I was very sorry to hear yesterday of the death of actor Paul Darrow, who played Kerr Avon in the TV series Blake's 7 many decades ago. He was one of the first characters I had a total crush on as a child...
Blake's 7 was a massively popular 1970s Brit SF series with a rather varied quality of script (and the occasional terrible set) which probably doesn't stand the test of time, but it goes down in history for having the most crushing ending ever to a series, as the Evil Federation comprehensively wins and our protagonists are betrayed to ignominious deaths. It traumatised a generation of kids - if you think the Red Wedding was grim then you are just a naive baby!
The other thing it did to a generation of kids was turn them on to some less-than-vanilla character relationships in the shape of Avon and arch-villain Supreme Commander Servalan...
Avon was a bad guy who accidentally found himself in company with the rebellious heroes and stuck around for the political struggle because he didn't have any better options. He dressed in black, was witheringly sarcastic and heartless, and is generally responsible for all my sexual interest in uber-intelligent emotionally-unavailable bastards.
Here's a lovingly-curated compilation of his bitchiest moments:
RIP Paul Darrow - you will be missed 😔
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