The best directors always wanted Rosalind Knight in their casts. Photograph: Simon Annand/PA In a career stretching over seven decades, the distinctive, cut-glass character actor Rosalind Knight, who has died aged 87, renewed her TV profile with younger audiences in two quirkily original comedy sitcoms: Jonathan Harvey’s Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999-2001) and Robert Popper’s Friday Night Dinner (in the second series, 2012). She dressed down and mussed up her hair for Beryl Merit, a retired prostitute and landlady of the north London flat shared by Kathy Burke’s foul-mouthed Linda La Hughes and James Dreyfus’s acidulous actor; and reversed that process for Cynthia Goodman, aka “Horrible Grandma”, who aggressively stiffens the tone of the Friday night ritual hosted by her son (Paul Ritter) and his wife (Tamsin Greig).