Mark's father Joe was a Royal Naval Commando, who landed on Gold Beach during D-Day and later worked as a metallurgist, who died in 1984, and his mother Clare was a teacher.
He then appeared as Mad Dog in the Channel 4 TV series Scully by Alan Bleasdale in 1983 with Cathy Tyson and Elvis Costello.
[citation needed] McGann's career in TV has seen him play Marcus Bannerman in the World War I era drama series by Russell T. Davies The Grand in 1999 for Granada TV; Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian industrial engineer in the award-winning factual drama-documentary Seven Great Industrial Wonders of the World in 2002 for the BBC; Tom Crean, the Irish companion of Ernest Shackleton in Shackleton opposite Kenneth Branagh; and Niven Craig in Peter Medak's Let Him Have It with Christopher Eccleston and Tom Courtenay.
He appeared as Conor Phelan in the multi-BAFTA nominated The Hanging Gale, a BBC drama set against the backdrop of the Great Famine, which also starred Mark's three actor brothers.
[4] In 2017, McGann launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund his short film Perplexed Music, based on the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Petrarchan sonnet of the same name.