In pictures: Hugo Blick

Among Blick's cameo roles is a part in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film. Blick played the young Jack Napier, who killed Bruce Wayne's parents and later became the Joker, played by Jack Nicholson. A resemblance between Blick and Nicholson - which led some Batman fans to ask whether the two were related - may have helped him land the role Photograph: Channel Five

Anarchic police comedy Operation Good Guys, Blick's first television project as a director in the late 1990s. The show was shot as a mock fly-on-the-wall documentary and - although it was largely improvised - is seen by many as a forerunner of The Office. Blick, who played villain 'Smiler' McCarthy in the series, is at the back, centre, of this shot Photograph: BBC

Blick was director and co-writer - along with Rob Brydon - of Marion & Geoff. The darkly comic show was formed entirely of monologues by Brydon as Keith Barret, a taxi driver striving to stay optimistic despite his wife Marion having left him for a man called Geoff . Keith reflects: 'I look upon it not as losing a wife but gaining a friend' Photograph: BBC

Keith with toys he has bought for his sons or 'little smashers', Rhys and Alun. Also involved with the show were Henry Normal, whose credits as a producer include Gavin & Stacey and Saxondale, and Steve Coogan Photograph: BBC

In Marion & Geoff spin-off A Small Summer Party we finally get to meet Marion, played by Tracy-Ann Oberman, and Geoff, played by Coogan. The one-off show is set at a party thrown by Keith to celebrate Marion's promotion at work Photograph: BBC

Blick wrote and directed the understated sitcom Sensitive Skin from 2005 to 2007. The comedy starred Joanna Lumley as Davina Jackson, trying to navigate the choppy waters of married life while in her 60s. Blick won kudos for eschewing out-and-out laughs in favour of bittersweet and surprisingly poignant emotion, with one newspaper calling the sitcom the best piece of television in years Photograph: BBC

Sensitive Skin won plaudits because Blick toned down the standard sitcom elements while eliciting a standout performance from Lumley. In series two Davina became single, allowing her to observe all manner of dysfunctional relationships including one involving feminist Sue Shortstop, played by Maureen Lipman Photograph: BBC

Written and directed by Blick, The Last Word Monologues is a series of three pieces to camera to run on consecutive nights from Monday, August 25. In the first, Before I Call You In, Sheila Hancock plays a woman rehearsing her final words to her husband at a euthanasia clinic Photograph: BBC

Rhys Ifans in the second of the monologues, Six Days One June. Ifans plays a Welsh farmer who lives with an overbearing mother. As in Marion & Geoff, a bleak comic effect is achieved as the audience is able to discern truths about the protagonist's life - by reading between the lines of the monologues - before they do Photograph: BBC

The final of The Last Word Monologues, A Bit Of Private Business, features Bob Hoskins as an assassin waiting in a public lavatory for his next target Photograph: BBC