Daily Inspiration Quote by Christopher Eccleston

Eccleston is doing something actors rarely get credit for: treating medium choice as a political and social decision, not a prestige ladder. The line quietly punctures the old cultural hierarchy where theatre is “serious” and television is suspect. He’s not apologizing for TV; he’s defending it as the more useful tool.

The key phrase is “in its small way.” That’s strategic humility, a pre-emptive disarmament against the inevitable accusation that television is too commercial or too compromised to “say” anything. By shrinking the claim, he makes it harder to dismiss. Yet he immediately expands TV’s moral ambition: it “deals…much more with issues.” Subtext: theatre, at least as it’s often produced and consumed, can become an insulated ritual for the already initiated, a place where relevance is performed more than delivered.

“Broader church of people” is the real tell. He’s framing audiences as a congregation: not just consumers, but citizens gathered around shared stories. Theatre can be intimate, electric, alive; it can also be geographically expensive, culturally coded, and gatekept by habit. Television, especially in Britain’s public-service tradition, is a mass hearth. It can smuggle thorny subjects into living rooms where no one has bought a ticket to be challenged.

Context matters: Eccleston’s career has moved between stage, prestige TV, and globally syndicated franchises. His point isn’t that theatre fails; it’s that TV’s reach can turn acting into a form of public service, where “issues” aren’t niche programming but part of the nightly weather of ordinary life.