|
Corridor
of Mystery |
DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, No. 14 |
 Sir Derek Jacobi as a lecherous old reprobate in "The Wyvern Mystery" |
BAD! Derek Jacobi, John Thaw, Roy Marsden and many others have played villains as well as heroes on PBS' Mystery! |
Maybe the best actors get bored playing good guys all the time
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
The last time we saw Sir Derek Jacobi on PBS' "Mystery!"
series, he was in the familiar cassock of Ellis Peters' medieval
monk-detective, Brother Cadfael, gently solving perplexing crimes
around the abbey in the village of Shrewsbury.
But this week he's back in a rather shocking new role: A skirt-chasing old reprobate named Squire Fairfield in "The Wyvern Mystery," the opening attraction of the 21st season of "Mystery!"
How bad is he? Well, Squire Fairfield raises a little orphan girl named Alice until she's grown into a peach of a young woman--then breaks the news to her that she's going to be: The Bride of Fairfield! Worse yet, he wants to seal it with a wet, sloppy kiss while plucking at her bodice in a twisted preview of loathsome things to come.
Though
his comely young ward, Alice Maybell (Naomi Watts), has always
loved Squire Fairfield like a...well, great grandfather, the
notion that he wants to frolic with her under the sheets comes
as quite a shock. In fact, if you pay close attention to the
look on her face when he first plants a big wet one on her, you
might think she'd just been forced to smooch a dead mackerel
that's been out in the sun too long.
(Yes, there's more to her repulsion than meets the eye: She's
sweet on the Squire's son. But that's a whole different matter,
which occupies most of the two-hour "Wyvern Mystery,"
playing tonight and next Thursday night on "Mystery!")
|
He's not exactly a eunuch, but Cadfael doesn't despoil young girls like Squire Fairfield wants to do. |
 |
It's always a stunner when fans of a TV series get used to seeing the lead actor playing a good guy for several years and then he goes bad on you in a new role. If the actor isn't especially gifted, it really can mess up his career plan because the public often won't like him in the new part and the ratings will tank.
However, that isn't a problem with PBS's "Mystery!" because ratings don't have quite the significance they have on commercial networks--and because the leading actors on "Mystery!" usually are accomplished British character players who routinely go from TV to movies to theater and are comfortable in all kinds of roles.
One
outstanding example would be David Suchet, who has played Agatha
Christie's Hercule Poirot for more than a decade on "Mystery!"
and now on the A&E network's "Mysteries to Die For."
Suchet frequently steps away from "good guy" roles
like Poirot to play real scumbag villains, like the terrorist
who tried to crash an airliner into the White House in the feature
film "Executive Decision."
Sir Derek Jacobi is an equally versatile actor, who had played
many villains before he became Brother Cadfael. In fact, it's
easy to imagine why wanted to play this rather nasty old man
in "The Wyvern Mystery": After several seasons wearing
the monk's robes of Brother Cadfael, he probably felt like pinching
a few bottoms and giving us all a good jolt.
Suchet and Jacobi certainly weren't the first actors in the long
history of PBS' "Mystery!" to relish playing good old-fashioned
dastardly types after a prolonged period of playing one of our
hero-sleuths. Most actors will tell you heroes can be boring
after awhile, that the best way to tune-up the acting equipment
is to take on a villainous role and chew the scenery until you
get it all out of your system.
Let me cite another perfect example: There is no more laidback detective hero in the annals of "Mystery!" than P.D. James' Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. Roy Marsden is the only actor who ever played Dalgliesh--and he's played him in film versions of every Dalgliesh novel, all of them for "Mystery!"
If you recall, Marsden plays Dalgliesh as a stalwart, thoughtful man, not given to anything remotely resembling the chewing of scenery. In fact, it's likely Marsden has to check his pulse rate every now and then to make sure Dalgliesh is still alive.
And I'm sure that's one of the reasons why Marsden agreed to take on one of the more outrageously colorful roles of his career in 1994: John Stockton, the infamous Sussex Vampyre, in "The Last Vampyre," a special two-hour mystery that pitted him against none other than Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett). Wearing his Dracula-style cape, Marsden revelled in this outlandish character, challenging Brett in a duel of scenery-chomping grandeur.
 |
|
 |
Here's another marvelous example: Several years after he was firmly established in all our minds as Horace Rumpole, the boozy, but brilliant barrister of the Old Bailey in the long-running "Mystery!" series "Rumpole of the Bailey," Leo McKern stepped WAY out of character to play the villainous international munitions dealer Basil Zaharov in "Reilly, Ace of Spies" on "Mystery!"
Not for a moment did anyone ever suspect Zaharov of putting up with a battleaxe of a wife like Rumpole's "She Who Must Be Obeyed." He was master of all he surveyed and you can bet the wine he drank bore no comparison to the bilge Rumpole consumed at Pommeroy's pub. In other words, does anybody need to ask why McKern approached the role of Zaharov with such fervor?
Yet another prime example would be that of Dame Diana Rigg, the current host of "Mystery!" Dame Diana began her relationship with most of us by playing glamorous and heroic Emma Peel on TV's "The Avengers." These days she plays a much older, considerably less frisky, but still brilliant detective in the "Mrs. Bradley Mysteries" on the series she hosts. (New episodes are coming in early 2001.)
But Dame Diana loves taking leave of these sturdy heroic characters every now and then in order to play truly virulent people. I refer you to the character of Helena Vesey--vengeful ex-wife and overly-doting mom in "Mother Love," one of the best of all dramas in the history of the "Mystery!" series. In that 1990 mystery, this demented woman committed nothing but awful crimes, including the poisoning of marzipan cookies intended for the children her ex-husband fathered by his new wife.
If that isn't among the best performances Dame Diana ever gave, then I'm the successor to Mikhail Baryshnikov--and, believe me, you don't want to even think about me in ballet tights! Dame Diana's motives for taking that nasty part are obvious.
Another favorite example would be the time John Thaw--interpreter of many TV heroes, including our beloved Inspector Morse of "Mystery!"--took the opportunity to play that peg-legged rascal Jonathan Small in "The Sign of Four" (1988) on "Mystery!" That made him yet another of the antagonists of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes. Thaw chewed so much scenery in that colorful part that the termites were jealous.
On the bright side, though, he didn't have to listen to opera all day, pretending to like it as much as Morse.
In every one of these cases, the viewers at home readily accepted the change of character for their heroes. It has worked in reverse, too: Ian Richardson, who probably has played more bad guys than good guys in his distinguished TV career, this season returns with more episodes of "Murder Rooms," the series in which he plays the newest "Mystery!" hero, Dr. Joseph Bell, who inspired young writer Conan Doyle to use him as the model for Sherlock Holmes. Networks usually don't order more episodes of programs if viewers don't like the hero.
Still, we probably have to consider the "Mystery!" experience something of an anomaly because of the quality of the actors and their distaste for getting stuck in the same image for an entire career. For most American TV actors, it's probably a big mistake to fool around with your image that way.
If James Garner's Jim Rockford had started molesting young virgins right after he left "The Rockford Files," chances are we wouldn't forgive him quite as easily as we're probably going to forgive Sir Derek Jacobi for the kinky stuff he does in "The Wyvern Mystery."
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The photo from "The Wyvern Mystery" is © by BBC Worldwide.
Ron Miller now writes about mysteries on the official MYSTERY! website at: http://www.pbs.org/mystery
and on the
mystery page of Alibris.com, one of the underwriters
of PBS' "Mystery!" series, at:
http://www.alibris.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |