According to the British Film Institute, Blakely's "chunky form and rumpled, good-natured features tended to direct him towards hero's-friend roles, but there was also an impressive toughness and intensity about his work.

In the 1975 British film, It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, derived from the James Herriot books, Blakely played the eccentric Siegfried Farnon.

(Blakely's Son of Man co-star Robert Hardy would play the role in the 1978-1990 BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small.)

Blakely also appeared in Young Winston (1972), The National Health (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Equus (1977), The Dogs of War (1980), Nijinsky (1980) and Evil Under the Sun (1982).

From that time onwards, he was a regular on British television, and in the same year played the leading role in a BBC adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now.