Saturday 4 January
When, last week, we left plucky yet easily terrified teenager Susan Foreman gathering her courage to leave the safety of the TARDIS and venture once more through the petrified jungle of Skaro, to bring her stricken companions life-saving anti-radiation drugs (or was it gloves?) we could have little inkling of what lay in store for her outside those police box doors: a bloke with PVC trousers and a bare chest (that scaly thing we saw in the trees last week was a sheet of lino he wears as a cloak). Anyway, he seems like a nice boy: his name's Alydon and he's one of the Thal people that the Daleks hold in such low esteem. He's played by John Lee, whose subsequent career would include a stint as a love interest for Helen Daniels in Neighbours. Susan's instantly smitten: "You're perfect!" she exclaims (though this probably says more about the standard of male beauty at Coal Hill school than anything else).
It turns out Alydon deliberately left the vital drugs outside the TARDIS, aware that the travellers must soon succumb to the radiation suffusing the planet's surface. He explains that he and the other Thals have lived on these ever since the nuclear disaster that made Skaro such an inhospitable place. For years they've enjoyed a contented existence on a far-off plateau, but have been forced to venture further afield by dwindling food stocks. Alydon wonders if the Daleks might want to help out, and speculates on what they look like inside their metal shells: "If they call us mutations, what must they be like?" (Is he trying to say he thinks the Daleks might be really pretty when you get their lids off?)
Alydon gives Susan his cloak and takes her back to the Dalek city: she goes in alone, and doses Ian, Barbara and the Doctor up with the Thal medicine. Susan's grandfather's close to death's door by this time, and the removal of his jacket, combined with his horizontal posture, encourages us to marvel at just how high-waisted those trousers of his are (either that or he's got an incredibly small upper body).
Motivated mainly by finding Alydon rather dishy, Susan's determined to help the Thals, an aim the Daleks claim to share. But can they be trusted? Well no, of course not. (Two things to note here: the Daleks' really rather marvellous dilating irises and the first, but not the last, appearance of a tea tray-toting Dalek).
Back out in the jungle, we get to have a good look at the marvels of Thal fashion, as we meet some of Alydon's compatriots (are the holes in their trousers/skirts supposed to be there, or has their nomadic lifestyle simply taken its toll on their clothes?). Doctor Who gets its first name guest star in Alan Wheatley, known to millions as the Sheriff of Nottingham in ATV's long-running Robin Hood series. Here he plays the much more benign figure of Thal leader Temmosus. We're also introduced to Alydon's girlfriend, the grumpy Dyoni (Virginia Wetherell) - possibly just feeling self-conscious about the flower growing out of the top of her head - and the rather louche Ganatus. Ganatus is as supercilious as any other character played by Philip Bond, but as he's the only Thal who seems to have a bit of life in him he's easily the most likeable of the lot.
Alydon's expecting a message from Susan ("No longer a child, not yet a woman", as he refers to her - which led me off on a wayward train of thought about a musical version of this story featuring the songs of Britney Spears - "Toxic" would certainly be suitable given Skaro's radiation-laden atmosphere) - his friends are suspicious that if it comes it could be a Dalek trap, but Alydon's convinced that if Susan signs her name all will be above board.
He's wrong of course, the wicked mutants having tricked Susan into signing her name to a letter inviting the Thals to their city for a nosh-up on food grown using their special artificial sunlight. Odd, when you think about it, that the Daleks would have a pen and paper lying around.
Susan's fellow travellers are less trusting of the Daleks. Having realised that their captors can hear as well as see them, they decide to stage a wildly over-acted pretend fight in their cell, culminating in the camera mounted on the wall being put out of commission.
"Do you think it was broken accidentally in their struggle?" asks a Dalek. Bless. Either way, the Daleks have now decided on the fate of their prisoners (and the concept they'll be forever associated with): "Extermination!"
Fortunately, the travellers are formulating an escape plan. The Doctor, back on form, deduces that the Daleks rely on static electricity to move about, and that they could immobilise one by getting it off the city's metal floor and on to... well, suddenly that great big heavy cloak seems very handy. Resourceful Barbara starts making mud to clog up a Dalek's eyestick with. The Doctor seems to be taking a shine to her...
When it's time for elevenses the travellers manage to manhandle their unsuspecting tea mutant into immobility.
Ian gingerly lifts the Dalek's lid, immediately deciding that the grotesque being within isn't a fit sight for the eyes of young ladies. He and the Doctor remove the disorientated thing (scrupulously kept from the viewers' delicate eyes as well) and bung it in a corner. The next, most absurdly risky stage of the plan: Ian is to get inside the casing and, piloting it, escort his companions to freedom. Let's hope none of the other Daleks notice him giving them dirty looks with his muddy eye...
As the travellers set off on their foolhardy gambit, we get the very barest glimpse of the uncontained Dalek before all fades to black...
Top class adventure. Now, from the barren, hostile world of Skaro we move to the not too dissimilar setting of the Salvation Army girls' home in Streatham, where the warden, Major Proctor, has been savagely beaten (to the strains of "Onward Christian Soldiers"). Could the man standing over her with an ornate candlestick and a bewildered expression have anything to do with it...?
Sergeant Cork will not be on the scene to find out, having been confined to bed with a stinker of a cold, and devoting his remaining energy to running his temporary nursemaid Miss Bolton (Pauline Winter), sister of his similarly bedridden landlady, ragged.
That means that this week Bob Marriott's conducting the investigation into the attack on Major Proctor alongside Sergeant Jones (Jack Watson, overdoing the Welsh accent). At the home, they meet the replacement warden, exasperatingly pious Major Washbourne (Gwynne Whitby) and her underling Captain Ruth Chilvers (Kathleen Byron - interesting coincidence that, as in her most famous role in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus Byron plays a highly-strung woman called Ruth who's a member of a religious organisation). Man about town Bob is even more horrified by the Major's attempts to recruit him to the service of Christ than he is by her obvious keenness on meting out harsh punishments to wayward girls: "The devil has a very strong hold on these girls. Sometimes the devil must be paid in his own coin!"
Clearly it's the devil's grip causing the girls to swoon over penny dreadfuls when they should be cleaning the band's instruments, and making them swarm like blood-crazed piranhas around any halfway attractive man they see (in this case a terrified Bob).
Two lines of inquiry suggest themselves in tracking down Major Proctor's assailant: the first involves two girls, Josephine Wells and Violet Berry, well-known pickpockets, who were seen waiting outside the Major's office shortly before the attack, and who disappeared from the home shortly afterwards; the other, Henry Gill, porter at the home - also a visitor to the Major on the night of the assault, and also missing. When Bob follows Captain Chilvers to Henry's house he learns she's engaged to the porter, and agrees to her request that she bring him to the police station the following day to explain his absence.
In exchange for a parcel of grapes (he wolfs them down whereas Bob delicately peels his), Sergeant Cork offers some thoughts on the case from his sick bed: as neither the girls nor the porter seem likely to have anything to do with the mysterious amber beads found in the Major's office, could she have had a fourth, unseen visitor that evening?
Marriott heads off with this thought playing on his mind, leaving his superior to the hated beef tea Miss Bolton insists on forcing upon him.
To help him find the girls, Cork's suggested Marriott enlist the services of young bootblack Dick (Roy Holder), whose knowledge of the streets he's had cause to use before.
With Dick under instruction to locate Josephine and Violet, Marriott and Jones receive a highly nervous Henry Gill (Howard Pays), who insists he found Major Proctor unconscious and fled from the scene, scared that the time he served in prison for theft would see him blamed for the crime. Marriott senses he's not telling the whole truth, and Jones obliges by producing Henry's file: rather than a year for theft, he was in prison for 10 years for armed robbery, and what's more he already has a wife. Kathleen Byron's underused in this episode but the way her face conveys the devastation wrought by this revelation on a life clearly lacking in any kind of fulfilment more than justifies her casting.
This awkward interview out of the way, Marriott heads to a house in Canonbury which Dick's pinpointed as the hideout of the missing girls (Margo Andrew and Kika Markham - whose sister Petra would later play Roy Holder's sister in children's fantasy series Ace of Wands). They're living like princesses in the charge of the ever so refeened Mrs Wilkinson (a panto dame-like turn from Betty Baskcomb), who's grooming them to be star turns at her bawdy house in Pimlico. The scene where she bustles the girls into their revealing new outfits as a spellbound Dick watches outside the window like a Victorian Robin Askwith is classic British smut (pre-watershed style).
When Bob bursts in on this little scene Mrs Wilkinson somehow manages to convince him she's perfectly respectable and took the girls in with no idea where they'd come from. It's only on Cork's prompting that he returns to see her, having fingered her as the owner of the amber beads. Producing the candlestick with which Major Proctor was attacked, Bob tricks the procuress into a confession by confusing her with talk of the new science of fingerprinting: "How can my fingerprints be on there when I was wearing gloves?"
If not quite Sergeant Cork at its most brilliant, The Case of the Fourth Visitor is hugely entertaining, and the performances of Byron and Baskcomb alone are worth the price of entry.
Now, also from the ATV stable, the return of another Saturday night favourite.
In an apparent tweak to the series' format, we only get one sketch per act in this episode, broken up with a musical number (in its original form this series actually had two musical acts per episode, but the overseas export versions, with one act snipped out to bring down the running time and allow for more commercials, are now the only ones that exist).
Sketch one sees painter and decorator Arthur blag his way into 10 Downing Street, which he recently helped freshen up for its new occupant, in order to give his brother-in-law Les some inspiration on doing his place up.
