Saturday 28 December
It's the last Saturday night of 1963, and how many viewers could have predicted that this winter evening's telly would give us our first full look (not to mention listen) at one of the enduring icons of 20th century British pop culture?
Hello. You may remember that last Saturday we left a terrified Barbara Wright as she was being threatened with a sinister plunger. Just who was wielding that plunger we have to wait a while to discover, as the scene shifts to her companions' search for her. The Doctor, Ian and Susan stumble into some kind of laboratory, where they hope they might find some mercury to refill the TARDIS's fluid link. Having almost forgotten his story about the link, the Doctor confesses to Ian that there's nothing wrong with it - he just wanted an excuse to see the city. "Abuse me all you like, Chesterton," the old man begins as Ian starts to berate him - and to be honest the mental image conjured by this meant I couldn't concentrate on the next few lines. There's a more pressing concern than the Doctor's deceit, though: the lab contains a geiger counter showing the radiation in the air is well over the danger mark: which certainly explains why everyone's been feeling a bit peaky.
The Doctor suspects that the planet's surface was hit by a neutron bomb, which destroyed life but left the buildings intact. It dawns on him that the case they found outside the TARDIS might contain anti-radiation drugs. He's in favour of legging it back there to cure themselves of their sickness, but he's made the mistake of giving Ian the fluid link, and the teacher's not giving it back until Barbara's been found.
That won't take too long, it emerges, as the door of the lab opens to reveal strange metallic forms: clearly these are Barbara's captors.
In bizarre staccato voices they insist the travellers accompany them. Ian makes a run for it, only to find himself on the receiving end of a blast of their egg whisk-like guns. If you were inclined to bad puns you might say they give off a lot of negative energy. Clearly I am.
The blast has temporarily paralysed Ian, who has to be carried to Barbara's cell by the Doctor and Susan. Still, it's good to know Barbara's safe, and that her hair's holding up well under the strain. Susan rather rudely laughs at her former teacher's conviction that there's something alive within those metal casings.
The effects of the radiation sickness are beginning to tell on the party, especially the Doctor. Presumably because he appears the least likely to hold out under interrogation, the metal beings call him to an interview (they're brilliantly conceived, by the way, from their gliding movements to their distinctive voices to the fully-realised city environment designer Ray Cusick's placed them in. Look at those little round screens - ideal for their little round eye).
The creatures reveal that they're called Daleks, and it emerges that they believe the Doctor and his companions to be Thals, the other race that shared the planet in the days before the neutron bomb - a few of whom still live on the surface. The Doctor tells the Daleks he and the others' precarious state of health, and the presumed drugs in the TARDIS. His captors agree to allow one of the group to go back to the ship and get them.
The illness is telling on the Doctor pretty badly - once he gets back to the cell he gets his lines stupendously muddled: "It's possible that they may have been anti-radiation gloves... drugs".
Ian insists he should be the one to get the drugs, but he still can't walk, and besides Susan reveals that the TARDIS lock is liable to melt unless the key's operated by someone who knows what they're doing with it. It looks like Susan will have to go back into the jungle, but having been frightened by the Daleks' insistence that the Thals are "disgustingly mutated", she's utterly terrified (though given that the Daleks thought their prisoners were Thals it should be pretty obvious that their idea of disgusting mutants is a bit different from ours).
As Susan reluctantly embarks on her quest, the Daleks, in classic villainous fashion, discuss their true plans: they intend to let the travellers die, and keep the drugs for themselves. The rotters.
It's night time, and Susan's trek through the petrified jungle is as scary as the BBC's limited budget could conceivably make it. Eerie sounds assault her from all angles, and there's a scary scaly something following her. Could this be one of the hideous Thals?
Susan's overcome with relief at making it safely to the TARDIS, but Ian's pleas for urgency ring in her ears, and pausing only to catch her breath, she prepares to head back outside, a dramatic flash of lightning illuminating the jungle as the TARDIS doors open...
Now, if you'll just squeeze yourself out from behind the sofa, it's time to welcome back ITV's brilliant Victorian detective series.
The new series gets off to an ideal start, with a pair of familiar character actors (Norman Rodway and Derek Benfield) in a Victorian funeral parlour. Rodway is Mr Darcy (not that one), secretary to Lord Liscurragh, and the funeral arrangements are for the peer's soldier son, killed in action.
The show's title character is being paid a visit by an old friend, Sergeant Tovey (Anthony Sagar), the CID's Irish Expert. He's been on the track of Fenian terrorists for years (although to date he's never actually caught any), and he's due to work with Cork on tracking down a group who've lately been threatening to make . Brian Mosley, best known as Coronation Street's Alf Roberts, is behind the beard. He tells Tovey all about a change of personnel at the CID - Superintendent Nelson's due to be replaced by a Superintendent Rodway (is it pure coincidence he shares the uncommon surname of an actor in this episode?).
