Do we like Jonathan Hardy?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and warm tributes from colleagues, but too little reporting to score him higher.
Jonathan Hardy was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 20 September 1940, and built a career of nearly forty years across stage, screen and writing. He was a theatre person at heart, and eventually settled in Australia, where most of his best-known work happened.
His writing is the headline act. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of Breaker Morant and won an Australian Film Institute award for it, according to tributes published when he died. Not bad for a bloke who is now mostly remembered for a puppet.
That puppet is Dominar Rygel XVI in Farscape, the grumpy exiled king he voiced across all four seasons from 1999 to 2003. He also turned up as Labatouche in Mad Max and in Moulin Rouge, so he got around.
On the harm test, we found nothing: no nasty comments about LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, no conspiracy rabbit holes and no dodgy company. We also found no court cases or allegations against him. To be straight with you, that's partly because the reporting we could read is mostly obituaries, so treat it as a clean sheet with small print.
As for the good stuff, the tributes are warm. Brian Henson said the “clever wit and joy” he brought to Rygel was a gift to the world of Farscape, and co-star Lani Tupu called him a friend, colleague, teacher and mentor. That's the sort of thing people say about someone who treated them well.
Nothing new on him lately: he died in 2012, and there's no recent controversy to speak of. He's a quiet, decent-looking pass rather than a gushing one. If you've loved Rygel for years, you can keep doing it.