The character Arthur plays here is edging closer to writer Johnny Speight's most famous creation, Alf Garnett: "He's only Prime Minister now," he says in disappointment at Alec Douglas-Home casting off his place in the nobility. "Anyone can be Prime Minister now. Get the right number of votes and bang, you're in." Of Mrs Douglas-Home's supposed plans to furnish the house in more extravagant style Arthur notes "I think he's got a bit more money than old Mac had."
It's Arthur's experience that things are different across the political divide: "They've got different tastes, the Labour lot... tiled surround and flying ducks... can you imagine President Johnson coming over here to talk politics and he winds up here with a glass of port and a tiled surround, with three flying ducks above his head?"
The visit's cut short by private secretary Nicholas Parsons, aghast that this pair have managed to get in. "Course, I was only the one who worked my fingertips to the bones," Arthur huffs on being ejected before he can even show Les the bedroom wallpaper.
On his way to the door, Arthur overhears the Prime Minister addressing his cabinet: "I think I can get this country back on its feet..." "Gorblimey," exclaims the decorator, "He's daydreaming again."
The surviving musical interlude this week comes courtesy of Mr Marty Wilde. His hit parade days over by this stage, Marty seems to be emulating the Beatles with an audience of ecstatic female hands and a cover of the original Motown hit, Barrett Strong's "Money", popularised in the UK by the Fab Four and at the time of broadcast a top 20 hit for Bern Elliott and the Fenmen. Marty even plays his own harmonica.
Finally tonight we catch up with tramps Arthur and Dermot, as usual harrassing a Nicholas Parsons-shaped establishment figure. This week it's a wealthy businessman who's parked his Rolls in a layby (or rather his chauffeur has) for a spot of lunch. Enter Arthur, being driven by his very own chauffeur.
Stopping for a cup of tea, Arthur obtains some water from the most convenient nearby source.
Arthur tries to make conversation with chauffeur Leslie Noyes: "Rolls Royce, is it? They're good little runners, they are", but doesn't get far. He decides this unfortunate underling of the ruling class is too firmly under his master's thumb to communicate with his proletarian brothers any longer.
The chauffeur's employer proves no more communicative, and won't even let Arthur have a look at his important papers. Arthur's astonished to find that such an apparently important figure is so shy, and expounds to Dermot on how the only possible way someone so shy could have reached an important position is due to his high birth. Dermot sighs for the social status that was never his: "My mother, she was too easy. If you're going to do that sort of thing you've got to save yourself for someone with a bit of money."
"He didn't mean to be offensive," insists Arthur, "Only he's Irish, and they're a bit primitive." Dermot, in fact, is facing deportation, even though he hasn't done anything. Actually, it's because he hasn't done anything. Unfortunately, the Irish aren't willing to have him back. In an ideal world he'd like to draw his national assistance in Britain, where you get more, and spend it in Ireland, where the cost of living's cheaper (In an era where the welfare state's become a controversial topic, this almost affectionate portrayal of benefit cheats seems remarkable).
The funniest thing about the sketch is Arthur' insistence on talking about his tatty old pram as if it was a vehicle on a par with Parsons' Rolls Royce. But of course, there's method to his madness. With the Rolls out of water, Arthur kindly offers to lend the contents of his kettle - in exchange for a lift to London. He insists the pram be tied to the back, and while this is being attended to, he and Dermot nonchalantly drive off.
From one theft of a rather conspicuous item to another now, as the staff of private zoo Noah's Ark are baffled by the disappearance of Snowy - an albino elephant.
Could it be a coincidence that Steed (who's just taken up yoga - not as ubiquitous in 1964, possibly because at that point it seems to have consisted purely of staring at flowers) has suggested the zoo's vacancy for a Zoological Director could be an ideal opportunity for Cathy Gale?
The zoo's owner, Noah Marshall (Godfrey Quigley) is a picturesque figure with his parrot, pipe and scar (the legacy of a run-in with a tiger that ended his big game hunting days). His secretary Brenda Paterson (Judy Parfitt), by contrast, is the image of the no-nonsense businesswoman.
As Cathy arrives to take her post at the zoo (she never seems to have any difficulty walking into these jobs Steed finds for her), she pauses only to feed a kangaroo before meeting with her new boss.
There's a spectacular moment as the naughty parrot decides to have a nibble on Godfrey Quigley's pipe - causing Honor Blackman much merriment.
Various animals make an appearance in tonight's episode: the smallest, though not the least noticeable, being a fly that scampers merrily across the camera lens for a good few scenes.
While Cathy settles in at the zoo, Steed (who's fessed up about being on the trail of ivory smugglers), investigates dodgy gunsmiths Bruno Barnabe and Toke Townley.
Unbeknownst to the Avengers, they're sheltering the officially missing Professor Lawrence (Edwin Richfield), Snowy's owner and the man behind her disappearance. He's also Brenda Paterson's secret husband. So he won't be best pleased to find her consorting with big game hunter Lou Conniston (Scott Forbes).
I may have exaggerated in my mind the amount of times that an Avengers act ends with Cathy discovering a body hanging from the ceiling, but it seems to happen every few weeks. In this case it's Snowy's keeper George (Martin Friend, who was in the episode The Gilded Cage just a few weeks back). George seemed an inoffensive character, so who could have been so keen to guide him to his end?
The White Elephant is one of the more mundane episodes from The Avengers' third series, and the motivations of the unwieldy cast of characters aren't always clear (or maybe they just weren't interesting enough to pay attention to). Fortunately director Laurence Bourne does his best to keep the viewer's attention, as in this bog standard expository scene at Steed's flat, enlivened by having Steed balance wine glasses on his forehead and Cathy stand on her head.
The highlight of the episode is Steed's visit to the manufacturers of Noah's Ark's cages, filled with suggestive imagery.
Saleswoman Madge Jordan (Rowena Gregory) seems especially keen on her work (Steed later refers to her as "Madame Restraint"). "Quadrupeds?" she asks Steed, when he enters. "Bipeds," he clarifies. "What mainly interests your principals?" she asks. "Strength? Or would they like a bit of weight?" She offers a discount on a job lot of manacles: "Export order cancelled due to a political upheaval."
At Noah's Ark Brenda and Lou, having incapacitated Noah with drugged coffee, are busy concealing ivory in the hollow frames of animal cages. Professor Lawrence arrives to confront them, but is greeted by Cathy. "Do you really need a gun to deal with a woman?" she asks him, before demonstrating that he did.
Unfortunately Cathy falls foul of Lou Conniston, less willing to give up his firearm, who locks her in a cage with a sleeping tiger.
The final conflict between Steed and Conniston is certainly unusual, taking place as it does against a backdrop of exotic birds.
The baddies defeated, Steed manages to acquire a few choice ivory ornaments. As the episode draws to a close, a livid Cathy gives her colleague her sternest talking to yet:
"You always manage to win something, don't you Steed? Whatever anybody else has lost you pick up your perks and off you go. Well I'm an anthropologist, not one of your gang. And if you want my help again you'd better have a very good reason."
"Is that it?"
"No. You're using my experience to cover your indolence."
"Indolence? If it hadn't been for me you'd still be in that tiger's cage."
"Well at least I'd know exactly what I was up against."
Nonetheless, in spite of herself, Steed's got Cathy smiling again by the time the credits roll...
Now for something a bit special. The list of contenders for the title of Greatest British Film Director has not traditionally been a very long one. The claim to the title of the most obvious candidate, Alfred Hitchcock, is weakened by his buggering off to Hollywood as soon as he was able. In 1964 most people would probably have pointed to two main contenders: David Lean and Carol Reed. It seems unlikely that at that time many people would have nominated Michael Powell, though subsequent decades have seen him canonised as our film industry's greatest visionary. The contemporary critical reaction to Powell's work that was characterised by damning with faint praise and accusations of "bad taste" (whatever that means) turned hostile with the release of Peeping Tom in 1960 (by which time Powell had gone solo from his long time collaboration with Emeric Pressburger). The scandal that greeted the film effectively ended his career: few people saw his next film, The Queen's Guards (a state of affairs unchanged today), and his final features were made in Australia. In 1963 he joined the ranks of less prodigiously talented movie directors like Charles Frend, John Paddy Carstairs and Charles Crichton in working on ITC's filmed adventure series, specifically on three episodes of Espionage, the first of which we turn to now.
Exciting credit, exciting star (Powell favourite Pamela Brown), and most of all exciting cardie:
Brown plays Kristine Jensen, a schoolteacher in Nazi-occupied Denmark whose days now mainly consist of teaching German officers English. By night she's a leading light of the resistance, and has been instrumental in bringing a legendary "demolition team" of three allied officers to the country. These are a volatile Russian, Tovarich (Julian Glover), a wily Englishman, Wicket (Mark Eden), and a laid-back American, Anaconda (Donald Madden, whose performance is the episode's weakest link). "An Englishman, an American and a Russian: sounds like the beginning of a funny story," observes Kristine - it's also a typical Powell story - his films frequently draw out revealing contrasts between the English and other nationalities. But the story that unfolds turns out to be a tragedy.
While out reconnoitring, Wicket captures a Nazi scientist, Professor Kuhn (George Voskovec), in defiance of the group's no prisoners rule. Wicket believes that the professor might be something a little bit special, though. What he turns out to be is the catalyst that tears the trio's friendship, not to mention their lives, to pieces.
Kuhn professes that he'd be happy to work for any of the allied governments: the only thing important to him is the advancement of science. And the advance he's on the threshold of is what viewers in 1964 would recognise all too well as the atom bomb.
The three friends have different reactions to the awesome destructive power the professor appears to be on the verge of unleashing: Tovarich insists the only sensible thing to do is to kill the scientist and prevent his weapon from coming into existence...
