His credits include Threads (1984), A Private Function (1984), Winter Flight (1984), Home to Roost (1985—1990), Haggard (1990), ID (1994), Hamlet (1996), Murder in Mind (2000), Spooks (2003), Conviction (2004), Ahead of the Class (2005), Love Lies Bleeding (2006), Life on Mars (2006), The Chase (2006), Silent Witness (2008), Midnight Man (2008), Coronation Street (2008—2010), Moving On (2011), Waterloo Road (2011), The Knife That Killed Me (2012), and Emmerdale (2020—2021).

[1] After initially working in theatre in Exeter, Nottingham, Birmingham and at the Edinburgh Festival, Dinsdale got his first TV role in the Granada thriller Knife Edge in 1981.

[2] 1984 also saw Dinsdale appearing in one of his first feature films, Alan Bennett's A Private Function, and the TV movie Winter Flight opposite Nicola Cowper.

[2] Glamour Night, another single drama for the BBC followed in 1984 before Dinsdale was cast as Matthew Willows in the British sitcom Home to Roost written by Eric Chappell and co-starring John Thaw.

[2] Dinsdale played the leading role of Jack Rover in Wild Oats in the inaugural production at the newly built West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1990.

In 1994, he played the leading role in ID, a British feature film charting the demise of a police officer who goes undercover to root out a firm of football hooligans.

[2] Dinsdale starred opposite Julie Walters in the ITV drama Ahead of the Class and played Robert in Conviction for the BBC (directed by Marc Munden).

[2] From 2008-2010, he played Joe McIntyre, in the long running soap Coronation Street to [4] Since then he filmed leading guest roles in Waterloo Road, Taggart and Moving On.

Dinsdale thereafter directed a fourth TV drama, again in the Moving On series, for Jimmy McGovern: "Eighteen", a story about the attempted deportation of an Afghan youth back to his native Kabul, starring Antonio Aakeel and Rosie Cavaliero.

[9] He is also an honorary patron of The Old Courts multi-arts centre in Wigan[10] After living in London for 24 years, he married Northern Irish actress Zara Turner and they moved north back to his homeland to raise their children.