From Mohicans to Mainwaring, Philip Madoc ruled the '70s

In the early 70s Philip Madoc was one of the most ubiquitous actors on TV. Like another Welshman Mark Lewis Jones today (Stella, Chernobyl, The Accident, The Crown, etc, etc) he seemed to be in just about every drama going. Unlike Lewis Jones, he often played the baddie, and not necessarily using his native Welsh accent. In particular, if there was an evil, sadistic Nazi role going begging, Merthyr-born Madoc had it in the bag. 

I may well have seen him in The Avengers, Jason King, The Saint, Barlow and other series of that era – probably as dodgy businessmen, Soviet spies or generic baddies - but my first abiding memory of Madoc was playing the evil, sadistic (etc) ‘Red Indian’ warrior Magua in the BBC’s Last of the Mohicans. Apart from Catherine and I dubbing the character Cora ‘Apple’ (reader, infant sides were split in hilarity) I vividly recall my nine year-old self being outraged and appalled at the Huron character, so memorably portrayed by Madoc.

When he wasn’t being a role model for future punks he was already an accomplished baddie in Doctor Who. Indeed he guest-starred in two classic stories I remember to this day. He was a malevolent War Lord in 1969’s War Games, the last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton, and a surgeon of uncertain morals in the Tom Baker serial Brain of Morbius. He didn’t need to dress as a hideously disfigured alien; a beard and glasses were enough to transform him into a credible adversary for our Time Lord hero.

I don’t know whether he picked up any extra-terrestrial dialects along the way but he apparently excelled as a linguist, at one time a professional interpreter. He even had a working knowledge of Huron, although I doubt he adopted it in that Mohicans production. I bet it gave him an edge in the audition, though!

Anyway, Madoc was the subject of more booing and hissing in other TV dramas, too. He was the theatrical prosecutor of Ross Poldark in the 1975 BBC original and shortly afterwards played a member of a Fascistic religious sect in the entertaining and often thought-provoking series Survivors. Can’t envisage that being repeated any time soon! He was also a convincing right-wing newspaper baron scheming against Ray McAnally’s left-wing PM in 1988’s A Very British Coup on Channel 4.

He wasn’t always on the wrong side of the law. In three further Seventies crime shows, The Expert, The Sweeney and Target, I would have watched him as a senior cop. However, in the Nineties I don’t recall tuning into A Mind to Kill, in which my ‘treasure’ enjoyed a rare starring role as a veteran detective. I also missed him in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George, a part he was surely born to play.

This was a regrettable oversight as he was allowed to adopt his native accent, as indeed he was in the Beeb’s Hawkmoor in ‘78, although my memories of this series remain sketchy at best. That decade, Welsh voices were often held up to ridicule, largely limited to Max Boyce, choirs from the Valleys and Windsor Davies’ Sergeant-Major in It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum. This is borderline criminal given the natural lyrical quality of great actors such as Burton, Hopkins and, yes, Philip Madoc. Nigel Stock was great in the early Seventies drama/soap Owen MD but mainstream TV seemed strangely reluctant to expose the UK audience to such Celtic cadences. Thankfully things have changed. 

For all those dramatic roles, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Philip Madoc was recruited to four of the best comedies of the Seventies, all of which I would definitely have seen. He appeared in The Goodies’ controversial 1975 send-up of apartheid and, in a solitary scene that same year, as the creepily downbeat convict Williams (yes, he was Welsh) in Porridge. He was in a 1977 episode of The Good Life as an oily sycophantic promotion rival to Jerry but of course there was also Dad’s Army.

As memory serves, few outsiders were ever allowed to mix with the venerable ensemble cast of the classic Home Guard sitcom, let alone upstage them, but in ’73 that is exactly what Philip Madoc did. On both counts. In ‘The Deadly Attachment’ he played a sneeringly arrogant commander of a captured U boat crew in the temporary charge of Mainwaring’s platoon. Earlier this year I took the opportunity of re-living the whole episode thanks to BBC2’s seemingly endless loop of Saturday evening repeats. Today, the full broadcast seems a little raw and rough around the edges, but that’s part of the enduring Dad’s Army charm. It still made me chuckle. Incidentally I also noted the flawless German pronunciation of his fish’n’chips order, that linguistic skill coming in very handy! 

Of course, the key scene, and one of the most famous in British comedy history, is totally dominated by Madoc, culminating in his immortal exchange with Arthur Lowe’s Mainwaring:

            “You’re name vill also go on ze list. Vot is it?”

            “Don’t tell him, Pike”

It was little more than a cameo but nonetheless a masterclass in comedy acting. I’d expect nothing else from the consummate TV actor that was Philip Madoc.