...while Wicket quickly begins to negotiate with Kuhn to ensure it gets into the right hands. Anaconda remains non-committal. Clearly relishing the role of a Satanic tempter, the professor taunts the three by likening them to the folk tale about three fishermen who find an all-powerful demon, willing to do the bidding of any one of them, in a bottle - but eventually seal the bottle back up because they're scared of what it offers.
Bottles are of special significance here: the three men's effectiveness as a team is underlined by the way they're forever tossing a bottle of liquor between each other, catching it without a second thought.
So when an angry Tovarich hurls the bottle at the professor and it smashes against a blackboard, it's a clear indication that everything's due to go tits up.
As the three friends go to sleep that night, the professor, restrained in the most charmingly civilised fashion, gloats over the conclusion to the folk tale: the demon forced its way out of the bottle and destroyed the fishermen anyway.
It's agreed the professor will accompany the trio out of the country, once they've headed over to his house (where all his top secret work has taken place) to pick up his vital notes. There they get their first glimpse of nuclear power.
But Kuhn isn't finished with poisoning the trio against one another. As he further impresses the power of his discovery to Wicket, the English officer becomes convinced that, above all, Russia shouldn't have it.
Tovarich, tipped over the edge by the professor's machinations, makes another attempt on his life. Wicket restrains him, but ends up dead for his pains.
The rest of the team aren't long in following their companion: Anaconda, following the late Wicket's lead, shoots his Soviet comrade and sends the professor off, ensuring that it's the Americans who'll get to exploit his dangerous knowledge. As Kuhn observes, "Never turn your back on a friend - it's the golden rule of our times."
A final shootout follows, ending with Anaconda dead and a fatally wounded Tovarich scrabbling around in a pathetic attempt to gather up the professor's scattered notes. Kristine looks up from the carnage at the departing helicopter and wonders what horrors the world must face next.
It's astonishingly powerful stuff, and shows that even working in the confines of a show like Espionage Powell was a blazing talent, even in his career's premature twilight. Though one of my favourite things about Never Turn Your Back on a Friend is the casting of middle aged Pamela Brown in a role that just about any other director on the show would have given to a younger, more decorative but undoubtedly far less talented performer.
Sunday 5 January
Being set in Scotland, it's only right that Dr Finlay's Casebook should be ringing the new year.
There are three first-rate guest stars in tonight's episode: Francesca Annis as young aspiring actress Fiona Senlac, and Faith Brook and Bernard Archard as her parents, Fanny and Jamie. They're sophisticated Glaswegians spending Hogmanay (1928 going in to 1929 if the timescale of last week's episode still applies) in Tannochbrae at the home of Fanny's father, shipbuilder Robert Ferguson - the town's only millionaire. Also present are Fanny's brother Hector (Andrew Downie) and sister Ethel (Katharine Page). Being more countrified types, the latter pair are alarmed by Fiona's plan to study drama in London: "I suppose that's what's called being a bright young thing," Hector marvels.
The head of the family's taking his time to show, and Ethel goes up to check that all is OK. It's not.
Ferguson is a patient of Dr Snoddie, but he's spending Hogmanay with his sister in Kilmarnock, and Dr Cameron is looking after his patients. It's an annual arrangement that the latter doctor is heartily sick of, and as he's only just got back to Arden House out of the driving rain when the call comes from the Fergusons, he sends Dr Finlay to them instead. He finds old man Ferguson perilously near death, and can do little more than give him some morphine and instruct his family to make his last hours as comfortable as possible. Apart from the utterly distraught Ethel, the family are all acting very furtively, especially Jamie, who seems particularly keen to ensure his father-in-law remains alive at the turn of the year.
Finlay returns home, and when conversation turns to the Fergusons Janet informs him that in actual fact he has no money of his own, having given it all away in three equal shares to his children three years before, in a bid to escape death duties. Finlay then has to rush off to see to an entire family stricken with food poisoning, leaving Cameron and Janet to ring in the new year by themselves. And who could fail to be aroused by the erotic charge in this scene?
There's no time to surrender to lust though, as various townsfolk will be descending upon the house for a wee dram, including seasoned first-footer Willie McEwen (Peter Sinclair).
Cameron receives a call from Dr Snoddie (Eric Woodburn), who's horrified to discover that Finlay (who he considers an impertinent young whipper-snapper) has been given charge of his most profitable patient.
Much to Janet's amusement. Cameron's smugness about Snoddie's outrage is punctured when he gets a call summoning to his hospital.
On his way back from ministering to the ailing Fraser family, Finlay returns to the Ferguson household to see how the old man is doing. He's informed that he passed on shortly after 2 am. After examining the body, Finlay seems particularly suspicious of Jamie.
Back at Arden House, Finlay toasts the new year with Cameron, then explains the reasons for his suspicions: although he was told Ferguson died just 15 minutes before his arrival, the body was cold: the old man had died no later than 10 pm the previous evening. Cameron and Janet swiftly cotton on to the reason for the family's deception: he gifted his fortune to his children on New Year's Day three years before, and the deed of gift (and subsequent exemption from death duties) will only apply if he died after midnight.
Next day, Hector calls at Arden House while Finlay's out and gets the death certificate from Cameron. Arriving home, he and his family are shocked to find that Finlay has dated it the 31st. Fanny calls him to point out the "mistake", but Finlay is adamant about the correct time of death.
Having returned to Tannochbrae, Snoddie is sent round to Finlay by the Fergusons. "Oh, why did it have to be you?" he despairs in the face of the younger doctor's inflexible principles. Nonetheless, Finlay's beginning to wonder if he did the right thing, and is frustrated by Cameron's refusal to venture an opinion.
At the Ferguson house, Ethel's descended into a fit of religious mania, insisting the family's sins will find them out. Fiona clearly finds her family's greed distasteful, but nonetheless suggests they get Finlay in to see to her disturbed aunt, and attempt to talk him round.
When the doctor visits, they first offer to entrust the medical care of the family, and the prestige that would go with it, to he instead of Snoddie. When this falls on stony ground, Jamie announces that he's arranged for an autopsy, and that it could easily be made to look like the morphine Finlay gave the old man contributed to his death.
As Finlay leaves in disgust, he's stopped by Fiona, who seems just as appalled at her family's behaviour as he is, and asks him to take her with him. They go to a local inn, where twinkly old innkeeper Mr Mackay (Ian Fleming) - a former gardener of the Fergusons' - supplies the underage Fiona with a dram.
Fiona professes to be disenchanted with her family's grasping ways, and her own idle existence, which consists mainly of shopping. She claims to want to help people, and asks Finlay how she could go about becoming a nurse. Touched by her interest - and clearly falling for her despite her tender age - he tells her about the dedication the job requires (it's a tender issue for him, having lost a girl he loved when she went off to work in an African mission), and when she seems unfazed by this, offers to get her an in at his old hospital.
Those viewers recalling that Fiona's initial ambition was to become an actress would not be surprised to see her return home and assure her mother that all is now likely to be well with the death certificate
Finlay once again asks Cameron his thoughts about the certificate (his desperate need for the older man's approval is certainly interesting from a psychological standpoint), and, prompted by Janet, he asks Finlay to consider whether it's his conscience or his pride that's the problem here.
Having resolved the issue in his mind, Finlay returns to the Fergusons' the next day. Only Fiona is at home, and he presents her with the death certificate, now altered. Her manner is completely changed from the previous day: with frosty patronage, she informs him it's no longer needed as the family solicitors have been in contact and revealed that they'd actually dated the original deed of gift the 30th, so it no longer matters when her grandfather died. Tragically, Finlay hasn't yet realised he's been had, and informs her that he's secured a place for her at the hospital. Amused, she informs him she won't be able to take it as she'll be living in London. The doctor departs, ripping the certificate into shreds. Bill Simpson's performance in this scene is deeply poignant, while Francesca Annis is so brilliant throughout that it's clear there's a glowing future ahead of her.
As you're no doubt aware, home video did not exist in Britain in 1964. It did have a precursor, though, in the form of soundtrack recordings of select programmes. Obviously the programmes most suited to this were ones that relied heavily on dialogue, and the comedy of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson was especially successful in this medium (Hancock's Half Hour had started off on radio, of course, and Steptoe and Son would later be adapted for the benefit of wireless listeners), as demonstrated by of Steptoe and Son records reaching both the LP charts (selected scenes from the show's first series) and the single charts (the sketch especially written by Galton and Simpson for the Royal Variety Performance - with Harry H Corbett speaking obviously overdubbed lines to cover the visual jokes). This also, of course, shows how hugely popular the rag and bone men's intergenerational bickering had become, with a huge audience settling down to watch as their third series began...
Things get off to a gentle start with Harold Steptoe taking his father for a ride in the country. He has absolutely no ulterior motive in doing this. None whatsoever. But hang on a moment, what's that beautiful big house through the trees there? "Oh! I wonder who lives there? It must be a millionaire at least... Hang on, there's a notice. I wonder what it says?"
A horrified Albert takes over the reins and drives back home as fast as the Steptoes' elderly horse can possibly go. "Slimy, that's what you are," he angrily tells his son when they reach home. "Connving, cunning - just like your mother. God rest her soul." Harold signally fails to look his father in the eye and say he doesn't want to put him in a home.
Despite Albert's insistence that travel's pointless as everywhere is much the same, Harold's brimming over with exotic fantasies: "I want to sit by the campfire with a bunch of sheikhs, sorting through the rice for a couple of sheep's eyes... Pearl fishing in the coral sea, ivory smuggling up the coast of Africa, whale hunting off Antarctica..."
