own limitations, and almost impossible not to love.
Beyond the confines of the spaceship Liberator, Michael enjoyed a long and varied career in theatre and television, including stints with both the National Theatre and the Old Vic. In 1985, he created the role of Marty at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End in Are You Lonesome Tonight, Alan Bleasdale's play about Elvis Presley, in which Martin Shaw played the King.
And, away from his screen career, Michael was a keen rambler with a love of the outdoors, a voracious reader, and by all accounts a thoughtful and deeply easy-going man, as generous in conversation as he was in the studio.
Michael's first role beind the microphone at Big Finish was in the monthly Doctor Who range, guest-starring alongside Paul McGann and India Fisher in the Eighth Doctor story, The Twilight Kingdom, in 2004. After sporadic appearances in other ranges, he finally reprised the role of Vila in 2012's first Big Finish Blake's 7 production, The Turing Test, bringing the same care and craft to the character on audio that had made him so enduring on television. Over the following decade he was reunited with many of his on-screen colleagues, including Paul Darrow, Gareth Thomas and Jacqueline Pearce.
While Blake's 7 on TV had ended in 1981 with the apparent massacre of the entire crew in its devastating final episode, for Big Finish listeners Vila's story was far from over. In 2019, at the recording of The New Age, written by Mark Wright, Michael was asked whether Vila could cope living in a society stripped of all technology – the kind of world a survivor might find himself in. His answer was entirely in character: "I'm sure he would survive. As long as he could make fire, keep warm and meet a young lady. He'd learn a lot about the trees on the planet, build a little hut. It would be wonderful."
Big Finish Blake's 7 producer, Peter Anghelides, said: "What a joy it was to work with Michael. Little did I realise when first encountering him at BBC Television Centre in 1981 that some three decades later I would be writing and producing Big Finish Blake's 7 audio stories for him as Vila Restal.
"His cheery presence on studio days was always most welcome. I would sit at the back of the Audio Sorcery control room hooting with laughter at his comic timing in our recordings. In the green room when we recorded the first full-cast audio Warship he jokingly suggested that there should have been a planet named “Vere” after his old colleague, TV director/producer Vere Lorrimer, so obviously I smuggled that idea into a later script, much to Michael's great delight.
"Blake's 7 fans loved him as Vila, the only character to appear in every Blake's 7 TV episodes between 1978 and 1981 and in both BBC Radio plays. At one point in planning the second series, Terry Nation thought that Vila was a 'borderline case' for being dropped as a Liberator regular, until the production team acknowledged the character’s popularity – in no small part thanks to Michael’s adroit performance as the career thief and reluctant rebel.
"Michael reprised the role for Big Finish in The Liberator Chronicles, full-cast plays, and audiobook readings. He played Goudry in the 1977 Doctor Who TV story The Sun Makers, and subsequently had roles in Big Finish audios alongside Tom Baker, Colin Baker, and Paul McGann. And to a generation of soap fans, he was the Reverend George Stevens in 54 episodes of EastEnders between 2005 and 2017."
His final Big Finish credit was in The Terra Nostra, alongside Sally Knyvette and Karl Howman, released in January 2022.
- Michael Keating, actor, born 10 February 1947; died May 2026.
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