It has become something of a truism that evil characters are a hoot to play - and, as a viewer, to respond to - while the goodies are rather more… uninspiring. With panto season just getting underway, I would put money on reading an interview in which a pretty young soap actress says how much fun it is scaring the little kids on the front row as the Wicked Queen.
Of course, most well-worn phrases have some basis in truth, and our TV reviewer Harry Venning certainly felt it applied to the current BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit:
There are very many good reasons to watch Little Dorrit, but two of the best of them are Alun Armstrong, who plays both of the loathsome Flintwich twins. The brothers are involved in some nefarious, if yet unspecified, scheming to do with the Marshalsea debtors prison.
But so is everyone else, it seems…
Matthew MacFayden and Claire Foy play the story’s morally upright hero and heroine, Arthur and Amy, but it doesn’t look half as much fun.
I don’t think anyone could argue that Alun Armstrong and Andy Serkis in particular had a wonderful time hamming up their parts, but Elise Favet, who wrote into The Stage this week, thinks that we celebrate our baddies far too much:
Yes, of course it’s fun to play villains and villainesses, but it’s just as enjoyable to play heroes and heroines. Good characters are just as strong (often stronger) than bad ones.
So, do the villains really provide the best characters, or is time we also appreciated the greatness of television heroes?
What audiences and, I would imagine, actors are always hoping for is depth and a little mystery in our leading characters, and perhaps that is simply easier for writers to establish with “bad” characters. With villains, we are inclined to ask why they act as they do, and writers are therefore compelled to provide us with interesting and intriguing answers. We get a back-story - maybe filled with tragedy, or betrayal (real or indeed only perceived) - and as such our villains often become more real and immediate. That sort of meatiness in a part is surely just what actors are looking for.
So perhaps one explanation for the bad reputation of good characters is that we do not demand such a rigorous explanation of what makes them so sweet and innocent in the first place. Our goodies, then, can feel a little more flimsy than their angst-ridden counterparts - but we should maybe consider that a baddie who is simply evil for no reason can become equally dull in the long term.
Bad or good, I think what we really want - and what actors love to play and explore - is complexity. We want to be able to engage with a character, get under their skin, hate them, love them. Baddies are great for provoking an instant reaction, but when I think of truly great television characters, I seem to find a similar theme recurring - they are not the bad guys, but the good guys tested. Call us masochists, but we like to see our heroes suffer.
That’s why (among a myriad of other contributing factors, of course) the time-bending hero of Doctor Who is such an enduring character that viewers love and actors are desperate to play (huge fame and public scrutiny notwithstanding). He is inherently good and moral, but those morals are constantly tested, and he has the sadness and the loneliness in his long past that mean that he’s as deep and mysterious as they come. For all his ‘otherness’, we engage fully with the Doctor, are on his side, and always want to see him doing the right thing. All this from a bona fide goodie.
Think of Gene Hunt in Life On Mars, or Ros or even Harry in Spooks. These are all good characters that have a certain extra something, whom we identify with when they are going through turmoil or faced with a huge and difficult decision.
In the end, I think we want the same thing from both goodies and baddies - we want them to be a puzzle which can slowly be pieced together - and when a programme is packed with figures that provide just that, it is always going to be a winner for actor and audience alike.
I agree, so often with good characters they're bland but if they're interesting they are just as fun - after all you'd never prefer to be the baddie rather than Indiana Jones or James Bond.
The prime example of blandness is the ending of Disney's Fantasia (the original). You get the wonderful Evil section "Night on a bare mountain" with that amazing devil & lots happening followed by pathetic boring Good - "Ave Maria" with a few lights flitting through a wood & ending in a church.
Mind you with evil acting, I think one of the things actors enjoy is letting out all those sides to your character that you normally supress. I know I love it as an amateur.