"Shipwrecked off Southend."
Turns out Harold won't be going alone. He answered an ad in the New Statesman requesting "Five blokes and five birds" to undertake the voyage. Albert picks up his own ideas from this what the purpose of the trip is. His son's revolted: "Please do not be so suburbanly preoccupied with sex. These are highly intelligent people. They don't look at life like that." Albert's unconvinced: "I'm going to be bunged into an old people's home while you float round the world with five bits of crumpet."
Although it's not quite clear why the far from infirm Albert would need to be put in a home, even with Harold preparing to sell off the yard to fund his travels, into the home he goes. There he's greeted firstly by "Miss!" Lotterby (Marie Makino), the resident in charge of "games and extracurricular activities": "Once you've settled in I'll pop up to your room to see what you're interested in!"
Despite this terrifying encounter, Albert's keen to impress on the home's matron (Peggy Thorpe-Bates) his intention of being a troublemaker: "You got old ladies here? Well you better keep them locked up for a start!"
Albert has one word of greeting for his fellow residents gathered in the lounge: "Bags!"
But despite all Albert's bluster, it's genuinely affecting when Harold leaves his father behind, Wilfrid Brambell's miserable face and the pan out showing the bareness of his new room combining to tug on every last heartstring.
But of course his stay at Chartwell House is destined to be brief. As Harold excitedly prepares to leave behind Shepherd's Bush and see all the sights the world has to offer, irony strikes in the form of a letter rescinding his place on the voyage, the other shipmates (average age: 20) having decided that it just wouldn't be right to take a practically ancient 37 year old with them.
Still, at least Albert gets a good laugh out of it...
A Bunch of Fives is the first episode of The Plane Makers to feature neither Patrick Wymark nor Reginald Marsh. Robert Urquhart and Jack Watling get top billing this week, but both Auntie Forbes and Don Henderson are really peripheral to events. However, we're privy to the revealing information that Don and his frosty wife sleep in separate beds.
That's not the case with Scott-Furlong test pilot Colin Stock (Glyn Houston) and his wife Peggy (Viola Keats), whose relationship seems happily physical.
By contrast, David Fleet (Barrie Ingham), a slick PR man ("Working class born and bred, but I hope it doesn't show from the front"), shares his bed with a succession of young women.
What links the three men is that they're all going on a Scott-Furlong sales trip to the Mediterranean to drum up more interest in the company's Sovereign jets. Also aboard the plane will be stewardess Jane Gaunt (Wendy Craig): "Not much wrong with that undercarrriage!" remarks Mac (Freddie Earlle), the most gittish of the sales team aboard. Later, he tries to force his attentions on an unwilling Jane. In a manner almost unthinkable today, she merrily brushes the incident off. But Colin Stock, who's clearly taken a shine to the stewardess, is outraged by it and promises to give "a bunch of fives" to anyone else who attempts the same.
First stop on the flight is Milan. (This was also a time when, in TV land at least, an Italian waiter would react to an Englishman demanding "Look here, John, just bring us two lager beers, chop chop. Compronny?" with nothing more than an indulgent smile).
Stock and Jane have dinner together, where she reveals that she's the widow of a pilot, who had several near misses in his career and then got run over on his way to the chemist's. Now she lives with her mother: "Two widows, getting more and more obsessed with gas bills and shopping lists." Despite being a happily married man, the pilot's incensed by David Fleet putting the moves on his dinner companion.
Slimy sales executive and expert shit-stirrer Christopher Chappell (Frederick Bartman - perhaps best known these days for being acquitted of beating an employee in his antiques shop to death in 1991) is quick to point out to Stock that Jane and Fleet have gone off together, though when he encounters her on the hotel landing later she denies it, suffering his drunken attempt at snogging her before returning to her room, and Fleet.
On the flight to Rome the next day, Auntie Forbes, a man who's never been encumbered by relationships with women, senses Stock's not enjoying the trip much. As he stresses to his co-pilot the need to properly take in one's surroundings on a visit abroad, Robert Urquhart stumbles over his lines in a manner worthy of William Hartnell: "You know, if you're wandering around some purpose, you should, er, er, really try to make it of some purpose." Auntie decides he'll have to take Stock in hand and ensure he sees everything worth seeing.
Their increasingly close relationship just serves to aggravate Stock, who's become totally obsessed with Jane, eventually leading to a punch-up between the pilot and the salesman aboard the plane.
This leads to a splendidly farcical scene as Don and the rest of the sales crew try their best to convince a potential buyer that everything's hunky dory.
Don's keen to forget about the incident, but it serves as a perfect opportunity for Chappell, who's not exactly subtle about his desire for the sales director's job, to embarrass his boss: "You know as well as I do Mr Wilder will hit the roof when he hears about this." "Well who's going to tell him?" "Aren't you?"
By this time, the sales flight has reached Greece. At a party held by a potential buyer (with some tremendous extras among the partygoers), Stock has another try with Jane: "Single people think if you're married you're miraculously satisfied," he laments, only to be stopped in his tracks by her response: "I was".
Stock's now sobered up from his infatuation with Jane, giving her relationship with Fleet his blessing and shifting his aggression to a more deserving target in Chappell.
When the Sovereign finally returns to London, Stock's greeted by his who wife, who notices the results of his scuffle with Fleet: "What have you done to your face? Was it a belly dancer?" (I don't know if the casting of 30s film star Viola Keats - 15 years Glyn Houston's senior - was meant to explain Stock's interest in another woman. If so it backfires as in her all-too-brief screen time she gives such a vivacious performance it seems baffling that he'd ever want to stray). Meanwhile, Jane waits for Fleet, who's nipped off for a few minutes. He doesn't come back.
As Don and Auntie offer her a ride in their taxi, Jane faces up to the fact that sometimes optimism just isn't enough...
This week's Space Patrol starts off in highly unusual fashion with some stock footage of monochrome and pleasant land. It turns out that despite their constant mutual exasperation at one another, Professor Haggerty and Colonel Raeburn see each other in their leisure time, and this week they've taken a trip into the countryside together. Some readers may be upset to learn that hunting remains a popular pastime in the year 2100, with the pair competing to shoot some decidedly flat looking non-specific birds.
Raeburn proves to be an absolutely useless shot, and endures much ribbing from the more successful professor. He does manage to bag something, but it doesn't look much like a bird. In fact, it looks very peculiar indeed.
As the pair examine their mysterious find it raises itself up on what looks like a leg (of a sort). Whatever it is, it seems to be alive. Asked for an opinion, Haggerty relies on the "say what you see" form of observation, as espoused by his fellow Irishman Roy Walker: "I'd say it was a bell-like object that can extend and retract its leg". He takes it back to examine in the lab.
Later, the professor admits defeat: "It isn't flesh and blood, it isn't metal, and it isn't plastic. When the colonel asks if it's intelligent, the strange being pipes up: "It's got a great deal of intelligence."
Having picked up enough English to express itself, the creature reveals that it originates from the Betelgeuse system, 190 light years away. Colonel Raeburn boggles at this piece of information: "At the speed our galaspheres travel, it would take thousands of years to reach you." When the bell-thing explains that his people's craft travel faster than light, Raeburn's disheartened: "Seems as if our solar system is one of the most backward in the universe," he sighs. Clearly sensitivity isn't a key Betelgeusean trait: "I'm afraid it is," comes the response.
The Betelgeusean mothership is currently orbiting Neptune: the bell had been landing on Earth in a smaller craft when it was shot down by the colonel. Raeburn promises to give it a lift back, but asks if it'll have a chat with some Earth scientists first: "Delighted, Colonel!" The bell's name is unpronounceable to any earth tongue (that old chestnut), but it's quite happy to be called Mr Bell.
The information Mr Bell gives on his people's space travel technology proves useless to a frustrated Haggerty: "We could travel at light speed if we had bloxene fuel, but bloxene fuel only works in a machine made of bonath metal!" Mr Bell has an unpleasant encounter with Gabbler: "What's that thing?" "My leg" "Who's ever seen a leg like that? Hahahahahahahahahahaha, what a funny looking thing you are!"
"Rude birds must be taught a lesson," announces Mr Bell prior to giving the Martian parrot a well deserved bop in the face with a glowing appendage that emerges from the top of his dome.
Haggerty's upset that Mr Bell didn't mention he possessed this curious antenna. "You wouldn't tell me you had hands or feet," the alien quite reasonably responds. It turns out the antenna possesses other abilities even more remarkable than teaching a lesson to rude birds. Mr Bell uses it to cure Colonel Raeburn of a headache, explaining the way medicine works in Betelgeuse: "Every creature has energy inside them, and when you are ill, some of this medicine is lost. But a creature who is completely well can give part of his energy to you and make you better." There are no hospitals in Betelgeuse, the creatures there just share their energy with each other. The damn bell-shaped hippies.
Raeburn summons Larry Dart to take Mr Bell back to his mothership, but shortly afterward contacts the Galasphere to request a detour to Jupiter to pick up some plant samples. When the galasphere lands on Jupiter Larry heads out to get the samples, but rather stupidly trips and falls down a hole, where he's imprisoned by a rockfall. Explosives fail to shift the rock - will he survive long enough for Slim and Husky to dig him out? It's Mr Bell to the rescue, as he extends his appendage to transfer vital life-giving energy. Ding dong.
Larry is finally freed and the galasphere takes off, by which time Mr Bell looks like nothing so much as a large turd. Fortunately the ship makes it to Neptune in time, and Larry takes the Betelgeusean back to his ship, where its agreed that more bells will soon visit Earth to spread the benefit of their strange medical knowledge. Agreeably bizarre as ever, it's a shame the episode didn't exploit the Betelgeusean craft's position over Neptune as an opportunity for the visitors from another solar system to tussle with the psychic baddies native to that world. That would have been something to see.