This week, we get to see Cork immersed in his grooming regime, which with the current fashion for outlandish moustaches looks oddly contemporary...
...prior to his being approached by Irish streetwalker and pickpocket Biddy (a splendidly saucy performance from Maureen Toal), who offers information on Fenian activity (her current squeeze is a member of a terrorist gang with a tendency to expound their plans in his sleep) for the princely sum of £25.
Neither Cork nor his superiors, Superintendent Nelson and Inspector Bird, are particularly inclined to take up this known criminal's offer.
At a pub in Camden Town, an aggressive drunk (Jack MacGowran), whose nickname, Drummer, is a hangover from his years serving in the army, angrily asserts his Irish nationalist credentials to the landlord, Quinn (Jack Cunningham).
Both men are involved with a secret Fenian group commanded by Mr Darcy, who's in the pub's cellar, overseeing the arrival of several crates shipped over by surly Scandinavian sea dog Selstrom (Brandon Brady). Darcy's lieutenant, Byrne, is played by future Ballykissangel star Tony Doyle, surprisingly handsome in his youth.
Beside Biddy's mutilated corpse the police find a letter to Darcy from Bulstrode's undertakers about the Liscurragh funeral, and a list containing the names of several peers. The tone of the episode lightens a bit with Bob Marriott's hilarious visit to the funeral parlour, where he's informed that "Mr Bulstrode is indisposed. A slight chill on the kidneys. We expect to see him here very soon." "Oh, I see," replies Bob, meaningfully.
Cork, meanwhile, is tackling Lord Liscurragh, an Irish landowner who proves to be boiling over with anti-Fenian sentiment, decrying the namby-pamby measures that have been taken against the insurgents.
Having pinpointed Quinn's pub as the terrorists' hideout, Tovey heads down there with a squad of men, only to fall foul of what's in the basement: not explosives, as we've been led to expect, but a Gatling gun.
There's a genuinely upsetting scene as Cork goes into the cellar next day to see his friend's body, and Marriott finds the slab of Stilton Tovey had promised to bring round to Cork's.
Cork deduces that the Fenians' plan is to carry out a massacre of peers who own Irish land at the Liscurragh funeral. When he confronts them in the chapel that they've occupied for the task they realise the game's up, but Darcy's plea to Cork that ordinary Englishmen like him who don't give a hoot about Britain's interests in Ireland should join with the Fenians in rejecting the country's occupation is searing.
The Fenians let the unarmed Cork and Marriott go, but they're determined not to surrender, and as a sorrowful Cork walks away the army arrive for what looks to be a guaranteed bloodbath...
The brilliance of Sergeant Cork is in the fact that as well as giving an utterly convincing portrait of the Victorian era it also provides the viewer with a lot to think about. In retrospect this episode, made at a time when Irish nationalist violence had been dormant for a while, seems to evoke spectres of its future as much as of its past.
Ada Larkins is peeved. Even more than usual, I mean. A caff filled with snoozing men seems to her to sum up the lack of help she gets in running the place: "I don't know what we're one short of: the seven dwarfs or the seven deadly sins".
Once awoken, Alf and Osbert announce their intention of heading off to the pub, along with Jeff, who's clearly now had enough booze to cure him of those soppy American ailments he was affecting last week. Alf calls them the Three Musketeers. "The Three Mustgetbeers!" Ada crows.
Meanwhile, Hetty's reluctantly participating in one of Georgie's predictably explosive experiments: "Would you hold this wire?" "Not on your thermodynamic nelly!" (I feel I will spend the rest of my life seeking opportunities to use that last line).
Once Georgie's been sent to his room, Hetty offers her sympathies to a comprehensively cheesed-off Ada. Initially she's not keen on the offer of a cup of tea, having dispensed far too much of the brown liquid: "If I see another drop of the stuff I shall bawl my eyes out." Eventually she relents, and what sight could be more glamorous than Peggy Mount drinking her tea?
Ada's got the 'ump with Alf's unwillingness to help out around the place. Hetty suggests "Being ladylike and dignified, take him quietly in a corner and thump him." It looks like Ada might favour less subtle means.
When Alf and his companions roll in at 4 pm thoroughly inebriated and demanding food it's the last straw for Ada. Forcing Alf to gulp down a black coffee, she makes a grave announcement: despite her stern disapproval of pubs and their habitués, she intends to accompany him to the Lion and Unicorn that evening. "Who knows? It might be quite a jolly evening."
Jollity at first looks in short supply, as Ada shoots down Hetty's idea of drinking "something madly gay and exotic". There's work at the caff tomorrow, so a peppermint cordial's the most she's allowed.
Ada soon begins to enjoy herself, though (it's not thanks to alcohol -she's on the tomato juice), as she loudly condemns the pub for its all-round grottiness, and drives the other customers away by telling them off for drinking. It all gets a bit much for Hetty: "Ooh, get me a shandy, I'm past caring."
