Villain
crushes are like the pot that won’t boil if you watch it. When you’re actively
seeking a new flame, you will mostly find nothing. The worrying thing is that
so many of my crushes start with a “surely not?” phase, where I am in denial
about having fallen at all, and I’m sligthly anxious about what taboo I’m going
to break next. There seems to be little
rhyme or reason to when villain infatuations strike –they just happen, or don’t
as the case may be.
How, for
instance, can I explain my lack of enthusiasm for Doctor Simeon, later morphing into
the Great Intelligence, in the latest episodes of Doctor Who? He’s Victorian, he’s chilly, he’s ruthless, he’s – well
– intelligent: in sum, just my type. True, he’s played by Richard E. Grant,
whom I have found vaguely unsettling in previous roles. However, I’ve always
thought that this was because he was playing dashing blades (Sir Percy Blakeney,
James Harthouse) or good eggs (Bob Cratchit) instead of villain roles, which he
was obviously better suited for. Gosford
Park seemed to bear me out: I approved of him as George the cynical footman
(admittedly, it would have been hard to go wrong with a part like that).
In Doctor Who, though, the Grant-unsettling
effect was still very much in evidence. Consequently, I had the weird
experience of viewing a villain in the same way a majority of viewers do: with
fear and even a little loathing. Instead of thinking “Yummy, what an adversary”
I went “Yikes, I’d hate the likes of him messing with my past”. In a way, a triumph for Richard E. Grant then, as this
was of course exactly how I was supposed to react.
And why
don’t I even like Thomas Watkins in Upstairs Downstairs? He’s not precisely
a villain, but you could say that he’s a villain surrogate. He often behaves in
a way no dyed-in-the-wool hero would get away with, and he’s got the cunning
and ambition which you normally expect from the baddie. But I just can’t warm
to the man. I’ve debated the point with myself roughly as follows.
“Why I
don’t like Watkins? Well, he’s so shifty, isn’t he?”
“I thought you liked that in a manservant. And why don’t you call him Thomas?”
“Well, obviously I can’t. Anyway, Watkins only ever thinks of himself. He’d walk over corpses just to get on. Just look at how he lets the admittedly idiotic Mr Kirbridge down.”
“As I was saying…”
“And then he’s so cold in his personal life. He disappoints Rose, and I’m never quite convinced that he really loves Sarah. They both deserve better than him in my opinion.”
“I see, cold in his personal life. You mean like Mr Tulkinghorn? Or Bitzer? Or Balzac’s bankers?”
“Oh, just shut up, will you?”
“Well, obviously I can’t. Anyway, Watkins only ever thinks of himself. He’d walk over corpses just to get on. Just look at how he lets the admittedly idiotic Mr Kirbridge down.”
“As I was saying…”
“And then he’s so cold in his personal life. He disappoints Rose, and I’m never quite convinced that he really loves Sarah. They both deserve better than him in my opinion.”
“I see, cold in his personal life. You mean like Mr Tulkinghorn? Or Bitzer? Or Balzac’s bankers?”
“Oh, just shut up, will you?”
As you can see, I can’t explain it, but there it is. In part, I can blame a latent bullish aggressiveness in Watkins’s character – even towards Rose, at one point – which I really don’t think is that common among my own diddle-diddle-darlings. Also, he came off rather badly in the spin-off series beguilingly titled Thomas and Sarah, where we learn that he didn’t make a success of his garage and he steadfastly refuses to marry his live-in-girlfriend Sarah. The spin-off ended – on a cliff-hanger too – after only one series: I blame Watkins, plus the couple’s continuing bad luck (surely, also his fault).
So, when it
comes to villain crushes, maybe it’s just as well to stick with what I’ve got
for the present. Away with embarrassment: sometime in the near future, I will buy that T-shirt with Downton’s Thomas on it and the caption
“Trust me”. But the question remains when I’m going to wear it?
