Iain Glenn: An Axiom of Premium Cable

Two observations about the aesthetics of TV drama, both prompted by the work of an excellent British actor named Iain Glenn.

The two episode storyline on "Strike Back" in which Glenn plays an international arms dealer is a perfect example of the way this psychologically astute series attempts to braid almost non-stop action adventure heroics together with drama -- though the emotionally squeamish would probably call it melodrama.

Glenn's character, an arms dealer named Crawford, has diverted his latest shipment of lethal weapons to Darfur, to meet the ransom demand of the militia leader who kidnapped his daughter, a UN aide worker whose do-gooding career was a repudiation of her father's greed and amorality -- the fruits of which may now end up saving her life. Glenn plays Crawford as a wise monster suddenly hamstrung by love, and he gets off a zinger in a conversation with one of our sinewy Section 20 heroes, the married one who is increasingly conflicted shuttling back and forth between hearth and home and various death-stinking war zones: "I know self-loathing when I see it."

On "Game of Thrones" Glenn plays Ser Jorah Mormont, a man who is almost wholly admirable, a paragon of loyalty. His section of the story, the Daenerys Targaryen/Khal Drogo subplot, is the one that works best on TV by a wide margin -- in part because here we occasionally get to see things happening, rather than listening in as characters describe them to each other. (Entire episodes of this widely praised series are devoted to expository conversations. Screenwriting students have been flunked for less.) Most often we see these things because Iain Glenn shows them to us through the eyes of Ser Jorah -- the eyes of a knight in exile, hungry for a cause, watching with dawning recognition as the young woman he was hired to protect transforms herself into a queen. It's a love story, in other words, not so much about a man smitten with a woman (thought there are hints of that) as about a knight smitten with a lord, one of the few on earth who may deserve the fealty of a person of his pride.

I think all premium cable shows from now on should be required by law to offer a role to Ser Iain Glenn. If he considered them worthy they would be better for it.