Richard Briers: a life in clips

With more than 50 years of work to his name, Richard Briers was one of the most instantly recognisable – and most beloved – actors in Britain. Much of this is down to his sitcom work, primarily The Good Life. Although it only ran for three years, The Good Life managed to latch onto a prevailing public mood – that of suburban alienation and a desire to connect with the earth – which is why it has been so endlessly repeated (and used as the basis for more than one reality show) over the years. Despite being the work he'll be most remembered for, Briers never got on with his character, often calling him stubborn and unlikable in the press.

There was much more to Briers's television career than The Good Life. His first televised lead was opposite Prunella Scales in the BBC1 sitcom Marriage Lines, a show that ran for 44 episodes in the early 1960s and was recently released on DVD. It was the perfect showcase for all the qualities that Briers would later come to refine in later work: niceness, mild exasperation and occasional pettiness.

Then, in the 1980s, came Ever Decreasing Circles. The series showed a gradual shading of the typical Briers TV role, with his uptight, detail-fixated character Martin Bryce given to bouts of jealousy and obsessiveness. Briers considered Bryce his favourite character to play, and Ricky Gervais has called the show one of his favourite-ever sitcoms.

This exploration of a darker side continued in the early 1990s with If You See God, Tell Him, written by One Foot In the Grave's David Renwick. Godfrey Spry was perhaps the most fascinating TV character Briers would play, dealing with every horrible turn his life took – injury, the death of his wife, the murder he committed – with a kind of relentless, demented cheeriness. The series was only broadcast once and never repeated, possibly because it was too much of a leap for fans of The Good Life, but it has grown in cult status over the years.

Much safer terrain was Monarch of the Glen, the BBC's chocolate-box drama about a crumbling Scottish pile and its residents. Nobody else could have played Hector, the dotty patriarchal laird, with as much charm as Briers – even in his final scene, where he was blown up in a boat.

As with all actors with long careers Briers' CV was studded with curios across television and film. There was his role in the Sylvester McCoy-era Doctor Who story, Paradise Towers, as a petty-minded caretaker with dictatorial leanings. Then there was his long-running relationship with Kenneth Branagh, which gave rise to a number of Shakespearian roles; most notably as Polonius in Hamlet in 1996. And one of his final performances came in last year's Cockneys vs Zombies, where he engaged in an epic shuffle-off with an army of the undead.

But perhaps his most lasting legacy was as a voiceover artist. He delighted generation after generation as the voice of Roobarb, his Jackanories were some of the best the series ever produced and then, of course, he was Fiver in Watership Down. I won't link to that. There has been enough heartbreak already today.