Television
Sinden appeared in ITV's 1960 adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring as John Jasper. No audio or video recordings of the production are known to have survived. In 1963, he appeared in the Associated Rediffusion series Our Man at St. Mark's. His other television roles included The Colonel in an episode of The Prisoner ("Many Happy Returns", 1967).
After starring in the series The Organisation (1971), he co-starred in the London Weekend Television situation comedy Two's Company which debuted in 1975. Sinden was cast in the role of an English butler, Robert, to Elaine Stritch's American character, Dorothy. Much of the humour derived from the culture clashes between Robert's very stiff-upper-lip Britishness and Dorothy's devil-may-care New York view on life. Two's Company was well received in Britain and ran for four seasons until 1979. The programme was nominated for a 'Best Situation Comedy' BAFTA in 1977. Stritch and Sinden also sang the theme tune for the opening credits to the programme, which received a BAFTA nomination. They each received a BAFTA nomination in 1979 for 'Best Light Entertainment Performance' and the show received two additional BAFTA nominations that year.
In 1978, Sinden was the leading guest star in the first "special" of Thames Television's The Morecambe & Wise Show, in which he carried on the butler's role.
In 1979, Sinden presented a documentary series on BBC2 (later repeated in 1981 on BBC1), Discovering English Churches inspired by his grandfather's architectural drawings and watercolours. Over ten episodes, Sinden explored the unique history of the English church, and the influences that shaped the development of 16,000 churches, showing the history of two or three churches in each episode.
From 1981, Sinden starred in the Thames Television situation comedy, Never the Twain. He played snooty antiques dealer Simon Peel who lived next door to a competitor, Oliver Smallbridge (played by Windsor Davies). The characters hated each other and were horrified when they discovered that their son and daughter were to be married—thus meaning they were related. The series was a TV ratings success and ran for 11 series until 1991.
He was the subject of an extended edition of This Is Your Life in 1985 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews while filming on location in Surrey.
Sinden was regularly spoofed on Spitting Image, the 1980s British satirical television programme in which famous people were lampooned by caricatured latex puppets. Much of the Spitting Image humour was centred around Sinden being a "ham" actor, forever overacting and behaving in an overly theatrical way. For example, when his puppet, sitting in a restaurant, summons a waiter and asks "Do you serve a ham salad?" the waiter replies "Yes, we serve salad to anyone".
From 2001 to 2007, he played the part of senior judge (and father-in-law of the title character), Sir Joseph Channing in Judge John Deed and was the voice of Totally Viral. In 2008, he played Colonel Henry Hammond in the Midsomer Murders episode "Shot at Dawn." In 2010 he played Sir Henry Clithering in the Agatha Christie's Marple episode "The Blue Geranium".
