Viper
Character: Suave villain Giles Seton
Fashion statement: Three-piece suits and turtlenecks are
in again
Deathless dialogue: (So many clichés, so little time.
Here are a few...) Don't play coy with me.... I shall have to resort
to more extreme measures.... I like to try new things.... Are you
ready for another dance?... Now just relax. It might be fun....
It's amazing what can be done with plastic surgery these days.
Peter appeared in the "About Face" episode of Viper
playing a corrupt engineer who creates a lookalike (Hawks) of the
hero (Cole), in order to steal the Viper car.
Peter may not have had many lines in The Sentinel, but he
makes up for it with Viper. Unfortunately, quantity doesn't
mean quality. Watching the episode for the first time, I was too
dazzled by how handsome Peter looked in a suit to notice just how
bad the dialogue was. Transcribing it, however, is another thing!
All that's missing is a fake mustache for Peter to twirl.
I have to commend Peter's talent for making some incredibly stilted
dialogue sound natural rolling off his tongue. I think he used the
"if I say the lines fast enough, maybe the audience won't notice
how bad they are" acting technique!
Although it aired after The Sentinel, Viper was actually
filmed first, and Peter got his role in The Sentinel —
which is made by the same production company, Pet Fly — based
on his work in Viper. Peter also got in trouble for a while
with the Canadian acting union for auditioning for Viper
without a work permit and then doing The Sentinel (even though
he didn't audition for The Sentinel). The union later admitted
that they just trying to send a message to Pet Fly to discourage
them from hiring foreign actors without work permits instead of
Canadians in the future.
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