Next tonight, an especially star-studded adventure for The Saint...
Lord Yearley (Anthony Quayle) is known as "the noble sportsman". Simon Templar's come to watch him showjumping, but he's also a champ at golf, tennis, shooting and fishing.
Yearley's daughter Rose (Jane Asher) is Simon's girlfriend of the week. After her father's triumph over the fences, she introduces her gentleman friend to her stepmother, Anne (Sylvia Syms, whose eyebrow is almost a match for Roger Moore's).
At dinner that evening, Yearley's sleazy German showjumping rival (an uncredited Donald Pickering) suggests that the 54 year old peer might not be as successful in all his activities: "A horse is one thing, you understand. He carries the rider over the fences. But, oh, that young wife of his - that is a completely different kind of fence, nicht wahr?"
How close to the truth he is we're about to discover. Anne slips out with a headache, but she's actually gone to see Paul Farley (Francis Matthews), an architect with whom she's been having a fling. She's come to tell him she's breaking off their relationship as she's expecting Yearley's child.
On being told of the pregnancy, Yearley practically explodes with expectations for the child. He decides it'll be a boy, signs it up for Eton, and is determined it will one day win the Grand National. His impending fatherhood's given him a whole new outlook on the world, and he incurs the wrath of a man named Bruno Walmer (Paul Curran) when he changes his mind about some land he was going to sell him. Walmer and Kelly (Russell Walters), the manager of Yearley's property development firm, were brimming over with very early 60s plans for the land ("It'll be one of the finest shopping centres in London!" "Seven stores, and a central playground for children!" "Underground parking for a thousand cars!" "A supermarket and a cinema!"). Yearley has instead decided to accept a lower offer from the local council, who plan to build a children's hospital. Walmer determines to change Yearley's mind... by whatever means necessary.
Yearley also has a disgruntled neighbour to contend with: Mr Bates (Martin Wyldeck, one of the Scott-Furlong board members from The Plane Makers), whose farmland adjoins Yearley's country estate, is deeply anti-bloodsports, and forbids Yearley's hunt from crossing his land (in truth there seems to be as much of class antagonism in his threats to the peer as there is concern for animal welfare).
And now, with a cast of enemies in place, it's time for the whodunnit (or, rather, who-wants-to-do-it) to commence, as Rose discovers that her father's been receiving death threats.
Rose offers to put Simon at Yearley's disposal, but he brushes off the threats. Until, that is, he and his daughter nearly have a very nasty accident - the brakes of his car having been cut in time-honoured fashion.
Yearley cedes to the insistence of the women in his life that he bring Simon in for help. The Saint's first step is to take the note to a typography expert friend, Tom Crofton (Howard Douglas, whose look is one more people should aspire to in their later years). Tom narrows the list of publications the words could have been cut from down to Photographic Monthly or Home and Design - the latter a magazine very popular with architects..
With a list of suspects drawn up, Simon suggests Yearley should invite Walmer and Kelly to stay for the weekend (Farley, who's been commissioned to remodel the house, is coming already). Having found Anne at Farley's house on paying the architect a visit, he puts two and two together and makes some unpleasant insinuations to Lady Yearley about the possible fatherhood of her child...
He doesn't get to make good on his threat to reveal Anne and Paul's relationship to Yearley, as Anne's husband himself comes across the two of them together. Simon's with him at the time, and all of a sudden the motive of Farley, who had the best opportunity of sending the notes, is all too apparent.
That night, a shot rings out as someone aims at Yearley from his balcony...
Having acquired Paul Farley's keys, Simon lets himself in to the architect's home and peruses his stack of Home and Design back issues, matching the threatening notes to the holes in the text with Dadaesque results.
Next day the hunt rides from Yearley's estate, and when Mr Bates tries to block the aristocrat's way he finds himself on the receiving end of his fury. Despite his bluster, Bates' failure to shoot Yearley when he had the chance seems to dispose of him as a suspect.
And indeed it's not long before Yearley reveals himself as the culprit behind the anonymous notes as well as everything else that's been going on. It's all been an elaborate plot against Paul Farley, who he's long been aware was carrying on with his wife. Locking Farley in his study with him, Yearley encourages the architect to participate in one of his beloved games: he places a gun at Farley's feet to see whether his love rival can shoot him before he gets to his own gun, locked in his desk drawer.
Farley refuses to participate, and Yearley's gun turns out to be empty. So the aristocrat turns to fisticuffs, only to be bettered by a swiftly-emerging Simon, who as always was several steps ahead.
This week's episode of the Granada thriller series is written by H V Kershaw, one of the architects of the company's most successful series, Coronation Street. Here he gets the chance to tackle material you wouldn't normally encounter on the cobbles of Weatherfield - tempting as it is to imagine an international human rights conference taking place at the mission hall under the beady eye of Ena Sharples. Unaccountably, the conference is instead being held in London, supervised by Anthony Brand with the assistance of shifty Greek Mr Dimitriades, played by rent-a-shifty-foreigner George Pastell (I think he supplies his own shifty toupee). Anthony's journalist wife Alice is less than impressed that her status as the organiser's wife doesn't immediately grant her access to the conference's main speaker, the press-hating Raoul Brissac, Nobel prize-winning author of Anatomy of the Police State, Freedom and the Common Man and Democracy in the 20th Century.
Brissac may be one of the most eminent thinkers of the age, but he's also a Frenchman, which means he can't keep his hands off the birds (sorry, came over all Albert Steptoe then). One former conquest (Margaret Elliot), a society lady who's attending the conference, is hoping they'll pick up where they left off, and she's rather indiscreetly blabbing everything she knows about Brissac to all and sundry.
However, on this visit the attentions of Brissac (Ronald Radd) have been especially drawn toward Justine Clare (Wendy Gifford), an agency secretary employed at the conference. He waxes lyrical about the Marquis de Sade's Justine; she confesses she was named after a missionary aunt. Having known her for a few minutes he invites her to accompany to his next destination: Guatemala.
At first responding with jokey excuses about having a hairdressing appointment, Justine comes to realise that Brissac is being totally serious. "I can't make a decision like this at the drop of a hat!" she gasps. In response, Brissac gives us the key to his philosophy: "Yes you can! Making a decision like this is one of the few freedoms left to the individual."
Elsewhere, Sergeant Swift impresses Inspector Rose with his knowledge of Brissac's oeuvre. Rose, summoned by the Assistant Commissioner, gives Swift his invite to the conference. He introduces the sergeant to the concept of mingling, with the Brands and other similarly liberal types: "Mingling, not tangling". Swift heads off, and the Assistant Commissioner introduces Rose to self-satisfied Dutch detective Inspector Van Lincke (Philo Hauser), who tells him about a pair of seemingly linked murders on the continent, both committed with a string tie...
...much like that worn by a waiter (Drewe Henley) at the hotel where the conference is taking place.
At the conference, Swift can't help but tangle with Alice Brand, who's not exactly his number one fan. He apologises for his rudeness to her when they first met. He didn't know who she was. "Would it have made any difference if you had?" she asks. "No, I don't suppose it would," he admits. But it looks like there could be something more than mutual antagonism bubbling under the surface with these two...
Anthony thinks Rose sent Swift to the conference purely to embarrass him over his role in the Sergeant's suspension last week. He's pretty astute.
It's not long before Rose turns up at the conference. Swift's impressed he got in without his invite - in fact he has something rather more compelling: a warrant to arrest Raoul Brissac for smuggling heroin. Brand could hardly be more aghast: he tries to laugh it off as an absurd error - "Are you sure he didn't steal the crown jewels as well?" (Alice, meanwhile, is practically licking her lips over the exposé of police incompetence she can make of it). Rose calmly insists it's not just an allegation: there's positive proof.
As Rose sends Swift to fetch Brissac, Dimitriades whispers to the sinister waiter. Shortly afterward there's a power cut, during which Dimitriades takes the opportunity to get rid of the loudmouthed socialite.
With Swift's attention diverted to the injured woman, Brissac (who most certainly is a heroin smuggler) meets up with his contact the waiter, who insists on the writer leaving the hotel with him. His Guatemalan romance quashed, Brissac bids adieu to Ms Clare...
...only to meet an expectant audience in the lobby. When questioned, Brissac breezily admits he brought heroin into the country. As he disagrees with Britain's drug laws he saw nothing wrong in contravening them when asked to do so by some men in Greece: he was drug smuggling as an intellectual exercise. And he's quite happy to face whatever consequences this may have.
Having in fact realised what was happening, Swift puts the waiter out of action as he tries to leave the hotel with Alice. Harsh words ensue over the journalist's lack of gratitude.
Downstairs, Anthony, who's so valiantly defended Brissac against charges of any wrongdoing, is comprehensively crestfallen by the philosopher's admittance that he was knowing drugs mule. For the lawyer it spells the end of the Human Rights Organisation, whose image will now be that of anarchists happy to ride roughshod over any laws they don't like. Brissac accepts his argument, and for the first time in years faces the press - to absolve anyone else involved in the conference of complicity in his test of his intellectual resolve.
Sunday 5 January
Being set in Scotland, it's only right that Dr Finlay's Casebook should be ringing the new year.