The embarrassment Ada causes her companions reaches a head with the arrival of her hated former char, Mrs Gannett. When the two have to be restrained to prevent them exchanging blows, the Larkins' entire party are banned from the pub by exasperated barman Fred (played by The Larkins' writer, Fred Robinson).
Next day smooth-talking Osbert tries to persuade Fred to lift the ban. It doesn't go well.
It seemed as if Ada was being extra loud and objectionable deliberately to get Alf barred, but the horrifying thing is that she actually wasn't: she's baffled as to why they were kicked out, and feels genuinely sorry that she's stopped Alf from going to the boozer he's attended for 30 years. Despite Hetty's prediction she'll be forcibly ejected, Ada heads back to the Lion and Unicorn to plead on her husband's behalf: "The man has not been born who could forcibly eject me!"
That's the last episode of The Larkins in the present series, but the show will be back in the summer. Next week sees the very welcome return of The Arthur Haynes Show.
Now, from an ITV comedy about a domineering wife and useless husband to, er, a BBC comedy about a domineering wife and useless husband. Not that they're that similar: in this one the couple are Northern.
The Bed, by Ronalds Wolfe and Chesney (whose hit sitcom The Rag Trade had ended back in April), tells the charmingly simple tale of Thora and Freddie Blackstock (played, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, by Thora Hird and Freddie Frinton), their quest for a new bed, and the undesirable results of buying one.
It's the eve of Thora and Freddie's 25th wedding anniversary, but Thora's convinced she won't make it to the big day alive: lack of sleep thanks to the knackered old bed they've had since they were married is (she insists) killing her. Freddie doesn't have a problem with it, but that's probably because he's usually drunk when he gets in it.
After arguing about the bed, the pair share a tender moment: but it turns out this is just a prelude to Thora decreeing that a new bed must be bought.
So it's off to a department store they trot, the bed department presided over by Brian Oulton, who builds up his part by outrageously camping it up. Thora's got her heart set on twin beds, having decided that 25 years of Freddie warming his feet on her back is quite enough ("You're a nasty sleeper. Nasty!"), but Freddie's worried what the neighbours will think about their separate sleeping arrangements. Anyway, it turns out two beds are prohibitively expensive so it's all moot.
The salesman suggests an extra wide bed as the solution to the couple's bedtime woes: "It's king sized!" he enthuses. "I don't care if it's filter-tipped," snorts Thora, "I don't want it!". She knows Freddie all too well: "You'd pinch me blankets, then psshht! Off into the distance, out of sight!"
After test-driving a few models, they're eventually persuaded to buy a new, high-tech bed that sleeps the man and woman at different levels,
Inevitably, when the couple get it home it proves not to be the bed of their dreams (I made that joke up myself). The lamp on Thora's side keeps retracting as she tries to read, and she nearly crushes Freddie behind the bed as he tries to fix it. The easy-slide castors mean the bed won't keep still, and cause Thora to spill her milk of magnesia all over the floor. And, obeying the salesman's instruction not to sit on the edge of the bed as it will ruin the springs, Freddie leaps in and out of it, bursting Thora's hot water bottle in the process.
They row, and Freddie decamps to the old bed, now resident in the spare room. Thora refuses to let him have any blankets. Restless, she prowls the bedroom and discovers a beautiful (to a middle-aged 60s housewife) dressing gown that Freddie's bought her as an anniversary gift, along with a card containing a heartfelt message.
An emotional Thora takes the blankets in to Freddie and joins him in the old bed.
Frinton and especially Hird, who wrings every laugh possible out of her lines (the highlight being her description of the couple's uneven bed: "You're down there like a mole in a hole while I'm up here keeping watch on the hillside!"), are wonderful, their performances resounding with the authentic ring of Northern music hall comedy. The warmth between them is especially cherishable: they're far more believable as a couple who've stuck together through thick and thin for many years than, say, the Larkins are.
The key line in the play is Freddie's "We've been pretty well-suited one way and another, haven't we love?", and Hird and Frinton proved well-suited enough to immediately secure their own Wolfe and Chesney-scripted sitcom, Meet the Wife, which ran for five years and achieved the distinction of being the only sitcom to get a mention in a Beatles song ("Good Morning, Good Morning"). The surviving episodes are out on DVD soon and I'll be taking a look at them here.
Next tonight, The Avengers follows up its Bonfire Night special with a New Year's special...
This week we begin with a sinister chap in a duffle coat (Leon Eagles) cutting through the fence of an early warning station, before using a very early mobile phone to report to his boss that all is well...
Cathy Gale pays Steed a visit after returning from Christmas in Marrakesh (Steed chuckles with disbelief when she tells him it was "very quiet"), and finds some remarkable debris left over from the drinks he had with friends the previous night.
