Pop Culture Roundup for August 28-September 8: TV Villains, Special Edition

by Karen A. Romanko

This installment of PCR highlights TV villains through the decades, costumed, dashing, or elegant, but rarely truly EVIL, because the Roundup likes to spin in the direction of happiness. They’re a diverse lot, with “mothers,” "gurus," “cats,” “foxes,” and more, villains to suit every wicked TV taste. Enjoy!

August 28: Greetings, mystery TV smarties! Here are 10 nicknames for villains, some nasty, some kind of nice, from mystery, spy, and crime TV series. Name the series where each appeared. Play fair, and work from your own knowledge rather than searching on Google. I will reveal the answers tomorrow (i.e in the next entry).

1) Le Renard
2) The Woman
3) Zelda the Great
4) Mr. Yin
5) Six-Way Killer
6) Jack of All Trades
7) Simon the Likeable
8) Mother Muffin
9) The Asylum Killer
10) Pollutia

August 29: Here are the answers to yesterday‘s TV quiz on villain nicknames. The best score was five out of 10! No one got number 10!

1) Le Renard from Remington Steele
2) The Woman from Sherlock Holmes, various versions.
3) Zelda the Great from Batman
4) Mr. Yin from Pysch
5) Six-Way Killer from Monk
6) Jack of All Trades from Profiler
7) Simon the Likeable from Get Smart
8) Mother Muffin from The Girl from UNCLE
9) The Asylum Killer from McMillan & Wife
10) Pollutia from Black Scorpion

Yes, this is Boris Karloff as Mother Muffin!

August 31: TV villain of the day! Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, the purr-fect female foil for the caped crusaders on Batman (1966–1968). I love the casual quirkiness of this photo, and I used it in my book Women of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (McFarland, 2019). Meow!

September 1: TV villain of the day! John Light as Hercule Flambeau, a dashing thief who bedevils amateur sleuth Father Brown (Mark Williams) in Father Brown (2013-). It’s amazing how priceless jewels and paintings always turn up for display in and around the sleepy hamlet of Kembleford, with Flambeau never far behind. Below, three faces of Flambeau.

September 4: TV villain of the day! Dana Wynter stars as Elena Standish, one of the most elegant and sympathetic villains ever to grace a TV screen. In “The Man without a Face,” a 1974 episode of McMillan & Wife, Mac’s past as an intelligence operative brings murder to San Francisco, so he tracks down his old colleagues, including the lovely Elena, who is hiding one BIG secret. Below: Dana Wynter as Elena, left, and Rock Hudson as Mac, Steve Forrest as Mark Erickson, and Wynter.

September 7: A fun and fascinating part of writing my book in progress, Historical Women on Scripted Television, is comparing photos of the real women I cover with the actors who portrayed them. It will come as no surprise that television tends to glamorize its historical subjects. (One particular phrase I have coined is “frontier false eyelashes.”) On the left, for example, we have the real Belle Starr, “the queen of the outlaws,” in an early 1880s studio portrait, when she was in her 30s. Top right is Jean Willes, who portrayed Starr in the Maverick episode "Full House" (1959). Bottom right shows Lynn Bari, who played Belle in "Perilous Passage,” a 1960 episode of the short-lived NBC western Overland Trail. (Pictured with Bari are William Bendix, left, and Doug McClure.) In TV’s Old West, clearly there are plenty of opportunities for a woman to get her hair and makeup done.

September 8: Gee, I wonder what decade this photo is from. Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Larry Storch in “The Groovy Guru,” a 1968 episode of Get Smart. It’s heartbreaking when groovy gurus use their powers for evil purposes. Definitely not hip.

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Last, but not least, please check out my books about women and television from McFarland Publishers, available in trade paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon:

Television's Female Spies and Crimefighters and Women of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television
 On sale now!