Michael Keating, Star of ‘Blake’s 7,’ Dead at 79

Michael Keating, the British actor who became a cult television icon through his role as the roguish Vila Restal in the BBC space drama Blake’s 7, has died. He was 79.

His agent, Dan Ireson, confirmed the news on Thursday, May 21, saying Keating had “passed away recently.” No cause of death was given.

Born in Edmonton, England, Keating built his career the old-fashioned way — through years of stage work and small screen appearances that quietly laid the groundwork for what was coming. His first stage role came at Nottingham Playhouse under classical actor and artistic director John Neville, and from there he worked his way through theaters across the UK, including the Library Theatre Manchester, the Pitlochry Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, and the Lyric Theatre Belfast. He’d eventually perform with both the National Theatre and the Old Vic — a stage résumé most actors would spend a lifetime chasing.

On television, he made his mark through guest appearances on British series including Special Branch, Merry-Go-Round, Omnibus, The Dragon’s Opponent, and even a stint in the enduring sci-fi franchise Doctor Who before his big break arrived.

The Role That Made Him a Legend

In 1978, Keating landed the role that would define his career. Blake’s 7 — the BBC’s dystopian space opera about a ragtag band of rebels fighting a totalitarian regime that had seized control of Earth — gave him Vila Restal, a self-declared coward and career thief who was somehow impossible not to love. Keating himself, according to Big Finish Productions, preferred not to call Vila cowardly at all. The character was simply, in his words, “cautious.”

What made the performance truly remarkable was its consistency. Keating appeared in all 52 episodes across the show’s four series from 1978 to 1981 — the only cast member in the entire run who never missed a single one. That’s not a footnote. That’s a legacy.

In 1985, he also originated the role of Marty at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End in Alan Bleasdale’s play Are You Lonesome Tonight, a production about Elvis Presley in which Martin Shaw played the King.

A Second Chapter on the Square

Decades after Blake’s 7 wrapped, Keating found a whole new audience through EastEnders. From 2005 to 2017, he played Reverend George Stevens — the vicar of the fictional London borough of Walford — across 54 episodes. It was a quieter role than Vila, but a meaningful one. Stevens was a constant presence at the community’s biggest moments: christenings, weddings, funerals. The kind of character a soap opera needs to hold its emotional center.

And even that wasn’t the end of his connection to Blake’s 7. Through Big Finish Productions, Keating returned to Vila Restal behind the microphone, reprising the role across several audio drama series throughout the 2010s and into the early 2020s — Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles (2012–2016), Blake’s 7: The Classic Adventures (2013–2020), and The Worlds of Blake’s 7 (2021–2022). He reunited in the process with on-screen colleagues including Paul Darrow, Gareth Thomas, and Jacqueline Pearce. His final Big Finish credit, The Terra Nostra, was released in January 2022.

Big Finish Blake’s 7 producer Peter Anghelides remembered him with unmistakable warmth. “What a joy it was to work with Michael,” Anghelides said. “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.”

Anghelides also shared a small, perfect story: during the recording of the first full-cast audio Warship, Keating jokingly suggested there should have been a planet named “Vere” after his old colleague, TV director and producer Vere Lorrimer. “So obviously I smuggled that idea into a later script,” Anghelides said, “much to Michael’s great delight.”

That’s the kind of man he was — someone whose warmth made its way into the work itself, one joke at a time.