People are getting together all the time in TV shows and films, but some of the best drama comes from those who never quite sealed the deal, even though there might have been some heavy flirting action! Badoo checks out a few of them.
Film and television are packed with couples who fall into bed on the first date. Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger certainly didn’t wait 9½ Weeks, and James Bond only has to look at a woman across a crowded Monte Carlo casino for all her clothes to drop off (perhaps with the help of a martini – shaken not stirred).
However, many of the best relationships, particularly on television, are those that keep us tuning in week after week, or rooting for them until the end of the film, only for that spark never to quite happen even when the tension between the two leads could cut granite. Even some that did get there in the end had to do so via a great deal of hassle, misunderstanding and often slapstick.
Here are a few of our favourite attractions that never seemed to work out…
Mulder and Scully – The X-Files
One of the classics, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were the classic odd couple, one crazy, overemotional and imaginative, and the other sceptical, analytical and sober. Unusually for mainstream TV though, it was the guy who was melodramatic, and the woman down-to-earth. It’s the sign of a strong friendship if it can weather alien abduction, implantation, men in black, black goo and Eugene Tooms, and Mulder and Scully’s relationship held strong over nine seasons. There were even inklings that it might become something more towards the end. Oh yeah, and Catatonia even wrote a song about them.
Laura and Alec - Brief Encounter
You couldn’t find a more terribly, terribly English love story than Brief Encounter. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson play star-crossed lovers whose surprise meeting and powerful attraction is complicated by the fact that she is already married, to a man that she is comfortable with, but without the fire of passion. Brief Encounter is almost agonising to watch in places, as the two skirt around committing adultery, restrained by both the risk of discovery and by propriety. On more than one occasion, they almost get together, but are disturbed by an oblivious friend, and the ending is tenser than many a spy thriller.
Charles and Carrie – Four Weddings and a Funeral
Another terribly English love story - well, except for Andie MacDowell and a great deal of swearing –but Hugh Grant more than makes up for that by being the quintessential bumbling, clumsy and tongue-tied, but nice Englishman. His Charles and MacDowell’s Carrie meet up repeatedly over the course of the titular nuptials and burials, and while they do get jiggy at the first one, they spend the rest of the film never quite getting together, due to one or other of them being in another relationship, or some other complication. The film carefully blends familiar real life situations with broad comedy to warm and hilarious result.
Steed and Emma Peel – The Avengers
Not the Hollywood version, although that’s not as bad as it’s made out to be (Eddie Izzard and Shaun Ryder as hitmen! Bear suits!). We mean the original, with Patrick Macnee as the impeccably dressed Steed, and Diana Rigg as the smouldering and frequently leather-clad Mrs Peel. The air between the two of them seemed to fizz with electricity, and there was clearly a massive attraction. However Mrs Peel was obviously not married to Steed, but who was Mr Peel? And indeed where was he? These questions were never quite answered, and the leads couldn’t even agree on whether Steed and Mrs Peel had ever been lovers, and if so how often, but this only added to the show’s mystique.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
We couldn’t wrap this up without one rad bromance, perhaps the oldest and most famous of all. The original buddy cops, Holmes and Watson form a mutual appreciation society more enthusiastic than Riggs and Murtaugh, Watson in awe of his friend’s amazing detective skills, and Holmes lost without his rock of a sidekick. Many adaptations have played with the notion of whether there’s an attraction, or just a great friendship, especially the recent film adaptation with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. This casts’ Holmes as a primo bit of boy totty, and has the pair bickering and chattering like a long-established couple. Regardless what you call it, it makes for great watching!