Cult Spy Icon: Caroline Steel - 'Primeval'

Caroline Steel was a sneaky, devious and duplicitous abomination who messed up a young man's love life, battered pet lizard Rex with a tennis racket and almost brought about the downfall of civilisation as we know it. More importantly, she was the best thing about Primeval's second season, especially as the 'Abby in underwear' scenes were conspicuously absent.

Let's face it - Connor was an irritating berk and deserved a bit of manipulation to jolt him into life. From the moment that Caroline crept up alongside Connor in a DVD store and professed her love for the same films, she had her claws firmly stuck in. Not even the bumbling lad's accidentally wiping her phone number from the back of his hand could keep her away. She merely pretended she'd left her phone back at his flat and randomly turned up - much to Abby's chagrin.

The beauty of the situation was that we were left wondering how Connor had managed to punch above his weight by reeling in the attractive and eager-to-please Caroline. This was made more prominent by the fact that he treated her appallingly, although not on purpose, by regularly ditching her to investigate some random anomaly. He also tried to dump her by text, which is even worse than the "it's not you, it's me" breakup scenario.

On a purely storyline basis, it appeared that Caroline had been introduced to serve as a rival love interest for Abby and cause friction between the pair of vixens. Yet there was something far more delicious at work. In a stunning scene, we saw Oliver Leek give her a stack of cash and the truth became apparent. Effectively, she was a prostitute - albeit one who takes pictures of lizards on her mobile instead of anything saucier.

Soon, she was wreaking havoc. Putting poor Rex into the freezer was bad enough, but delivering a double-handed backhand that almost killed the flickering-tongued creature was pure evil. Who said that British tennis has no rising stars?

Sadly, dramatic convention dictated that she had her moment of atonement at the end of the series. Betrayed by Leek, she was left for dead in a beast-filled research facility along with Abby, who by now knew of her past acts. Ultimately, Caroline did a heroic deed by carrying a wounded Rex to safety and saving his life. But it's for Caroline Steel's nastier endeavours that she'll be remembered and hailed…