There's glorious innuendo as the pair thank each other for their Christmas gifts. Steed: "I didn't know they did them in crocodile!" Cathy: "I tried it in the sitting room, but I felt it was more effective in the bedroom" (to which Steed responds, "I should have thought that would have been immaterial").
Sadly Steed had to abandon his party the night before when it was in full swing, due to the apparent outbreak of World War Three: "All our early warning stations picked up an approaching missile attack on this green and verdant isle." Fortunately, it was a false alarm: "Another few seconds and you and I would have been mutating now." Surely it must be a coincidence that Steed's recently taken an option on some prime trout fishing land in Cornwall nearby Smallwood, the only station that didn't pick up the rogue signal?
Anyway, it's New Year's Eve, and Steed's hoping to make up for his spoiled party of the previous night. His friend Tony Linklater, a fertiliser baron, has invited him to a costume party aboard a train heading north from Paddington. We get an inkling all's not right on realising the ticket collector's the duffle-coated chap we saw earlier.
Steed's ushered into the club car, where he meets his fellow revellers. There's Napoleon (Alex Davion), and a Pussycat (Anneke Wills), who Steed takes a particular shine to ("You'll make me purr!" she cries as he plays with her tail)...
A Highwaywoman (Anthea Windham)...
...a Victorian policeman (Richard Leech), who responds to the Pussycat's with-it lingo in wearily pedantic fashion: "Fabby? I suppose you mean fabulous... I hardly think this event will pass into fable and legend."
Complementing Steed's outfit there's a Wild West sheriff (The Plane Makers' John Junkin), in truth a former railwayman who recently won the Irish lottery.
And finally there's Leonard Rossiter, playing an overbearing and lecherous self-made man ("I thought she was a model," he says of the Pussycat, "Then I found out she really does model") who's come as Robin Hood.
The revels take on a worrying edge as the partygoers find they've all been brought aboard under false pretences, each given to believe the host was a different acquaintance of theirs. And things get more curious when the train stops. The sign reads Wolverhampton, but this just conceals the name of a station that's been disused for years.
What's more, it's just the one carriage halted at the station, the rest of the train having gone on. And if that wasn't bad enough, a sinister figure dressed as a monk is stalking the partygoers.
As he's the only one who knows anything about the area where they find themselves, the Sheriff agrees to go and seek help. But it's not long before he's found, killed by one of the arrows Robin Hood claims to have lost.
And the party's soon missing another member, as the Highwaywoman's rendered unconscious by the train's sinister barman (Frank Maher).
The monk's revealed as Cathy, who Steed brought along as he was highly suspicious of his invitation (Tony Linklater's abroad). Nobody bats an eyelid when she takes the place of the unconscious Highwaywoman (shows how much notice they took of her, I suppose).
The partygoers have deduced that the reason they've been abducted is because they've all got an appointment at noon the next day to sign the papers that confirm their ownership of land nearby the Smallwood station. Having decided that one among them must be an impostor, the Policeman insists they each point out the plot of land they've claimed (note the camera coming into frame on the left, preparing to focus on the map for the next shot).
Cathy ends up picking the same plot as Steed (despite choosing the only one the trout stream doesn't run through), the result being imprisonment for both of them. The tips Steed picked up in his recent handcuffs course prove useless against the Policeman's Victorian model, and the Avengers are more than usually ruffled.
Steed explains that the archvillain (whichever of the party that may be) plans to buy all the land around Smallwood and set up a device to render Britain's early warning system useless by causing constant false alarms. Fortunately, Pussycat happens along, and Steed attempts to flirt her into setting them free ("She's fascinated by me. It's my winning smile." "Did you take a smile course?"). "The longer I stay here, the more danger you're in", he warns her. "I would have thought it completely the opposite," she replies, wonderfully.
Anneke Wills is adorably mischievous (and seemingly completely unconcerned by the perilous situation she and the others are in) as she makes up her mind whether to set Steed free.
She decides not ("But you did ask nicely,") though Steed manages to get the keys out of her pocket. By the process of elimination Cathy works out that Napoleon is the villain (his costume was a clue to his plans for world domination all along - it would have been ace if the Pussycat had been the baddie, though), and as Cathy tackles the barman with a jolly-faced Speak Your Weight machine ("You are six stone two and have a strenuous day ahead")...
...Steed tackles the boss in a fashion appropriate to his Western costume.
The job done, Steed and Cathy relax in iconic (sorry to use that word) fashion with a glass of Champagne. Steed wishes Mrs Gale a happy new year "And very many of 'em". "Let's not push our luck, Steed. We only just got through this one."
Another brilliant script from Brian Clemens, Dressed to Kill is The Avengers at its most sublime. I'll drink to many more episodes this wonderful.
Sunday 29 December
This week's First Night play on the BBC is Jane Phillips' The One Night of the Year, with Kenneth Cope and Warren Mitchell.
