10 Worst TV Villains Of The Last 10 Years

The last three seasons of BBC megahit Line Of Duty centred around the mystery of H, the man at the centre of a clandestine network of corrupt police officers. As AC-12 tightened the net, we reached the finale, perched on the edge of their seats, waiting for the final reveal.

Yeah, it turned out it was Ian Buckells, the inept DSI who’d been on the perimeter of several investigations, adding little in the way of good policework and coasting on his seniority. Buckells wasn’t some master criminal, he was just a venal, amoral man who’d agreed to sell out his duties and his colleagues for a quick buck.

Some viewers understood that the anticlimactic nature of the reveal was kind of the point. The real underworld is rarely comprised of flashy criminal masterminds - it’s folk like Buckells, doing the wrong thing to fill their pockets.

To others, though, this was a slap in the face, a lame ending to a show we’d been invested in for nine years (creedence was added by the fact that the stories had become increasingly glossy and less realistic as the budget ramped up). Buckells may have made some logical sense, but he certainly turned the final moments from a gasp to a sigh.