Please No! But alas - too late.

I have made passing reference recently to my less than positive attitude to a certain Thomas Brodie Sangster, actor of this parish.

I cannot quite put my finger on why this, possibly perfectly nice young person, irritates me so much, although I suspect one of the reasons is that he is always there. I seem to have been seeing his little freckly snub-nosed face for ever and a day. Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, Lewis, Game of Thrones and many many more. I wasn't pleased to see him with a major-ish role in Game of Thrones and was horrified when I saw his name flash up in the opening credits for Wolf Hall. For a brief and very enjoyable moment I allowed myself to believe that he was going to be Mark Smeaton, as this would at least mean that I could look forward to him coming to a sticky end, but no, it turned out that he was Rafe Sadler and destined to be with us, and whole, right up to the closing credits of the final episode.

 

I also think that as he gets older his acting becomes less good. Possibly a little too much self consciousness is creeping in. He was in fact not at all bad in Love Actually in a cute-sie, sickening kid sort of a way, but his performance in Wolf Hall hardly merits the name. Standing about stiffly in historical costume is not the same thing as acting, something which I'd have thought he would know.

 

Now I have been vaguely aware for some time that someone is doing a remake of Thunderbirds, an exciting  TV puppet show from my childhood which I remember with huge affection and I suppose I was vaguely thinking I would tune in and give it a go when it hit the small screen some time this year, more for the sake of nostalgia than anything else.

 

And then, a couple of days ago, I heard to my consternation that Thomas B-S was going to be doing one of the voices in this remake.  And not just any voice: no, the fates had decided that Thomas B-S, my current least favourite under 25 actor was going to voice none other than John Tracy, my absolute fave of the central family of five Tracy brothers - when I was 8. This is not of course a sign that the universe hates me, nor a disaster on a par with say, a hurricane, but having said that to put it into a context on my list of Bad Things that can Happen in the World, my response is still - Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!! Bad Idea. No No No.

 

The OH of course is unbothered by this piece of opprobrious casting. 'I always considered that John was a sociopath, why else did they banish him to Thunderbird 5 for 3 weeks out of every 4?' he said as I was moaning about it. This is a total lie, because when he was 8 and watching Thunderbirds the OH would not have known the word 'sociopath' let alone  known what it meant. Not to mention that as far as I recall, John Tracy showed no signs of sociopathic tendencies, although granted this would have been difficult since he was basically a lump of wood with a motor in his head.

 

I refuse to blot the blog with a picture of the ubiquitous Mr Sangster, but here's a picture of the lovely non-sociopathic John Tracy. (Hard to see the attraction nowadays tbh)

 

and here, because I couldn't resist sharing it, is one of his brother Virgil, looking distinctly shifty.