Monday 30 December
The BBC wastes no time after the final episode of Maigret to start rerunning The Best of Maigret on Monday nights. This is followed by a Points of View end of year special and, as ever on a Monday, Come Dancing. Tonight it's South London (in the Orchid Ballroom, Purley) vs the Northeast (from the Empress, Whitley Bay).
Tuesday 31 December
Tonight's Plane Makers begins aboard a demonstration flight for one of Scott-Furlong's Sovereign jets, heading back from India. As pilot Henry "Auntie" Forbes goes to check on his passengers it's exciting (for me at least that one of them (supposedly Indian) is played by prolific bit-part actor Kenneth Benda, who has my favourite name of any performer (here he's credited as C. Kenneth Benda, which is even better).
Also aboard the plane is Sir Gerald Merle, Labour MP, Scott-Furlong board member and sworn enemy of John Wilder. His reappearance suggests there's trouble brewing for the company's Managing Director.
In the immediate present, though, things look pretty rosy for Mr Wilder. His (self-interested) actions last week in averting mass redundancies at the factory (picked over in exasperating detail here) have made him flavour of the month with union chief Jeremy Bessiter (Harold Innocent), who's planted a puff piece about him in The Daily Globe insisting he deserves a knighthood. Innocent's fruity tones mark Bessiter out as one of a new breed of middle class union man, who socially has far more in common with Wilder than the workforce he represents. They also help to make the lengthy chat between he and Wilder recounting the events of the previous episode more bearable (few actors could do more with dialogue like "He preferred to listen to some rattle-pated gibbering computer" than Innocent). And of course, far more important than any of this is Kay Lingard's hairdo, which grows more baroque with each passing week.
Meanwhile, Scott-Furlong chairman Sir Gordon Revidge decides to join forces with Sir Gerald and give the hated Wilder the boot. Perhaps the rest of the scene wasn't sufficiently interesting, or perhaps I've just been doing this blog too long, but I couldn't help observing that in his offices at Albertson's merchant bank, Sir Gordon has the very same coffee cups as Wilder. Fascinating stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.
It's great to see the always entertaining Barbara Murray back for the first time in ages as Wilder's wife Pam. They seem to have made up since she ruined his chances of becoming chairman, but she still gets in the odd dig at his mistress. With rumours in the air about John receiving a knighthood in the New Year's honours list, she's anxious to know whether the invites to his forthcoming birthday party should be from John and Pamela Wilder or Sir John and Lady Wilder.
Wilder's aware of the simmering plots to get rid of him, but he's hoping his shares in the company might help to improve his position. Inspired by this talk of shares, Pam sounds Auntie out about the possibility of meeting up with a stockbroker friend of his. Pam and Auntie's relationship is very sweet: although his sexual orientation (if he even has one) is likely to remain an open question, he seems every inch the gay best friend, enthusiastically educating her in his music collection, and even teaching her knitting.
Auntie's broker friend, Mr Telliter (John Wentworth) seems even more of an old queen. When he meets with Pam she's stunned by the revelation that the shares she and her husband own in Scott-Furlong now number 250,000 each, and that between them they have more than anyone else.
As the end of the year approaches and Wilder receives no notification of his longed-for knighthood, Revidge closes in, and demands the Managing Director's resignation: he plans to move him to another company Albertson's has an interest in - in Australia. Wilder, who knows full well how many shares he owns in the company, threatens to sell his and Pam's all at once, leaving the door open for a takeover bid. Revidge says he's prepared to take the risk in order to be rid of Wilder, but the announcement of the news that a quarter of a million shares have just been released on the market reveals he was bluffing: he agrees Wilder (who conceals the fact he knows nothing about it) can stay on if he'll just stop the sale of any more.
A delighted Wilder returns home to discover his unwitting saviour is Pam, who's been having a wild adventure on the stock market, encouraging Mr Telliter to sell, buy, sell and buy back all afternoon. She's ended the day as Scott-Furlong's biggest single shareholder: "Doesn't this make me your boss, in some kind of way?"
On that unexpected note, we wave goodbye to 1963. I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings here: there's more to come in '64. And I wish you a very happy new year!
Wednesday 1 January
Happy New Year! There's no special New Year's programming on BBC TV, though tonight's Festival play is The Comedy of Errors, with an impressive cast including Donald Sinden, John Welsh, Ian Richardson, Alec McCowen, Clifford Rose, Janet Suzman, Susan Engel and (in only her second TV appearance) Diana Rigg.
Thursday 2 January
- "Captain Dart and his men are in orbit around Uranus"
-"How does Uranus look, Husky?"
-"I keep thinking about that light Husky said he saw on Uranus"
-"There's nothing on Uranus. Nothing!"
Yes, tonight's episode of Space Patrol brings us once more to the seventh planet of the solar system. And I thought I'd get the most sniggery lines out of the way first, as this is a deadly serious episode. Sort of. It's Space Patrol's own characteristically strange take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers motif.
