Crashing
In Phoebe Waller-Bridge‘s pre-Fleabag comedy Crashingset in a disused hospital where a group of young people live as property guardians, Bailey starred alongside Waller-Bridge, Damien Molony, Louise Ford, Julie Dray and Amit Shah. He played Sam in the Channel 4 series, which aired six episodes in early 2016 and is currently available to stream on Netflix. Sam is an estate agent and something of a player who maintains that he’s straight while developing romantic feelings for housemate Fred, played by Shah. Witty, modern and sweet, the series was adapted from two plays written by Waller-Bridge.
W1A
Bailey plays slick, ambitious climber Jack Patterson in John Morton’s satirical BBC-spoofing series W1A. As the PA to Sarah Parish’s inscrutable, arse-covering Head of Output, Jack mostly spends his time scheming to get ahead, winding up Hugh Skinner’s posh idiot Will, and romantically pursuing fellow underling Izzy, played by Ophelia Lovibond (the star of Sky adventure drama Hooten & The Ladysee below). W1A is currently available to buy on Amazon Prime Video.
Cock
Currently on at The Ambassadors Theatre, London until June, Bailey is starring opposite Kingsman and Rocketman‘s Taron Egerton in Mike Bartlett play Cock. Bartlett’s play first opened in 2009 with Ben Whishaw and Andrew Scott as male leads John and ‘M’ in the story of a gay couple whose relationship finds itself on shaky ground when John is sexually attracted to a woman and experiments with bisexuality. His Dark Materials‘ Jade Anouka co-stars as ‘W’, the woman Bailey’s character John finds himself drawn to, in this production directed by Marianne Elliott.
Campus
This short-lived Channel 4 sitcom from the team behind sketch show Smack the Pony and unhinged, inventive hospital-set comedy Green Wing took place in a British university. Campus boasted a fun cast led by Andy Nyman, with Dolly Wells, Joseph Millson, Sara Pascoe and Katherine Ryan. Bailey played post-graduate student ‘Flatback’, a sports-obsessed dumbo assigned to assist womanising English Professor Beer (Millson). It may well have done better business as a half-hour than a Green Wing-style 45-minute comedy, and was cancelled after one series aired in 2011, but deserved better. All six episodes are currently available to stream on All4.
Leonardo
This one’s a deep dive for the real Bailey obsessives and/or those who were children in 2011. Following on from his start in theatre and on TV as a child actor, Bailey played the young artist, inventor and Renaissance man Leonardo de Vinci in this CBBC kids’ series. Before Mark Rylance and Aidan Turner jumped on the bandwagon, Bailey had already made the role his own. Two series exist, currently available to import on DVD. Watch some clips here.
See also:
– 2014 Doctor Who episode ‘Time Heist‘, which pitted the Twelfth Doctor and Clara against a psychic bank teller, and starred Bailey as augmented human Psi. Stream it on BBC iPlayer here.