There are three first-rate guest stars in tonight's episode: Francesca Annis as young aspiring actress Fiona Senlac, and Faith Brook and Bernard Archard as her parents, Fanny and Jamie. They're sophisticated Glaswegians spending Hogmanay (1928 going in to 1929 if the timescale of last week's episode still applies) in Tannochbrae at the home of Fanny's father, shipbuilder Robert Ferguson - the town's only millionaire. Also present are Fanny's brother Hector (Andrew Downie) and sister Ethel (Katharine Page). Being more countrified types, the latter pair are alarmed by Fiona's plan to study drama in London: "I suppose that's what's called being a bright young thing," Hector marvels.
The head of the family's taking his time to show, and Ethel goes up to check that all is OK. It's not.
Ferguson is a patient of Dr Snoddie, but he's spending Hogmanay with his sister in Kilmarnock, and Dr Cameron is looking after his patients. It's an annual arrangement that the latter doctor is heartily sick of, and as he's only just got back to Arden House out of the driving rain when the call comes from the Fergusons, he sends Dr Finlay to them instead. He finds old man Ferguson perilously near death, and can do little more than give him some morphine and instruct his family to make his last hours as comfortable as possible. Apart from the utterly distraught Ethel, the family are all acting very furtively, especially Jamie, who seems particularly keen to ensure his father-in-law remains alive at the turn of the year.
Finlay returns home, and when conversation turns to the Fergusons Janet informs him that in actual fact he has no money of his own, having given it all away in three equal shares to his children three years before, in a bid to escape death duties. Finlay then has to rush off to see to an entire family stricken with food poisoning, leaving Cameron and Janet to ring in the new year by themselves. And who could fail to be aroused by the erotic charge in this scene?
There's no time to surrender to lust though, as various townsfolk will be descending upon the house for a wee dram, including seasoned first-footer Willie McEwen (Peter Sinclair).
Cameron receives a call from Dr Snoddie (Eric Woodburn), who's horrified to discover that Finlay (who he considers an impertinent young whipper-snapper) has been given charge of his most profitable patient.
Much to Janet's amusement. Cameron's smugness about Snoddie's outrage is punctured when he gets a call summoning to his hospital.
On his way back from ministering to the ailing Fraser family, Finlay returns to the Ferguson household to see how the old man is doing. He's informed that he passed on shortly after 2 am. After examining the body, Finlay seems particularly suspicious of Jamie.
Back at Arden House, Finlay toasts the new year with Cameron, then explains the reasons for his suspicions: although he was told Ferguson died just 15 minutes before his arrival, the body was cold: the old man had died no later than 10 pm the previous evening. Cameron and Janet swiftly cotton on to the reason for the family's deception: he gifted his fortune to his children on New Year's Day three years before, and the deed of gift (and subsequent exemption from death duties) will only apply if he died after midnight.
Next day, Hector calls at Arden House while Finlay's out and gets the death certificate from Cameron. Arriving home, he and his family are shocked to find that Finlay has dated it the 31st. Fanny calls him to point out the "mistake", but Finlay is adamant about the correct time of death.
Having returned to Tannochbrae, Snoddie is sent round to Finlay by the Fergusons. "Oh, why did it have to be you?" he despairs in the face of the younger doctor's inflexible principles. Nonetheless, Finlay's beginning to wonder if he did the right thing, and is frustrated by Cameron's refusal to venture an opinion.
At the Ferguson house, Ethel's descended into a fit of religious mania, insisting the family's sins will find them out. Fiona clearly finds her family's greed distasteful, but nonetheless suggests they get Finlay in to see to her disturbed aunt, and attempt to talk him round.
When the doctor visits, they first offer to entrust the medical care of the family, and the prestige that would go with it, to he instead of Snoddie. When this falls on stony ground, Jamie announces that he's arranged for an autopsy, and that it could easily be made to look like the morphine Finlay gave the old man contributed to his death.
As Finlay leaves in disgust, he's stopped by Fiona, who seems just as appalled at her family's behaviour as he is, and asks him to take her with him. They go to a local inn, where twinkly old innkeeper Mr Mackay (Ian Fleming) - a former gardener of the Fergusons' - supplies the underage Fiona with a dram.
Fiona professes to be disenchanted with her family's grasping ways, and her own idle existence, which consists mainly of shopping. She claims to want to help people, and asks Finlay how she could go about becoming a nurse. Touched by her interest - and clearly falling for her despite her tender age - he tells her about the dedication the job requires (it's a tender issue for him, having lost a girl he loved when she went off to work in an African mission), and when she seems unfazed by this, offers to get her an in at his old hospital.
Those viewers recalling that Fiona's initial ambition was to become an actress would not be surprised to see her return home and assure her mother that all is now likely to be well with the death certificate
Finlay once again asks Cameron his thoughts about the certificate (his desperate need for the older man's approval is certainly interesting from a psychological standpoint), and, prompted by Janet, he asks Finlay to consider whether it's his conscience or his pride that's the problem here.
Having resolved the issue in his mind, Finlay returns to the Fergusons' the next day. Only Fiona is at home, and he presents her with the death certificate, now altered. Her manner is completely changed from the previous day: with frosty patronage, she informs him it's no longer needed as the family solicitors have been in contact and revealed that they'd actually dated the original deed of gift the 30th, so it no longer matters when her grandfather died. Tragically, Finlay hasn't yet realised he's been had, and informs her that he's secured a place for her at the hospital. Amused, she informs him she won't be able to take it as she'll be living in London. The doctor departs, ripping the certificate into shreds. Bill Simpson's performance in this scene is deeply poignant, while Francesca Annis is so brilliant throughout that it's clear there's a glowing future ahead of her.
Monday 6 January
It's Monday night, so the highlight of the BBC's TV schedule is, of course, Dancing Club with Victor Silvester. Tonight's thrill-packed edition includes demonstrations by Peter Eggleton and Brenda Winslade, runners-up in the 1963 International Championships , and a lesson in International Social Dancing, with Mr Silvester assisted by Zizi Tu from Malaya.
Tuesday 7 January
Things get off to a gentle start with Harold Steptoe taking his father for a ride in the country. He has absolutely no ulterior motive in doing this. None whatsoever. But hang on a moment, what's that beautiful big house through the trees there? "Oh! I wonder who lives there? It must be a millionaire at least... Hang on, there's a notice. I wonder what it says?"
A horrified Albert takes over the reins and drives back home as fast as the Steptoes' elderly horse can possibly go. "Slimy, that's what you are," he angrily tells his son when they reach home. "Connving, cunning - just like your mother. God rest her soul." Harold signally fails to look his father in the eye and say he doesn't want to put him in a home.
Harold tries to shift the blame for his desire to offload his father: "It's like what they said in the Guardian the other week. You are the victim of western society in not knowing how to look after its old people." Harold explains how things are different in the East: they respect the elderly, as they worship their ancestors. "Well then!" cries Albert. "Oh, well, we're not wogs, Dad" Harold responds. Yes, it's appallingly racist - but it perfectly exposes the limitations of Harold's liberal pretensions.
Eventually, Harold reveals the reason for his plan to dispose of Albert: he intends to go round the world in a sloop. His father's reaction isn't the most supportive you could imagine: "You should be in a home, not me!"
Despite Albert's insistence that travel's pointless as everywhere is much the same, Harold's brimming over with exotic fantasies: "I want to sit by the campfire with a bunch of sheikhs, sorting through the rice for a couple of sheep's eyes... Pearl fishing in the coral sea, ivory smuggling up the coast of Africa, whale hunting off Antarctica..."
"Shipwrecked off Southend."
Turns out Harold won't be going alone. He answered an ad in the New Statesman requesting "Five blokes and five birds" to undertake the voyage. Albert picks up his own ideas from this what the purpose of the trip is. His son's revolted: "Please do not be so suburbanly preoccupied with sex. These are highly intelligent people. They don't look at life like that." Albert's unconvinced: "I'm going to be bunged into an old people's home while you float round the world with five bits of crumpet."
Although it's not quite clear why the far from infirm Albert would need to be put in a home, even with Harold preparing to sell off the yard to fund his travels, into the home he goes. There he's greeted firstly by "Miss!" Lotterby (Marie Makino), the resident in charge of "games and extracurricular activities": "Once you've settled in I'll pop up to your room to see what you're interested in!"
Despite this terrifying encounter, Albert's keen to impress on the home's matron (Peggy Thorpe-Bates) his intention of being a troublemaker: "You got old ladies here? Well you better keep them locked up for a start!"
Albert has one word of greeting for his fellow residents gathered in the lounge: "Bags!"
But despite all Albert's bluster, it's genuinely affecting when Harold leaves his father behind, Wilfrid Brambell's miserable face and the pan out showing the bareness of his new room combining to tug on every last heartstring.
But of course his stay at Chartwell House is destined to be brief. As Harold excitedly prepares to leave behind Shepherd's Bush and see all the sights the world has to offer, irony strikes in the form of a letter rescinding his place on the voyage, the other shipmates (average age: 20) having decided that it just wouldn't be right to take a practically ancient 37 year old with them.
Still, at least Albert gets a good laugh out of it...
It's good to have you back, boys. Next, after several weeks of John Wilder's boardroom wrangles, tonight's Plane Makers is more of a standalone affair. It's an early work from Peter Nichols (whose career as a playwright hadn't yet taken off), and it's possibly the best episode of the show yet.
A Bunch of Fives is the first episode of The Plane Makers to feature neither Patrick Wymark nor Reginald Marsh. Robert Urquhart and Jack Watling get top billing this week, but both Auntie Forbes and Don Henderson are really peripheral to events. However, we're privy to the revealing information that Don and his frosty wife sleep in separate beds.
That's not the case with Scott-Furlong test pilot Colin Stock (Glyn Houston) and his wife Peggy (Viola Keats), whose relationship seems happily physical.
