15 Most Monstrous Villains In Television
9. Captain Ned Low (Black Sails)
Everyone’s favourite low-rent cable pirate epic introduced the fabulously evil Captain Ned Low at the beginning of season two. While there aren’t really any proper heroes in Black Sails - it’s a show about pirates in the vein of Game Of Thrones, so the emphasis is on skulduggery over swashbuckling - this is the first genuinely monstrous pirate captain to be featured.
The first scenes featuring the aptly-named Low see him massacre the entire crew of a ship that had surrendered to him without a fight. He daydreams about rape, and rewards an attempt at mutiny with public torture and beheading.
It’s all in keeping with the acts attributed to the real life Edward Low, on whom the character is based, and who’s considered to have carved out a reputation for casual brutality the equal of Blackbeard in his three years as a pirate. If Ned Low hadn’t been born in the age of piracy, he’d have been a serial killer.
He doesn’t last that long on the show, either - he makes the mistake of crossing the hardest b*stard in Nassau, Charles Vane - but he certainly makes an impression, as does the actor who plays him with such sinister malevolence, Tadhg Murphy.