Actor best known as Avon in Blake's 7

Born: May 2, 1941;

Died: June 3, 2019

PAUL Darrow, who has died aged 78, took a character who was originally intended to be a rather moany, downbeat background presence and transformed him into one of the most memorable anti-heroes on television in 51 episodes of the 1970s and 80s BBC science-fiction series Blake’s 7.

The concept was essentially The Magnificent Seven meets Star Wars on a shoestring budget, but the programme was to prove a landmark in British television.

The premise was that a freedom fighter Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) leads a ragbag team of mercenaries and criminals against the nasties from the Terran Federation. But Blake himself was written out of the show at the end of the second series, after which Darrow’s character, the ruthless and amoral Kerr Avon, became very much the main character and Darrow had top billing.

Cult is an overused term, but Blake’s 7 definitely merits the description. Despite the low budget, it had a dark tone. Blake returned to the series at the end of the final series, when Avon, mistakenly thinks he has betrayed his crew and kills him. Virtually everyone is killed in the end.

Darrow specialised in villains and other rather dodgy characters, playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1975 BBC mini-series The Legend of Robin Hood, appearing in two different Doctor Who stories and voicing Grand Moff Tarkin, the commander of the Death Star originally played by Peter Cushing on film, for the computer game Star Wars: Empire at War.

He also worked regularly in theatre and played Elvis Presley in Are You Lonesome Tonight? in the 1980s in the London West End and on a tour that brought him to the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh. But it is the role of Avon with which he will be most readily associated.

Born Paul Valentine Birkby in Chessington in Surrey in 1941, he spent much of his childhood in the local cinema. He particularly enjoyed westerns. His mother would phone up and ask the staff to send him home for tea.

After completing his schooling, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, sharing a flat with John Hurt and Ian McShane. He adopted the stage name Paul Darrow as the suggestion of his father, taking the surname from the famous American lawyer Clarence Darrow.

After RADA, he spent years in rep and acquired the lifelong habit of smoking after playing a character who smoked in a production of Jean Anouilh’s Ring Around the Moon.

But he also had a recurring role in the medical soap opera Emergency – Ward 10, appearing in more than 50 episodes in 1965-66. He met his wife actress Janet Lees-Price on set. There were also early appearances in The Saint (1967) and a couple of episodes of Coronation Street (1969), playing a doctor.

However, it was Blake’s 7 and the morally ambiguous character of Avon that made him a star. Dark and brooding, and motivated by his own self-preservation and interests, Avon was an oddly compelling mix of Heathcliff, Dirty Den and the dastardly Dr Smith from Lost in Space, forever ready to sell out his companions, but without the buffoonery and comedy of Lost in Space.

Terry Nation, the creator of Blake’s 7 and one of the creators of the Daleks, said: “Paul Darrow took hold of the part and made it his own. It could have been a very dull role, but this particular actor took part of it and gave it much better dimensions than I ever gave it on paper.”

Sometimes Darrow seemed to be chewing the scenery, but sometimes there was just a flicker of a smile. The series ended with Avon totally surrounded by enemy soldiers. He raises his weapon as if to fire and the end-credits play over the sound of shooting.

Darrow’s character, his dry wit, cynicism and deadpan delivery, and the whole tone of the series, with the killing of nearly all the main characters, influenced later series, including arguably Game of Thrones, although the budget for Blake's 7 was low, even by the standards of the time.

“At conventions in America when I’ve met a lot of actors, George Takei (Sulu in Star Trek) said to me, 'Blake’s 7 scripts are so good, that’s why it did well even though it couldn’t compete against Star Trek for production values,'” said Darrow.

Darrow played a couple of different roles in Emmerdale in 1991 and 2009 and a judge in seven episodes of Law and Order: UK (2009-14). He made few films. He did shoot a small role in the James Bond film Die Another Day (2002), but it was cut before release.

Any rational observer would assume Avon had no more chance of getting away at the end of Blake’s 7 than Butch and Sundance do in the final freezeframe when they face down the entire Bolivian army - a direct influence on Blake’s 7’s finale. Yet Darrow was involved in plans for a sequel years later and he did reprise the character in several audio plays. He also wrote a spin-off novel, as well as an autobiography entitled You’re Him, Aren’t You (2006).

His wife died in 2012 and Darrow had health issues in recent years. He had a leg amputated and part of the other one. His final appearance came last year on a celebrity edition of the quiz show Pointless. He and Blake’s 7 co-star Michael Keating won the show.

BRIAN PENDREIGH