By contrast, David Fleet (Barrie Ingham), a slick PR man ("Working class born and bred, but I hope it doesn't show from the front"), shares his bed with a succession of young women.
What links the three men is that they're all going on a Scott-Furlong sales trip to the Mediterranean to drum up more interest in the company's Sovereign jets. Also aboard the plane will be stewardess Jane Gaunt (Wendy Craig): "Not much wrong with that undercarrriage!" remarks Mac (Freddie Earlle), the most gittish of the sales team aboard. Later, he tries to force his attentions on an unwilling Jane. In a manner almost unthinkable today, she merrily brushes the incident off. But Colin Stock, who's clearly taken a shine to the stewardess, is outraged by it and promises to give "a bunch of fives" to anyone else who attempts the same.
First stop on the flight is Milan. (This was also a time when, in TV land at least, an Italian waiter would react to an Englishman demanding "Look here, John, just bring us two lager beers, chop chop. Compronny?" with nothing more than an indulgent smile).
Stock and Jane have dinner together, where she reveals that she's the widow of a pilot, who had several near misses in his career and then got run over on his way to the chemist's. Now she lives with her mother: "Two widows, getting more and more obsessed with gas bills and shopping lists." Despite being a happily married man, the pilot's incensed by David Fleet putting the moves on his dinner companion.
Slimy sales executive and expert shit-stirrer Christopher Chappell (Frederick Bartman - perhaps best known these days for being acquitted of beating an employee in his antiques shop to death in 1991) is quick to point out to Stock that Jane and Fleet have gone off together, though when he encounters her on the hotel landing later she denies it, suffering his drunken attempt at snogging her before returning to her room, and Fleet.
On the flight to Rome the next day, Auntie Forbes, a man who's never been encumbered by relationships with women, senses Stock's not enjoying the trip much. As he stresses to his co-pilot the need to properly take in one's surroundings on a visit abroad, Robert Urquhart stumbles over his lines in a manner worthy of William Hartnell: "You know, if you're wandering around some purpose, you should, er, er, really try to make it of some purpose." Auntie decides he'll have to take Stock in hand and ensure he sees everything worth seeing.
Jane, meanwhile, has fallen head over heels for Fleet: "You're so different from the sort of men I usually go out with... you're witty, with it, hep." "Hip... not hep, hip." "There you are, you see!"
Their increasingly close relationship just serves to aggravate Stock, who's become totally obsessed with Jane, eventually leading to a punch-up between the pilot and the salesman aboard the plane.
This leads to a splendidly farcical scene as Don and the rest of the sales crew try their best to convince a potential buyer that everything's hunky dory.
Don's keen to forget about the incident, but it serves as a perfect opportunity for Chappell, who's not exactly subtle about his desire for the sales director's job, to embarrass his boss: "You know as well as I do Mr Wilder will hit the roof when he hears about this." "Well who's going to tell him?" "Aren't you?"
By this time, the sales flight has reached Greece. At a party held by a potential buyer (with some tremendous extras among the partygoers), Stock has another try with Jane: "Single people think if you're married you're miraculously satisfied," he laments, only to be stopped in his tracks by her response: "I was".
The highlight of the episode, and Nichols' finest dialogue, come in a tender scene between Fleet and Jane, in which the swaggering PR man reveals that underneath his bravado he's a bundle of insecurities, and feels greatly inferior to a man like Stock, who, in being able to fly a plane, has an undeniable skill: "Untalented people like you or me, and like Don, we just spend all our time trying to keep our jobs, or trying to get someone else's." Touched by this vulnerable side to her lover, Jane promises to help him become more fulfilled. "You've no idea what it'd be like, helping me. You'd have to find enough optimism for both of us, because I never finish anything."
Stock's now sobered up from his infatuation with Jane, giving her relationship with Fleet his blessing and shifting his aggression to a more deserving target in Chappell.
When the Sovereign finally returns to London, Stock's greeted by his who wife, who notices the results of his scuffle with Fleet: "What have you done to your face? Was it a belly dancer?" (I don't know if the casting of 30s film star Viola Keats - 15 years Glyn Houston's senior - was meant to explain Stock's interest in another woman. If so it backfires as in her all-too-brief screen time she gives such a vivacious performance it seems baffling that he'd ever want to stray). Meanwhile, Jane waits for Fleet, who's nipped off for a few minutes. He doesn't come back.
As Don and Auntie offer her a ride in their taxi, Jane faces up to the fact that sometimes optimism just isn't enough...
It's a brilliant, heartbreaking piece of TV drama, and a welcome reminder that The Plane Makers can be a lot more than just middle-aged men in suits when it wants to be.
Wednesday 8 January
Blacklisted Hollywood actress Lee Grant plays the title role in tonight's BBC Festival play, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute. Her co-stars include Andre Morell and Earl Cameron.
Thursday 9 January
This week's Space Patrol starts off in highly unusual fashion with some stock footage of monochrome and pleasant land. It turns out that despite their constant mutual exasperation at one another, Professor Haggerty and Colonel Raeburn see each other in their leisure time, and this week they've taken a trip into the countryside together. Some readers may be upset to learn that hunting remains a popular pastime in the year 2100, with the pair competing to shoot some decidedly flat looking non-specific birds.
Raeburn proves to be an absolutely useless shot, and endures much ribbing from the more successful professor. He does manage to bag something, but it doesn't look much like a bird. In fact, it looks very peculiar indeed.
As the pair examine their mysterious find it raises itself up on what looks like a leg (of a sort). Whatever it is, it seems to be alive. Asked for an opinion, Haggerty relies on the "say what you see" form of observation, as espoused by his fellow Irishman Roy Walker: "I'd say it was a bell-like object that can extend and retract its leg". He takes it back to examine in the lab.
Later, the professor admits defeat: "It isn't flesh and blood, it isn't metal, and it isn't plastic. When the colonel asks if it's intelligent, the strange being pipes up: "It's got a great deal of intelligence."
Having picked up enough English to express itself, the creature reveals that it originates from the Betelgeuse system, 190 light years away. Colonel Raeburn boggles at this piece of information: "At the speed our galaspheres travel, it would take thousands of years to reach you." When the bell-thing explains that his people's craft travel faster than light, Raeburn's disheartened: "Seems as if our solar system is one of the most backward in the universe," he sighs. Clearly sensitivity isn't a key Betelgeusean trait: "I'm afraid it is," comes the response.
The Betelgeusean mothership is currently orbiting Neptune: the bell had been landing on Earth in a smaller craft when it was shot down by the colonel. Raeburn promises to give it a lift back, but asks if it'll have a chat with some Earth scientists first: "Delighted, Colonel!" The bell's name is unpronounceable to any earth tongue (that old chestnut), but it's quite happy to be called Mr Bell.
The information Mr Bell gives on his people's space travel technology proves useless to a frustrated Haggerty: "We could travel at light speed if we had bloxene fuel, but bloxene fuel only works in a machine made of bonath metal!" Mr Bell has an unpleasant encounter with Gabbler: "What's that thing?" "My leg" "Who's ever seen a leg like that? Hahahahahahahahahahaha, what a funny looking thing you are!"
"Rude birds must be taught a lesson," announces Mr Bell prior to giving the Martian parrot a well deserved bop in the face with a glowing appendage that emerges from the top of his dome.
Haggerty's upset that Mr Bell didn't mention he possessed this curious antenna. "You wouldn't tell me you had hands or feet," the alien quite reasonably responds. It turns out the antenna possesses other abilities even more remarkable than teaching a lesson to rude birds. Mr Bell uses it to cure Colonel Raeburn of a headache, explaining the way medicine works in Betelgeuse: "Every creature has energy inside them, and when you are ill, some of this medicine is lost. But a creature who is completely well can give part of his energy to you and make you better." There are no hospitals in Betelgeuse, the creatures there just share their energy with each other. The damn bell-shaped hippies.
Raeburn summons Larry Dart to take Mr Bell back to his mothership, but shortly afterward contacts the Galasphere to request a detour to Jupiter to pick up some plant samples. When the galasphere lands on Jupiter Larry heads out to get the samples, but rather stupidly trips and falls down a hole, where he's imprisoned by a rockfall. Explosives fail to shift the rock - will he survive long enough for Slim and Husky to dig him out? It's Mr Bell to the rescue, as he extends his appendage to transfer vital life-giving energy. Ding dong.
Mr Bell's energy keeps Larry alive, but the rescue mission takes so long that the poor Betelgeusean dwindles in size as he expends most of his life force. On Earth, Colonel Raeburn marvels at this act of self-sacrifice: "For a man to give his life for a friend is the greatest thing he can do, but for a creature from another solar system to do it for an Earthman..."
Larry is finally freed and the galasphere takes off, by which time Mr Bell looks like nothing so much as a large turd. Fortunately the ship makes it to Neptune in time, and Larry takes the Betelgeusean back to his ship, where its agreed that more bells will soon visit Earth to spread the benefit of their strange medical knowledge. Agreeably bizarre as ever, it's a shame the episode didn't exploit the Betelgeusean craft's position over Neptune as an opportunity for the visitors from another solar system to tussle with the psychic baddies native to that world. That would have been something to see.
Next tonight, an especially star-studded adventure for The Saint...
Lord Yearley (Anthony Quayle) is known as "the noble sportsman". Simon Templar's come to watch him showjumping, but he's also a champ at golf, tennis, shooting and fishing.
Yearley's daughter Rose (Jane Asher) is Simon's girlfriend of the week. After her father's triumph over the fences, she introduces her gentleman friend to her stepmother, Anne (Sylvia Syms, whose eyebrow is almost a match for Roger Moore's).
