Ah, hell. British actor Warren Clarke died yesterday
after a brief illness, according to his agent. At age 67 he was way too young
to stop engaging us on the screen.
In his career Clarke gave us everything from the
psychopathic (in A Clockwork Orange)
to the servile (an episode of Inspector
Lewis).
I loved him in the series Sleepers, about two KGB agents who’ve been in deep cover for so
long in the UK that they’ve become quintessential Brits. And he creeped me out
as that menacing Corporal Dixon in The Jewel
in the Crown.
Of course, mostly for me he was the personification of Chief
Superintendent Andy Dalziel in the BBC series based on Reginald Hill’s Dalziel
and Pascoe novels. I’m told that he wasn’t quite Hill’s notion of the vulgar,
relentless, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, vastly politically-incorrect
Yorkshireman (not fat enough); but he certainly got the job done for me.
The man had a voice that rumbled like a West Riding thunderstorm and a face that looked the Afrika Korps had run over it. And his body was definitely more by Pillsbury than by Fisher. So I thought he was pretty damned good as Dalziel.
(Yes, I think the series jumped
the shark with Season 8, and Clarke himself seemed to come somewhat
artistically unhinged. But, damn, he was good until then.)
Everyone from Malcolm McDowell to the cast of Call the Midwife has spoken of what a great
guy Clarke was to work with—professionally and personally. In a fear-driven and
ego-based industry that’s saying a lot.
I believe a small splash of single malt is in order.
Because I miss him already.
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