He is a noted Scottish actor and his epoch-hopping character shifts back and forward on the space-time continuum, righting wrongs and avoiding scrapes with death and disaster.

However, this is not David Tennant as Dr Who on British television, but a new major drama series in the United States called Journeyman, which is to star another actor from Scotland.

Kevin McKidd, originally from Elgin, has impressed the networks in America with his roles in movies such as Trainspotting but most notably with his work in Rome, which impressed the casting agents in Hollywood, despite not having high ratings.

McKidd will play the lead role in Journeyman, about a man who travels back in time to help change the course of people's lives, including his own.

Whether it is closer in theme and execution to Dr Who or the cult TV show Quantum Leap is as yet unknown, but is another big role for the actor, who played Lucius Vorenus in Rome and currently stars in Hannibal Rising.

McKidd is the latest in a series of British actors who have been hired for leading roles by the largest broadcasters in the US.

Tom Conti, Natasha Richardson and McKidd's Rome co-star, Ray Stevenson, are all taking major roles in new series currently being shot across the Atlantic.

Stevenson, who played Titus Pollo in Rome, is appearing in the pilot episode of a new police drama called Babylon Fields, for CBS, where he will be displaying his newly minted Long Island accent.

Indeed The New York Times this week said that British actors are set to star in two dozen prospective drama series - in total one-third of all the pilot shows being made across the television networks in the United States.

Sharon Klein, the head of casting for 20th Century Fox, said this week: "There is a tremendous number of British actors being signed.

"It is certainly more than ever before."

Asked why this may be, she added: "They are so accomplished."

Another advantage for British actors in the US television market is that they can be hired for cheaper rates than their American peers.

"It has gotten so expensive to sign American actors," one anonymous TV executive said this week.

Richardson has landed a role in an NBC comedy, Conti has a part in a comedy on Fox and Julian Sands also has a role in an NBC drama.

Damian Lewis, known for his leading role in Band of Brothers, has also been signed to another unnamed NBC drama.

The New British Invasion' has possibly been catalysed by the success of Hugh Laurie in the hospital drama House. Eddie Izzard, another actor known primarily for his comedy, has also just landed a lead role, in a show called The Riches.

McKidd was a member of the Moray Youth Theatre before going on to study at the University of Edinburgh.

While at university Kevin became involved with Bedlam Theatre, the university's student theatre company, and made his name on the big screen playing the brutal gangleader Malky Johnson in Gillies Mackinnon's Small Faces.

He also played the tragic Tommy in Trainspotting.