At dinner that evening, Yearley's sleazy German showjumping rival (an uncredited Donald Pickering) suggests that the 54 year old peer might not be as successful in all his activities: "A horse is one thing, you understand. He carries the rider over the fences. But, oh, that young wife of his - that is a completely different kind of fence, nicht wahr?"
How close to the truth he is we're about to discover. Anne slips out with a headache, but she's actually gone to see Paul Farley (Francis Matthews), an architect with whom she's been having a fling. She's come to tell him she's breaking off their relationship as she's expecting Yearley's child.
On being told of the pregnancy, Yearley practically explodes with expectations for the child. He decides it'll be a boy, signs it up for Eton, and is determined it will one day win the Grand National. His impending fatherhood's given him a whole new outlook on the world, and he incurs the wrath of a man named Bruno Walmer (Paul Curran) when he changes his mind about some land he was going to sell him. Walmer and Kelly (Russell Walters), the manager of Yearley's property development firm, were brimming over with very early 60s plans for the land ("It'll be one of the finest shopping centres in London!" "Seven stores, and a central playground for children!" "Underground parking for a thousand cars!" "A supermarket and a cinema!"). Yearley has instead decided to accept a lower offer from the local council, who plan to build a children's hospital. Walmer determines to change Yearley's mind... by whatever means necessary.
Yearley also has a disgruntled neighbour to contend with: Mr Bates (Martin Wyldeck, one of the Scott-Furlong board members from The Plane Makers), whose farmland adjoins Yearley's country estate, is deeply anti-bloodsports, and forbids Yearley's hunt from crossing his land (in truth there seems to be as much of class antagonism in his threats to the peer as there is concern for animal welfare).
And now, with a cast of enemies in place, it's time for the whodunnit (or, rather, who-wants-to-do-it) to commence, as Rose discovers that her father's been receiving death threats.
Rose offers to put Simon at Yearley's disposal, but he brushes off the threats. Until, that is, he and his daughter nearly have a very nasty accident - the brakes of his car having been cut in time-honoured fashion.
Yearley cedes to the insistence of the women in his life that he bring Simon in for help. The Saint's first step is to take the note to a typography expert friend, Tom Crofton (Howard Douglas, whose look is one more people should aspire to in their later years). Tom narrows the list of publications the words could have been cut from down to Photographic Monthly or Home and Design - the latter a magazine very popular with architects..
With a list of suspects drawn up, Simon suggests Yearley should invite Walmer and Kelly to stay for the weekend (Farley, who's been commissioned to remodel the house, is coming already). Having found Anne at Farley's house on paying the architect a visit, he puts two and two together and makes some unpleasant insinuations to Lady Yearley about the possible fatherhood of her child...
He doesn't get to make good on his threat to reveal Anne and Paul's relationship to Yearley, as Anne's husband himself comes across the two of them together. Simon's with him at the time, and all of a sudden the motive of Farley, who had the best opportunity of sending the notes, is all too apparent.
That night, a shot rings out as someone aims at Yearley from his balcony...
Having acquired Paul Farley's keys, Simon lets himself in to the architect's home and peruses his stack of Home and Design back issues, matching the threatening notes to the holes in the text with Dadaesque results.
Next day the hunt rides from Yearley's estate, and when Mr Bates tries to block the aristocrat's way he finds himself on the receiving end of his fury. Despite his bluster, Bates' failure to shoot Yearley when he had the chance seems to dispose of him as a suspect.
And indeed it's not long before Yearley reveals himself as the culprit behind the anonymous notes as well as everything else that's been going on. It's all been an elaborate plot against Paul Farley, who he's long been aware was carrying on with his wife. Locking Farley in his study with him, Yearley encourages the architect to participate in one of his beloved games: he places a gun at Farley's feet to see whether his love rival can shoot him before he gets to his own gun, locked in his desk drawer.
Farley refuses to participate, and Yearley's gun turns out to be empty. So the aristocrat turns to fisticuffs, only to be bettered by a swiftly-emerging Simon, who as always was several steps ahead.
As the police arrive to take Yearley away, Anne pledges to stand by him. And Rose insists "I'll always think of him as a noble sportsman." Yes, well perhaps it's best not to focus on his deliberately dangerous driving with you in the passenger seat...
Friday 10 January
This week's episode of the Granada thriller series is written by H V Kershaw, one of the architects of the company's most successful series, Coronation Street. Here he gets the chance to tackle material you wouldn't normally encounter on the cobbles of Weatherfield - tempting as it is to imagine an international human rights conference taking place at the mission hall under the beady eye of Ena Sharples. Unaccountably, the conference is instead being held in London, supervised by Anthony Brand with the assistance of shifty Greek Mr Dimitriades, played by rent-a-shifty-foreigner George Pastell (I think he supplies his own shifty toupee). Anthony's journalist wife Alice is less than impressed that her status as the organiser's wife doesn't immediately grant her access to the conference's main speaker, the press-hating Raoul Brissac, Nobel prize-winning author of Anatomy of the Police State, Freedom and the Common Man and Democracy in the 20th Century.
Brissac may be one of the most eminent thinkers of the age, but he's also a Frenchman, which means he can't keep his hands off the birds (sorry, came over all Albert Steptoe then). One former conquest (Margaret Elliot), a society lady who's attending the conference, is hoping they'll pick up where they left off, and she's rather indiscreetly blabbing everything she knows about Brissac to all and sundry.
However, on this visit the attentions of Brissac (Ronald Radd) have been especially drawn toward Justine Clare (Wendy Gifford), an agency secretary employed at the conference. He waxes lyrical about the Marquis de Sade's Justine; she confesses she was named after a missionary aunt. Having known her for a few minutes he invites her to accompany to his next destination: Guatemala.
At first responding with jokey excuses about having a hairdressing appointment, Justine comes to realise that Brissac is being totally serious. "I can't make a decision like this at the drop of a hat!" she gasps. In response, Brissac gives us the key to his philosophy: "Yes you can! Making a decision like this is one of the few freedoms left to the individual."
Elsewhere, Sergeant Swift impresses Inspector Rose with his knowledge of Brissac's oeuvre. Rose, summoned by the Assistant Commissioner, gives Swift his invite to the conference. He introduces the sergeant to the concept of mingling, with the Brands and other similarly liberal types: "Mingling, not tangling". Swift heads off, and the Assistant Commissioner introduces Rose to self-satisfied Dutch detective Inspector Van Lincke (Philo Hauser), who tells him about a pair of seemingly linked murders on the continent, both committed with a string tie...
...much like that worn by a waiter (Drewe Henley) at the hotel where the conference is taking place.
At the conference, Swift can't help but tangle with Alice Brand, who's not exactly his number one fan. He apologises for his rudeness to her when they first met. He didn't know who she was. "Would it have made any difference if you had?" she asks. "No, I don't suppose it would," he admits. But it looks like there could be something more than mutual antagonism bubbling under the surface with these two...
Anthony thinks Rose sent Swift to the conference purely to embarrass him over his role in the Sergeant's suspension last week. He's pretty astute.
It's not long before Rose turns up at the conference. Swift's impressed he got in without his invite - in fact he has something rather more compelling: a warrant to arrest Raoul Brissac for smuggling heroin. Brand could hardly be more aghast: he tries to laugh it off as an absurd error - "Are you sure he didn't steal the crown jewels as well?" (Alice, meanwhile, is practically licking her lips over the exposé of police incompetence she can make of it). Rose calmly insists it's not just an allegation: there's positive proof.
As Rose sends Swift to fetch Brissac, Dimitriades whispers to the sinister waiter. Shortly afterward there's a power cut, during which Dimitriades takes the opportunity to get rid of the loudmouthed socialite.
With Swift's attention diverted to the injured woman, Brissac (who most certainly is a heroin smuggler) meets up with his contact the waiter, who insists on the writer leaving the hotel with him. His Guatemalan romance quashed, Brissac bids adieu to Ms Clare...
...only to meet an expectant audience in the lobby. When questioned, Brissac breezily admits he brought heroin into the country. As he disagrees with Britain's drug laws he saw nothing wrong in contravening them when asked to do so by some men in Greece: he was drug smuggling as an intellectual exercise. And he's quite happy to face whatever consequences this may have.
Unaware of Brissac's confession, Alice has gone to his room in the hopes of securing an interview about the scandalous charges against him. Instead she runs into the murderous waiter - and if that wasn't bad enough, Sergeant Swift discovers her in a highly compromising position: "Don't worry, I won't tell your husband," he smugly promises.
Having in fact realised what was happening, Swift puts the waiter out of action as he tries to leave the hotel with Alice. Harsh words ensue over the journalist's lack of gratitude.
Downstairs, Anthony, who's so valiantly defended Brissac against charges of any wrongdoing, is comprehensively crestfallen by the philosopher's admittance that he was knowing drugs mule. For the lawyer it spells the end of the Human Rights Organisation, whose image will now be that of anarchists happy to ride roughshod over any laws they don't like. Brissac accepts his argument, and for the first time in years faces the press - to absolve anyone else involved in the conference of complicity in his test of his intellectual resolve.
It would have been easy to write Brissac as a phony, an academic poseur who in the end failed to have the courage of his convictions. Instead Kershaw and Radd make him a hugely engaging character, undeniably noble despite the troubling implications of his insistence on absolute individualism ("No such thing as society" to a degree Thatcher wouldn't have dreamed of).
You can find full Radio Times listings for all this week's BBC programmes here.
And to play us out...
It's the Dave Clark Five, "Glad All Over" to be at number 2 in the hit parade this week (it's still the Beatles at number 1). You can see the full chart here.
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