As Galasphere 347 orbits Uranus, crewman Husky's convinced he sees a light glowing on the supposedly uninhabited world. His crewmates scoff, but it turns out he's quite right...
Viewers who've been following Space Patrol's various ongoing plotlines may remember the discovery of walking, telepathic plants native to Uranus. Well, this week it emerges that the previously only-just sentient vegetable beings have recently undergone a massive and mysterious increase in intelligence (it's the second episode in a row to feature a species who've experienced a huge evolutionary leap, oddly enough): they've now built a spaceship and their embiggened brains are set on the one goal of all good malicious extra-terrestrials - the invasion of Earth.
The people of that ever-desirable planet are oblivious of the impending arrival of their would-be conquerers. Professor Haggerty's busy irritating Colonel Raeburn with the unpleasant-looking products of his recent fruit-combining experiments. There's the pinepear, the grapegoose and the plunge. All likely to be coming to a Waitrose near you soon. A hurtful remark by the colonel about the Professor's receding hairline sets him on the path of creating a machine to make it grow back.
During all these hi-jinks, the Uranians have been piloting their ship toward Earth. They now call themselves the Duos, seemingly due to their ability to split their minds from their bodies. Their master plan is to hide their craft and conquer the planet by using their mental forms (which look like wisps of cotton wool) to possess human beings.
As there are only about five of them, it's important to pick the right human beings to possess. Scientific genius Haggerty, the man most likely to prevent their invasion, is their prime target. But while they manage to take over his daughter Cassiopeia, the Duo attempting to enslave the professor has his mind electrocuted by Haggerty's elaborate hair-restoring machine.
What can be done to save the Earth from the Duos, and more importantly, an epidemic of bad temper? Well, the only thing that can destroy their mental forms is electricity. The gooey effect of a Duo's body melting when its mind gets fried is brilliantly done.
Haggerty manages to ruin the plans to welcome the Duos to Earth (all the possessed characters are very keen on welcoming their masters - I'm not sure what this would consist of: possibly a finger (or tendril) buffet would be involved) by shooting everyone with a gun that gives them an electric shock.
The one Duo left alive after this massacre makes his escape, but is tracked down by the gallant crew of Galasphere 347, who send his ship up in flames, and quite possibly commit genocide in the process. Still, they started it.
Elsewhere, Noel Purcell gives his usual turn as an excitable Irishman with a gargantuan beard, called, in case the performance wasn't clue enough to his Celtic origin, Mike Kelly (it's actually a fairly subdued performance for Purcell). An employee of the oilmen, he's shocked to learn of the events at the palace from local trader Ahmed (Fireball XL5 and Dalek voice artist David Graham). But only a few moments later he finds himself tended to the wounded prince (despite the Emir earlier voicing his concerns about the Westernisation of Sayeda, it appears it's already made it as far as his son's hairdo).
In case you're wondering where Simon Templar fits into all this, his girlfriend of the week (Suzanna Leigh) is the daughter of the late Mr McAndrew, and he accompanies her to Sayeda to help avenge her father's death.
They meet up with Kelly and the Prince at the guesthouse of Kelly's old friend Mrs McAlister (Renee Houston). She certainly knows how to deal with all this Middle Eastern angst. As the prince swears to Lilla McAndrew that "The death of our two fathers shall be avenged! I shall fight, and I shall raise an army!" in sweeps the merry Scottish widow: "Have a nice cup of tea first!"
Like a lot of this episode's cast, the actor playing Mrs McAlister's sinister servant Habib is uncredited, but I think it might be Henry Soskin/Lincoln (see my ramblings on The Avengers' Death a la Carte for more information). Anyway, he's a bad penny who reveals the whereabouts of the Prince to an even worse penny (John Bennett - this episode is teeming with Caucasian actors who made a living from being vaguely "foreign" looking).
Bennett and his men invade the guesthouse but are beaten off (not like that) in the customary mid-episode fight scene. It's an especially vicious one this week, with Simon booting some poor sod right in the face.
This excitement over with, Simon puts into action his plan to restore Prince Karim to power. It involves him going undercover as gloriously supercilious oil buyer J Pierpoint-Sykes. Roger Moore clearly has a whale of a time in this somewhat queeny persona: "They always manage to discover oil in the most uncomfortable places." He conveys even more discomfort as he reluctantly chomps on a sheep's eye (which looks more like a mini marshmallow than anything else).
And as all the troops seem to be just as useless as the one played (uncredited) by David Graham's fellow Fireball XL5 voice John Bluthal, it appears they may well succeed.
Simon's masquerade is exposed when John Bennett's character turns up, and he's flung in prison, but he soon gets the better of the guard played by Frank Olegario, whose wild overacting makes it a huge shame that he, too, is uncredited.
The same can't be said of this listless pair of extras (are these really supposed to be Arabs?) who Simon shares his cell with.
