WoD 4: Simon MacCorkindale

Dr Jonathan Chase... wealthy, young, handsome. A man with the brightest of futures. A man with the darkest of pasts. From Africa's deepest recesses, to the rarefied peaks of Tibet, heir to his father's legacy and the world's darkest mysteries. Jonathan Chase, master of the secrets that divide man from animal, animal from man... Manimal!

When The Wall first noted earlier this morning that 'Dashing British Actor' (courtesy NYTimes), Simon MacCorkindale had died, our thoughts turned to those traditional winter saturday nights watching Casualty on BBC1. There is something comforting about Casualty. We don't know if it's the unrelenting predictablity of it all (all the greatest TV drama's have an utterly inflexible narrative arc - I give you: Petrocelli! Quincy! The A-Team! Knight Rider!), cue introduction of the episodes new characters as families feverishly wager on who will die horribly, followed by unprofessional meddling in patients lives by nurse/doctor, and melodramatic 'event' in hospital creating challenging environment within which hospital staff can conduct medical miracle and simultaneous relationship trauma. Mr MacCorkindale's involvment in all this is duly saluted.

However, soon after that reverie, The Wall was suddenly struck with MacCorkindale's finest hour, the mighty Manimal. In this ludicrously short-lived series he played Dr Jon Chase a man with a unique crime-busting ability... A playboy (ain't they all?) who, with enormous concentration, could change himself, shape-shift if you will, into any animal he fancied. Our memory is that this involved heavy breathing and the skin/flesh on the back of the good doctors hand bubbling and throbbing until it turned to fur or feathers or snakeskin. Theoretically Dr Jon could change into any animal he deemed suitable to fight the crime in question (he would be the crime solving side-kick to Det. Brooke Mackenzie, the only other person aware of his powers being his good friend Ty Earl), but virtually every episode saw the appearance of a panther or a hawk, with the occasional other animal appearances having been achieved with an off-camera transformation. In these guises he would help solve cases including smuggling, kidnapping, gambling, exortion, a scrimshaw(!) and a girl who had been found living with wolves in the forests of India... Genius.

Sadly, Manimal was cancelled before it had completed its first season. Not before we at The Wall had been impressed enough to include manic staring at our improbably throbbing hands into our playground repertoire...