When there's not much to write about.....how I became an avowed Richard Armitage fan.
After perusing the fan forums, I conclude that I'm not entirely off the deep end, though admittedly more delusional than your average television viewer. Still nuts enough to write an entire blog post about an actor though, as if obsessing alone somehow dampens the crazy factor. It doesn't.
Crazy kicked off with a random viewing of North Square, a show about some posh totty lawyers. RPJ played his usual smug, smart, but somehow lovable self. About this time, the 7th series of Spooks was starting. I gave it a go, only because of one Rupert Penry-Jones. Little did I know he was going to get blown up in the first episode, or that I wouldn't miss him at all thereafter, or that the show would be awesome. Didn't really pay attention when Lucas North was first dragged out with a bag over his head. It wasn't until the conversation in the car with Harry Pierce that the man even registered on the radar. It's the moment when Lucas says that he'd agree to play spy for the Russians and he gets this look...is he really a double agent? Verrry intriguing. While everyone else was deciding what side he's on, I was trying to figure out if this scraggly actor (his character had just emerged from 8 years of Russian imprisonment) was dangerously handsome or just a skinny dude who needed a haircut, a shower, and some chicken.
Well, we know how that one turned out. Here is where credit goes to the show for its delicious powers of seduction. Those first 60 minutes of season 7 were television crack. There were many plot and character strands that converged into one explosive climax - possible double agent, massive bomb plot, kidnapped soldier. What really hooked me though was the return of Ros, agent extraordinaire. If MI5 recruited more people like her, they wouldn't be leaving shit in cabs and trains all the time. In her opening scene, she is informed by the Section D that her mission is compromised, and she's ordered out of Russia where she's working undercover. But one phone call ain't stopping this woman. She's minutes away from reaching her contact, and when she arrives, the guy's dead. As she's searching his body for information, she spies, from a beer bottle, an assassin. Within seconds, she disposes of the guy, probably with her bare hands and without secreting a bead of sweat. In my Second Life, I want to be Ros.
But I diverge. By now, I'm hooked, and since Lucas North is kind of a major character, and because he appears tattooed, shirtless, and ripped, my curiosity is piqued. Naturally, I do a little research. I don't remember what came next - Robin Hood, Vicar of Dibley, or North and South - but the combination of those 3, plus the ongoing series of Spooks was like Charlie getting lost in the Chocolate Factory (wait a minute...). Pure imagination and sensory overload.
And that's how it happened.
