Richard Chamberlain, who has died at 90, achieved exceptional television celebrity by playing devastatingly attractive men whose professions made them unavailable to women.
In The Thorn Birds – a 1983 miniseries that achieved huge ratings for ABC in the US and BBC One in the UK – he was Ralph De Bricassart, a Catholic priest whose vow of celibacy is tested beyond breaking point over four decades by Meggie, a young woman whom he meets on an Australian sheep farm.
