Patrick Malahide, An Appreciation

Well, like most of the globe right now, Admin and I are stuck at home.   It’s a very strange and surreal situation to be in, and more than a little worrying.    We also hope that Mr. Malahide is keeping himself safe and healthy during this time.  BUT…  nonetheless, we got to wondering how various Malahide characters would handle the situation we’re facing now, and we thought it might be a good distraction to post about them.

RF:  My choices are:

Jack Turner
(“Hunted“, 2012)

Stomping around his eerily green-lit basement
just to get some exercise

This is a bit of a no-brainer as we already have ample evidence as to what crimelord Jack Turner is like when he’s cooped up.  The words “caged tiger” spring to mind.  Even though Jack had a pretty big house for just him, his son Stevie (Stephen Campbell Moore), and grandson Eddie (Oscar Kennedy) – okay, and a few henchmen plus his right-hand man, Bingham (Tom Beard)  – it seemed like any amount of confinement was unendurable for Jack.   He’s very naturally an active guy, and staying at home all day just isn’t his thing.  In the early part of the series, it seemed like he was stomping around his basement just to work off some tension.   He’s the kind of guy who likes to be out and about so he be aware of what’s going on in his universe and be “hands-on” when he thinks it’s needed.  So I think he’d definitely go a little stir-crazy if he was forced to stay inside for any length of time.  Certainly after we’d seen Jack cooped up for a while in the first couple of episodes, it was something of a relief to see him finally let outside to get into some action.  He’s not much of an online/tech-savvy guy either, so it’s not like he can Skype with all of his criminal contacts and do business that way.

Wearing off some energy by driving around at night.
Watch out for that cyclist, Jack!

That said, I’m not sure Jack would just passively obey the rules, even if it was for his own good.  I have the feeling he’d sneak out after hours whenever possible and get some take-away, or perhaps just drive around on the now-deserted carriageways a little (or a lot) too fast.  He might get nabbed by CCTV and speed cameras, but we already know that Jack  has connections on the police force that would surely be only too happy to rip up any tickets he might get.  All of this is assuming he’d prefer to stay in London and he doesn’t have a nice country estate being held in reserve.  But I think Jack would go even more stir-crazy on a country estate than he would in self-isolation in London.
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