TV’s Best Psychopath: The Charmer, Havers and Hamilton

By Will Barber Taylor

To depict the psychopath accurately or at least, accurately enough for a television programme, you must ensure that their detachment from the rest of humanity is clear. Psychopaths, as in those suffering from psychopathic tendencies, are all around us but we mainly only think of them in regard to blood soaked monsters of the big and small screen.

Norman Bates is believed to be a classic example of a psychopath and the very title of Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho reinforces that. Bates wouldn’t probably be considered a psychopath by most doctors today. His detachment from reality is too profound, his split personality with his dead domineering mother too deep set to mean he could truly be classed as a psychopath. He is more psychotic than psychopathic, similar to Tony Curtis’ Oscar winning portrayal of The Boston Strangler (who in reality had none of the multiple personalities the film gives him).

If you want a true big screen psychopath, then Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley or Bret Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman are truer to what a psychopath is (though again the nature of Bateman’s mental state is questionable throughout both the novel and film; how delusion is he? Are his delusions in fact delusions at all?) and certainly would spring to the mind of anyone who is asked to name a famous fictional psychopath.

And yet, there is a contender for the title of fiction’s greatest psychopath who has yet to appear on the big screen. His mastery of human nature, his inability to understand the feelings of others and his child like desire to get what he feels are owed to him combine with a rakish charm make Ernest Ralph Gorse (or Ralph Ernest Gorse in The Charmer) a truly fine example of a psychopath. Both in the above-mentioned television series The Charmer and in the novels that inspired it by Patrick Hamilton (The West Pier, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse and The Unknown Assailant) Gorse is a social climber, overly sensitive about his own background, who combines charm with blackmail, theft and sexual sadism.

In the same way that Bates was purportedly inspired by Ed Gein (although author Robert Bloch stated his creation of Bates was more inspired by the circumstances of the Gein case rather than directly inspired by him) Gorse was inspired by the 1940s killer Neville Gordon Heath. Like Gorse, Heath was a social climbing sexual sadist who saw no remorse in the harm that he caused, killing two women in 1946. Heath’s pretence at being a peer or a lieutenant colonel combined with his charm allowed him to use the confusion of war to his advantage, escaping court martial in the UK by fleeing to South Africa and then escaping the same fate there by simply returning to the UK.

Gorse, both in the novels and for the majority of the TV series is not in fact a killer; rather he is an arch manipulator who, Hamilton hints throughout the novels is responsible for some hideous crime for which he is tried for and presumably executed. What makes Hamilton’s work so compelling is this lurking sense that Gorse’s sadomasochism and self-entitlement, his manipulation of all those around them in a breezy, charismatic way will eventually lead him to a similar fate to Heath. Yet, we never see that in the novels due to Hamilton’s early death from alcoholism in 1962. The Unknown Assailant gets close as it reaches it denouement, but Gorse does not kill the unfortunate victims of his charms. This means that if anything Hamilton’s sequence is incomplete — there is certainly enough room for another novel in the series but one will, unless penned by a successor to Hamilton, sadly never be written.

This isn’t the case with Allan Prior’s part adaptation of Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse, The Charmer. In the series Prior delivers Gorse to his ultimate fate and gives his career of crime a finish that Hamilton was never able to give it. Prior’s adaptation begins with a dramatization of the aforementioned Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse but Prior expands on the work in that novel, turning Stimpson from an annoyed cuckold who seeks comfort with an Irish maid into a psychotic avenger, obsessed with Gorse and determined to destroy him at any cost. Prior’s interpretation of Stimpston is especially fascinating as he gives the character an air of intensity which is not fully brought to the surface in the novel.

This isn’t the case in the TV series. Gorse’s sexual conquest, as Stimpson sees it, of Mrs Plumbleigh — Bruce, a gin soaked army widow, is at the core of Stimpson obsession with destroying Gorse. There is an element of the vengeful cuckold to Stimpson; he remarks to Gorse that if “handled right” Mrs Plumbleigh — Bruce would be willing to “put out” — something Gorse achieves that Stimpson is unable to. The sexual jealously combines with Gorse’s making Stimpson look a fool to help ferment within the latter an intense and fanatical hatred. Whilst it is clear throughout that Gorse is a psychopath, Stimpson’s character is also evidently unhinged as well; he breaks a glass at the mere thought of besting Gorse and laughs maniacally in his car when Gorse is unable to claim life insurance for the death of his wife (which Gorse inadvertently causes). Prior’s writing of this complex character matches Bernard Hepton’s excellent portrayal of him to make Stimpson almost as psychologically fascinating as Gorse; a prime example of the repressed, middle aged, middle class establishment figure that is unable to express himself properly and cannot stand anyone who can best him.

Not only does Prior make changes to Stimpson’s character, he draws on the other novels in the Gorse series to fully bring his titular villain to life. Prior borrows somewhat from both The West Pier and The Unknown Assailant in order to provide some explanation for his psycho sexual fantasies and provide more of an insight into why he is such a twisted individual. Gorse is, both in the TV and to some extent in the books (mainly The West Pier and to a lighter degree The Unknown Assailant) fond of using ropes to tie people up; in the novels there is the implication of sexualisation with the use of the restraints which is made explicit by Prior in the TV series. He uses it on every character he has sex with (to the fatal cost of Judy Parfitt’s Alison Warren, a character created specifically for the series) and seems to link it intensely to his own sexual desire. In the first novel The West Pier, there is an incident which details Gorse using bondage on a young girl whilst at school:

“Ethel Joyce then described how she drank two glasses of lemonade with the boy and then continued in the same irritating but slightly mysterious and not fully comprehensible way.

