After guesting in
The Bill, Telford appeared as a guest on several British TV shows before her first major role in the mini-series
The Last Train (1999). One of her first recognisable works was in the first season of
Channel 4's
Teachers (2001) in which she played Maggie, a police officer and girlfriend to the character Simon Casey, played by
Andrew Lincoln. In the TV movie
Men Only (2001), she played Alice, a nurse who was gang-raped by a group of men known to her and with whom she had flirted, played by, among others,
Stephen Moyer and
Martin Freeman. She played the social worker Christina Leith in
Real Men (2003), a two part TV drama that tackled the subject of paedophilia. Telford appeared as
Eva Braun in the 2003 Emmy-nominated
Hitler: The Rise of Evil opposite
Robert Carlyle. The TV movie was broadcast in the US on
CBS with some controversy as it reportedly "likened the nation's acceptance of the Bush administration's pre-emptive strike on Iraq to the climate of fear that allowed Hitler to prosper". Her screen time was short since the film focused more on the events leading up to the
Final Solution. In 2008 she worked for the first time with
Juliet Stevenson in the three part ITV series
Place of Execution; the show was broadcast in the US in the following year as part of the PBS
Mystery! anthology. In 2009 Telford appeared in several other
procedural dramas including
Law & Order: UK (2009), the second season of
Criminal Justice (2009) where she played the defence barrister for
Maxine Peake’s character Julie, and
Collision (2009) which was broadcast in the US under the
PBS Masterpiece Contemporary. In the same year she appeared as a freelance tabloid reporter in two episodes of the comedy series
The Thick of It (2009). In 2010 she appeared in ''
Foyle's War (2010), shown in the US under the PBS Mystery!'' series. She also appeared in Episodes 2 and 3 of the first season of the BBC's
Sherlock (2010) as Sarah, a physician colleague and love interest of
Dr. John Watson, played by her
Men Only co-star Martin Freeman. Telford's appearance as Freya Carlisle in
Lewis (2011) reunited her with Juliet Stevenson and Laurence Fox; while her appearance as Eva Storr in the BBC's
Room at the Top (2012) reunited her with her
Criminal Justice co-star Maxine Peake. She played the newly created character Claire Sutton, a policy adviser, in the 2013 remake of
Yes, Prime Minister. Telford won a Special Commendation Award for her role in the film
Greyhawk at the 2014
Edinburgh International Film Festival, where the film premiered. She plays Paula, a beleaguered housewife who helps Mal, a blind veteran, find his dog. ==Personal life==