WARNING: This newsletter contains spoilers for a lot of TV shows. So if you don’t want to know pertinent details about House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones, ER, Cracker, It’s a Sin, The Wire, The Walking Dead and The Sopranos, you might want to skip the first section and scroll down to the Take Five section.
I’ve witnessed a lot of deaths on TV over the years, but suicide by dragon is definitely a new one. That was the fate that Laena Velaryon opted for in this week’s instalment of House of the Dragon, extinguished by fire after realising that neither she or her unborn baby would survive childbirth. “TV deaths don’t get more horrific than that” was how the Guardian’s recap put it. I’m not sure about that – I still have the gruesome end of the Red Viper of Dorne in House of the Dragon’s predecessor stuck in my head – but it certainly was memorable. (Controversial too – playing as it did into wider questions about the show’s peculiar fixation on childbirth.)
There’s a lot of death on TV in 2022 – far more certainly than there was, say, 25 years ago. That’s of course down in part to the fact that there’s a lot more TV full stop. But it’s also down to the way that TV has changed: the move away from more traditional self-censoring models (network TV in the US, the watershed in the UK), a greater number of shows playing with genres like fantasy or horror, an increased audience tolerance for violence. In such a sea of untimely demises, it can be hard to stand out from the pack.
A truly memorable TV death can be sudden or inevitable, violent or peaceful, emotionally shattering or, even occasionally, a cause for celebration. What it does have to be though is earned – the character, whether you love or despise them, needs to be well-drawn enough for their death to feel significant. Which doesn’t necessarily mean years of careful character development. A much-cited memorable TV death is that of Lisa Faulkner’s character in Spooks, who famously suffered an encounter with a deep fat fryer in the show’s second episode. It wasn’t just the grisly nature of her offing that makes the death so memorable, it was the work the show had done in teeing her up as a significant character only to pull the rug away early on (a trick repeated to great effect on more than one occasion a decade later by Line of Duty).
But what are your most memorable TV deaths? We put the question to you last week and had a truckload of responses. Here are some of the highlights …
You be the Guide
“Dr Greene in ER. From a passing of the baton to a bemused Dr Carter (“You set the tone”, a line said of Dr Greene in the pilot), to characters in the hospital reflecting on a letter relating the news, and a funeral montage set to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World – just beautifully handled. Genre TV at its best.” – Richard Hamilton
“Definitely Ned Stark in the last episode of the first series of Game of Thrones. Closely followed by the Red Wedding, where pretty much all the rest of his family got wiped out. I was rather impressed that George RR Martin clearly has no issue with killing off his most popular characters.” – Bernadette Stott
“Bilborough (Christopher Ecclestone) in Cracker. So real I felt I should attend the funeral in the days after it aired.” – Alison Shore [A popular choice this one! – Ed]
“Ritchie in It’s a Sin. That moment where his mother tells Jill on the promenade. His mother so spiteful in her grief instantly slams you with devastation and anger and vice-like crushes your heart. Death delivered in that way by an onscreen character is truly a unique scene.” – Elaine Mcnee
“Spoilt for choice with The Wire for this, Wallace and D’Angelo up there, but I’ll go for Bodie – he was one of the good bad guys. Damn.” – Simon Marczycha
“Glen and Abraham, The Walking Dead, Season 7 Episode 1. The most brutalising and upsetting piece of TV I have ever watched.” – John Finch
“The assassination of Adriana La Cerva in season 5 of The Sopranos was absolutely heartbreaking. She’s tricked by Tony and Silvio into thinking that Christopher has attempted suicide, before getting shot in the woods while attempting to crawl to safety. Then her possessions are tossed on to wasteland by her feckless fiancee. Brutal. Genius, but brutal.” – Steve Woodward
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