It's Dark Outside is a spin-off from a previous Granada crime series, The Odd Man, and focuses on William Mervyn's conspicuously erudite Chief Inspector Rose. Here he's teamed with hot-headed, working class Sergeant Swift ( a young Keith Barron). So far, so much like any other odd couple detective series - but It's Dark Outside is lent an extra dimension by two other regular characters. Barrister Anthony Brand (John Carson) is an old friend of Rose's who often tussles with him professionally in his role as head of the Human Rights Organisation, who keep a beady eye on the police's treatment of its suspects (so it turns out human rights aren't just something that have been foisted on Britain by Brussels in the period since political correctness went mad after all); Brand's journalist wife Alice, meanwhile, is chomping at the bit to chronicle the police's misdemeanours in the Sunday papers.
The question at the heart of the show: Are the police systematically disregarding people's human rights, or are they being hindered in their quest to bring criminals to justice by clueless do-gooders? has never seemed more relevant than in the opening decades of the 21st century, and in many ways It's Dark Outside seems far more modern than its contemporary police series.
The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk begins with Rose and Swift arriving at the scene of a child murder. It's certainly an attention-grabbing start to the series, and seems a world away from the stolen handbags and misunderstood juvenile delinquents that more often characterise 60s crime shows. Rose (the living embodiment of the word "urbane") takes it all in his stride, but it proves a bit much for Swift, not yet sufficiently dry behind the ears.
Once Rose is satisfied his assistant is up to the task, he leaves him to look after the body, and endure the clucking of the garrulous neighbours who found the body.
The scene changes, to a hammy rendition of music hall staple "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" by the Brothers Tulk, Arthur (Richard Butler) and Harry (Aubrey Morris, in drag). As their performance goes on, it becomes clear there's no audience: much to Harry's distress, their days on the halls are long over, and they just run through their well-worn routines at home for old times' sake.
It appears their lack of success stemmed partly from the oddly macabre nature of their act, and Harry's convinced that changes in comedy fashion mean their time's come at last: "It's all the rage now, our kind of humour... you know, jokes about dead bodies. Sick, they call it."
"Sick" is exactly the word Arthur's wife Joan (Jane Barrett) applies to the brother-in-law she unwillingly lives with: "I'm sick of the neighbours talking about him, calling the kids into the house when he walks down the street. I'm sick of that loony creeping about the place. Sick of it, sick, sick, sick!" For his part, Harry thinks Joan's jealous that he looks better in women's clothes than she does. "Ugly old bitch!"
It wouldn't have been possible to find a better fit for the role of Harry than the incomparably seedy Aubrey Morris. The scene where he gazes longingly at a ghostly display of shop window dummies is undeniably creepy. It ends with him apprehended by a policeman for loitering.
Things get worse for Harry when he's taken to the police station, and a glove embroidered with the name of the dead child, Doreen Bates, is found in his pocket. The interrogation Sergeant Swift subjects him to is not exactly gentle. The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk is full of memorable lines, none more so than Swift's assessment of Harry: "You wear perversion like an overcoat, Tulk, it's stinking and it suits you down to the ground" (an ideal description of Aubrey Morris's screen persona, in fact).
The fact that Harry's clearly gay ("We had a name for your sort... rough trade!" he tells Swift, and his pockets contain photos implied to be of naked men), only convinces Swift further that he's a murderer of little girls (a pervert is a pervert, after all). The more worldly Rose sees it as a good reason for thinking he's not ("Chacun a son gout"). "He enjoyed killing that kid!" Swift insists. "I doubt it," drawls Rose, "I doubt it very much. The English almost always take their pleasures sadly."
As Harry's locked up in a cell, Anthony Brand drops in to pay Rose a visit. Rose explains Swift's hostility on learning who his guest is: "We like to think of ourselves as a public service and you keep insisting we're a public menace."
There's a shock end to the episode's first act as Harry Tulk's found dead in his cell. Not only do things look black for Swift but with Brand privy to the find there could be a major PR headache...
But, as Brand explains to his wife, until someone makes a complaint to the Human Rights Organisation about Harry's treatment, there's not much he can do. The word "yuppie" didn't exist in 1964, but if it had there'd have been nobody more suited to it than the Brands. They're a far from flattering characterisation of a middle class liberal couple: Alice is brimming over with excitement at the prospect of writing an article about a death at the hands of the police (she talks about writing for "the Sunday papers" - the Observer seems the most likely place she'd be published in). The social gulf between the Brands and those they professionally stick up for is at it's clearest when Alice jokes that a mysterious letter had made her think her husband had a mistress. "In Balham?!" he cries in disbelief.
The Tulk business sees Swift suspended from the force pending investigation. His heated exchange with Rose (who he believes to be behind the suspension) sets the terms of reference for their relationship: Rose, embodiment of the old boys' network, is despised by his chippy subordinate. Rose accepts his insults with little more than a raised eyebrow: "Do stop shaking, Swift. You're giving me double vision."
