A thought popped into my mind during the second episode of Hard Sun, and every subsequent episode has only helped to exacerbate it. That thought, presented simply, is “I wish the sun would get a bloody move on”.
You suspect this wasn’t the intention. In a show about the slow disintegration of society in the face of certain solar armageddon, chances are you’re probably supposed to root for humanity. But Hard Sun is such hard work, and its characters are so unstoppably annoying, that you find yourself rooting for the end of the world instead. “Come on sun,” you mutter to yourself as Jim Sturgess mangles yet another line into yet another unconvincingly sub-Luther growl, “Just explode and put everyone out of their misery”.
Genuinely, hand on heart, every second that the sun in Hard Sun doesn’t incinerate the entire population of Earth into a pile of dust seems like a wasted opportunity. If I was the sun, I’d have flamethrowered the lot of them at first glimpse of Agyness Deyn’ haircut. And you would have thanked me for it, because it would stopped anyone from making any more episodes of Hard Sun.
And this got me thinking. Hard Sun isn’t the only show where I’ve sided with the antagonist. Leaving aside anti-heroes – because that’s a much trickier proposal – there are many other programmes where, either thanks to their own charisma or the dreariness of their opposite number, I’ve actively wanted the baddie to win.
In a true and just world, for example, Joffrey would still be ruling over Westeros like a malignant sore. Game of Thrones is densely populated with bastards, but he nevertheless rose to the top; sitting cockeyed on the Iron Throne, impetuously daring the world to kill him. Joffrey was privilege incarnate, but he managed to be so unrepentantly toxic – and, crucially, to own his toxicity – that he somehow looped around the event horizon and ended up as a kind of swaggering, cocky hero. Nobody knows how Game of Thrones will end yet, but the most satisfying scenario involves Joffrey returning from the dead, blowing everyone up and then sitting down to test out all the ringtones on his new phone at top volume on a bus.
There are others. The first series of Netflix’s Daredevil endlessly teetered on the brink of dank self-pity, and it was only the appearance of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin that managed to liven anything up. Ideally, he’d have punched all the way through Daredevil’s skull in the very first scene, and the rest of the series would have been about him staring at walls, which was the most interesting part of the show anyway.
On Lost, the Man in Black was always more interesting than the blandly do-gooding Jacob and Ben – who actually murdered Jacob – was often the most interesting character on the whole show. Shaun Dooley’s magnificent beard of evil was all that kept Gunpowder afloat. Gotham is such a by-the-numbers mess that it all but handed itself to Jada Pinkett Smith’s Fish Mooney. Her performance was so at odds with the drudgery around it that you would have forgiven her if she’d chosen to drown Bruce Wayne in a well at birth.
Still, no baddie is quite as irresistible as Hard Sun’s actual sun. One quick flare, that’s all it’d take. Wait until Jim Sturgess is outside and looking up and, blammo! I’d embroider the sun a great big celebratory sash if it did it before the finale on Saturday.
Which TV baddies do you unintentionally root for? Leave your suggestions below.
