Over many years Anton Rodgers quietly built a career for himself as one of Britain's leading stage and television actors, attaining a measure of stardom relatively late in life. He is probably most widely known for the sitcoms Fresh Fields (1984-86), in which he played Julia McKenzie's long-suffering husband, and May to December (1989-94), playing a lawyer embarking on a romance with a girl half his age. The actress changed during the show's lengthy run, the principal actor remained the same, and there is something oddly apt about that.

Rodgers played lawyers, policemen (the plodder rather than the dashing hero), officials, long-suffering husbands and homosexuals. His features suggested missed opportunities, befuddlement and resignation. His voice was mellifluous and comforting. Bald and bespectacled in later years, Rodgers was never the action man or glamour boy, but he tackled a surprisingly wide range of projects from Shakespeare and Dickens to The Pink Panther and The Prisoner (in one of the episodes he was Number 2, the character that always changed week to week).

Adept at comedy, drama and musicals, he played Mr Jingle opposite Harry Secombe in the West End musical Pickwick in 1963, a role he reprised on Broadway two years later, and latterly he served as Grandpa Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium.

He was married to the actress Elizabeth Garvie, with whom he appeared in the TV adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard's Something in Disguise (1982) and several stage productions, and they were due to appear in their own shows celebrating Dickens, Austen and marriage in the coming weeks at several modest venues.

Born at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, in 1933, Rodgers attended the Italia Conti acting school and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and began acting professionally while still a schoolboy, making his first stage appearance at the age of 14 in Bizet's opera Carmen (Royal Opera House, 1947), and appearing in touring productions of Great Expectations and The Winslow Boy.

He was a member of the helicopter crew that provided the focus for the BBC comedy series The Sky Larks (1958), while on stage he continued to appear in a wide range of productions. He caused a stir in John Osborne's Under Plain Cover (1962) at the Royal Court, as a sado-masochist, devising new games with his partner, who it transpires is his sister. If anything, Rodgers specialised in the ordinary and unremarkable individual, but there was sometimes a hint of deeper currents beneath the surface. The following year he played Hardy in the historical opening sequence of Carry on Jack, doing everything he possibly can to get out of kissing Nelson.

During the 1960s and early 1970s Rodgers secured fairly regular employment as a guest star in Lew Grade's contemporary thriller series, including Danger Man (1964-65), The Saint (1967) and The Champions (1968). In 1968 he was a German officer in Where Eagles Dare and played the lead role of conman Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge in the P.G. Wodehouse series Ukridge. In 1970 he sang Leslie Bricusse's Oscar-nominated song Thank You Very Much in the Dickens musical Scrooge.

It was television, though, rather than film, that was to provide Rodgers with most of his significant screen roles, though he continued to act on stage as well throughout his life. He was a Scotland Yard detective who teams up with astrologer Anoushka Hempel in the light-hearted series Zodiac (1974), another policeman in the comic mystery series Murder Most English (1977), Lillie Langry's weak-willed spouse who has to turn a blind eye while she conducts an affair with the Prince of Wales, in Lillie (1978) and a country practice vet in Noah's Ark (1997).

Few of his TV series attained the status of true classics, though Fresh Fields and May to December scored well in the ratings. Fresh Fields was sufficiently popular for Thames Television to reunite Rodgers and McKenzie in their old roles of William and Hester Fields, in a new setting, in French Fields (1989-91). Many critics and commentators have lamented the lack of inspiration and risk in British sitcom at the time. Fresh Fields ranked 83rd in a 2004 BBC poll to determine the best British sitcoms of all time.

Rodgers and McKenzie co-starred in a one-off ITV family comedy You Can Choose Your Friends earlier this year, though by that time Rodgers was semi-retired. He revealed that he had turned down several series and preferred to spend his time fishing, though he could not resist the temptation of working with McKenzie again.

In total he appeared in about 100 films and TV productions and dozens of plays throughout the country and abroad. He also directed numerous plays in the regions and on the fringe.He had a main supporting role (another policeman) in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), with Steve Martin and Michael Caine; starred in the Frederic Raphael mini-series After the War (1989); narrated the popular Old Bear Stories (1993) for children; played the central character of the vet in Noah's Ark (1997-98); was a retiree in the sitcom Up Rising (1999), the Duke in The Merchant of Venice (2004), with Al Pacino as Shylock, and Tory politician Willie Whitelaw in the TV drama Longford last year.

He is survived by his wife, three sons from that marriage, and two children from an earlier marriage.

Anton Rodgers, actor, was born on January 10, 1933. He died on December 1, 2007, aged 74