“After we left the shop, he suggested we enter the County Ground by the back entrance. I agreed. He said this was for fun. The back entrance was locked but he said we could climb over. He assisted me to do so. There were spikes on the gate but he showed me a way of avoiding them. We climbed up and jumped down from the pillar at one side.

“Having entered the ground, he took me to a shed underneath the big wooden stand. Here he found a rope. He did not have this rope when I met him, but I think he knew it was in the shed. I had a skipping rope with me, but this was not a skipping rope.

“He then suggested I should tie him up for fun. I did as he said, and when I had untied him, he suggested that he should tie me up as well. I agreed to this, and he tied me to the roller so I could not free myself. He then left me, and as he did not return, I became frightened and called out. He then returned and put his hand over my mouth and told me to be quiet.””

The incident can be clearly read to be an example not only of Gorse’s sadism but also of his need for domination, whether physically or intellectually. Gorse is, in this respect, characteristic of what can be described clinically as a narcissistic personality disorder. Psychopaths are often narcissistic as their perception of themselves is often distinctly separate from the way the rest of the world sees them. Gorse here shows no remorse for the pain that he is inflicting. Similarly, the psychopaths we are most familiar both in real life and fiction often exhibit examples of abnormal behaviour early on as Gorse does in the first part of The West Pier and as is hinted at in the TV series.

Prior’s interpretation of these events are two fold — there is a brief mention of Gorse having attended a private school in which there was an incident involving a boy dying in a lake and a watch (potentially inspired by a similar occurrence in Christie’s Endless Night) — and Prior incorporates the use of similar kind of restraints, though more often in the use of neck ligature, throughout the series to show Gorse’s sexual psychopathy, which Hamilton based in Gorse’s childhood.

All of this though would not work as well without Nigel Havers portrayal of Gorse. He carries off both the smooth, oily charm of the titular Charmer to a tee and is perfect when entering one of Gorse’s manic states of delusional behaviour. In the TV series this is often showed to be as a result of stress and Gorse seeing his own reflection — both when fleeing from Reading after Stimpson becomes aware of his deception of Mrs Plumbleigh Bruce and when he feels cornered and kills Alison Warren. Havers’ bulging, animalistic expression is perfectly in contrast of the cooler, more in control Gorse and tells us that there is something deeply troubled and unbalanced beneath the seemingly shiny veneer of Gorse’s otherwise polished act.

Like all truly good TV psychopaths (again, to use the term somewhat loosely) we know that Gorse isn’t merely a criminal. He isn’t simply concerned with breaking the law for profit but rather for a purpose — to gain a particular status he feels owed to him. The use of old school ties that Gorse did not receive but rather bought in order to strangle the women he has sex with; his pathetic plea in his own defence to Fiona Fullerton’s Clarice Mannors that he did it all because he “wanted to be” like Clarice and her fellow upper class friends; the instance of being called Captain Gorse and his dismay at not receiving a commission by legitimate means in the army are all signs of Gorse’s own feelings of inadequacy.

This is why Gorse in The Charmer is to my mind, the best example of a psychotic or psychopathic character on television. Throughout the series we get a far more detailed examination of his psyche than other psychopathic characters end up receiving on television or in film. The focus of their actions is often solely on murder or causing mayhem and this often, whilst being interesting, devolves into the kind of voyeurism that has caused many critics, rightly or wrongly, to condemn shows like The Fall for. Whilst that criticism can be understandable to a degree it cannot be levelled at this series. Gorse’s mental state does not focus on murder and his psychopathic nature is not, inherently, one of a murderer. Again, a modern misconception that has been reinforced by the media is that all psychopaths are murderers when in fact the vast majority of them are not. This nuance is present in the Gorse series and is present throughout, his true lack of understanding of other people’s emotions (which plays a part in his downfall — Gorse is genuinely surprised to learn that Stimpson still has an obsession with being humiliated by Gorse because Gorse cannot process other people’s emotions beyond how they react to him).

His psychological inability to understand the concerns of others and his innate selfishness are core to why the character is fascinating. Havers’ uncanny ability to draw out these various strains and balance them with Gorse’s seemingly mesmeric charm are core to why The Charmer is such a fascinating and relevant TV series. Gorse is not some abnormal oddity as both the novels and the TV series strive to prove — every character in both has to a greater or lesser degree something wrong with them. They are all flawed, often cruel and vindictive characters who are simply made to feel worse by an even greater manipulator.

We all know that we have inner demons, and The Charmer shows what happens when a man with more destructive character defects than others manages to get away with so much and inflict misery on so many lives. It is for this reason that I encourage anyone who hasn’t seen the series to watch it now; it is a vivid depiction of the horrors that lurk within the human subconscious, horrors that could be just around the corner.