But by the series three "Who shot JR?" finale, 70 million Americans were hooked on his signature style of dastardly one-liners and references to anyone of the female sex as "darlin", usually before he gave said "darlin" a good seeing to.
The hospital in which Charles Dance's sinister Dr Roget conducts dastardly experiments on comatose patients is identical to the one in the first film, only transplanted from suburban Melbourne to an isolated park; nearby lurks a lighthouse.
Or, rather, it was the fault of two dastardly Frenchmen and one untrustworthy Spaniard.
This masterpiece concerned the murder, by dastardly poisoning, of one of the opposition - a member of the "Trojans" if you must know.
"It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine".
Now, it looks like New Jersey police have finally caught their own dastardly defecator and this one feels like the end of particularly shit-centric Scooby-Doo episode.
"All together we have an incredible skill of taking on dastardly deeds and daredevil stuff that no one else would attempt".
Tintin, with or without the others, rights wrongs, rescues the innocent, uncovers dastardly plots, goes on mind-boggling adventures; even, in one book, to the moon (a scientifically accurate adventure conceived some 15 years before people actually walked there).
Meanwhile, in September, 56 detainees brought another lawsuit against CACI to the Eastern District Federal Court accusing its employees, among other dastardly things, of forcing one detainee to watch while her mother was tortured and to observe the sexual assault of a male inmate.
But one dastardly deed by the troubled Ribéry might yet haunt Munich.
