Gee, I’ve been here before.
It seems Francis Dolarhyde is obsessed with this painting by William Blake. And yes, my ignorance of Thomas Harris’s book is showing. Red Dragon can mean a helluva lot of things, and so years ago when I heard of the book, I didn’t automatically associate it with Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Obviously, I’m curing my ignorance this evening by reading up on this character and drawing all sorts of interesting conclusions. Blake definitely does that to you, er, me whenever he’s around.
And for the uninitiated, the character of Lucas North (played by our guy) was, dare I say it, entangled in the worldview of Willam Blake — or so we were led to believe by the writers and a statement or two by Richard Armitage before his first episode in Spooks was broadcast. Not to mention, these paintings prominently displayed in Lucas’s apartment:
All of this has me very interested in reading the book and also wondering how much it influenced the Spooks writers even though it seems they were either grappling with a) not being good enough to pull off an interesting plot line involving the philosophies of Blake, or b) the damn BBC not giving them the support they needed to develop the character satisfactorily, or c) Richard Armitage being cast in The Hobbit, or d) all of the above. Yes, I’m being kind with the last three options although Richard Armitage leaving Spooks indeed had some impact on how his character was resolved. I just think the writing had gone to shit before he decided to go onto something better.
But back to Francis. He does sound interesting, yet I’m finding I have to gear myself up to read about a maniac.
And no question I’m going to have more to say about Blake. I never did get those thoughts out of my system when many of us were in the throes of watching Lucas North. Maybe I will now.
note to self: find that book on Blake! It has to be around here somewhere.
Screencap courtesy of SpooksFanBlog
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RAFrenzy 
Lucas North is still my favorite RA character – and I could never fathom out why they let aliens write Series 9. The tattoos certainly could have been put to better use in the story – and it would have meant we’d have seen a lot more of them.
I agree about the lack of use of the tattoos in the story line for Spooks.
I can’t say I’m not really disappointed with this role. It will be the only think RA has done so far that I won’t watch (except for those ads).
I wish he’d taken *anything else* but this. I hate the series, I hated the movies, I hate the books and characters, I don’t like the actors playing them.