The suspended sergeant is tracked down by Alice Brand to a caff where she finds a knickerbocker glory to be the only vaguely appetising item on the menu (even that doesn't merit more than a mouthful). He proves resistant to her attempts at an interview.
Joan Tulk, stricken with guilt over her mistreatment of her brother-in-law, calls in the Human Rights Organisation to look into his death. But when Brand comes to visit her, he's puzzled by the strange familiarity of her husband. Arthur, for his part, disappears shortly afterward. The discovery of a photo of Arthur in a policeman outfit leads Rose to the conclusion that he disguised himself as an officer on canteen shift, and - seen by Brand as he arrived at the police station - delivered his brother's very last meal.
Hiding out in the basement of a derelict house, Arthur's brought food by Joan, and explains that he was compelled to kill Harry in order to prevent him from attacking any more children.
As you've probably realised, it's all a lie. It's Arthur who's the danger to young girls (the word "paedophile" was barely known in 1964), as illustrated by the arrival of young Sally (Elna Pearl), who runs into the basement after her ball...
Sergeant Swift was trailing Mrs Tulk, and rescues young Sally before anything terrible happens. "If every private citizen took his duty as seriously as you, spying on his fellow citizens, following them through the streets as you followed Mrs Tulk, it'd be the death of democracy in this country," Rose observes to his now-reinstated Sergeant, who's decided he wants to carry on working with him (it's an education of sorts). Later, Rose gloats over a brandy with Brand that the police weren't to blame after all. The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk certainly comes down on the side of the police - nominally Rose's more cautious methods, though it was Swift's that prevented a child being molested - and it'll be interesting to see if future episodes continue to paint the Brands purely as obstructions.
You can see full Radio Times listings of the week's BBC programmes here.
Sunday 29 December
This week's First Night play on the BBC is Jane Phillips' The One Night of the Year, with Kenneth Cope and Warren Mitchell.
Monday 30 December
The BBC wastes no time after the final episode of Maigret to start rerunning The Best of Maigret on Monday nights. This is followed by a Points of View end of year special and, as ever on a Monday, Come Dancing. Tonight it's South London (in the Orchid Ballroom, Purley) vs the Northeast (from the Empress, Whitley Bay).
Tuesday 31 December
Tonight's Plane Makers begins aboard a demonstration flight for one of Scott-Furlong's Sovereign jets, heading back from India. As pilot Henry "Auntie" Forbes goes to check on his passengers it's exciting (for me at least that one of them (supposedly Indian) is played by prolific bit-part actor Kenneth Benda, who has my favourite name of any performer (here he's credited as C. Kenneth Benda, which is even better).
Also aboard the plane is Sir Gerald Merle, Labour MP, Scott-Furlong board member and sworn enemy of John Wilder. His reappearance suggests there's trouble brewing for the company's Managing Director.
In the immediate present, though, things look pretty rosy for Mr Wilder. His (self-interested) actions last week in averting mass redundancies at the factory (picked over in exasperating detail here) have made him flavour of the month with union chief Jeremy Bessiter (Harold Innocent), who's planted a puff piece about him in The Daily Globe insisting he deserves a knighthood. Innocent's fruity tones mark Bessiter out as one of a new breed of middle class union man, who socially has far more in common with Wilder than the workforce he represents. They also help to make the lengthy chat between he and Wilder recounting the events of the previous episode more bearable (few actors could do more with dialogue like "He preferred to listen to some rattle-pated gibbering computer" than Innocent). And of course, far more important than any of this is Kay Lingard's hairdo, which grows more baroque with each passing week.
Meanwhile, Scott-Furlong chairman Sir Gordon Revidge decides to join forces with Sir Gerald and give the hated Wilder the boot. Perhaps the rest of the scene wasn't sufficiently interesting, or perhaps I've just been doing this blog too long, but I couldn't help observing that in his offices at Albertson's merchant bank, Sir Gordon has the very same coffee cups as Wilder. Fascinating stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.
It's great to see the always entertaining Barbara Murray back for the first time in ages as Wilder's wife Pam. They seem to have made up since she ruined his chances of becoming chairman, but she still gets in the odd dig at his mistress. With rumours in the air about John receiving a knighthood in the New Year's honours list, she's anxious to know whether the invites to his forthcoming birthday party should be from John and Pamela Wilder or Sir John and Lady Wilder.
Wilder's aware of the simmering plots to get rid of him, but he's hoping his shares in the company might help to improve his position. Inspired by this talk of shares, Pam sounds Auntie out about the possibility of meeting up with a stockbroker friend of his. Pam and Auntie's relationship is very sweet: although his sexual orientation (if he even has one) is likely to remain an open question, he seems every inch the gay best friend, enthusiastically educating her in his music collection, and even teaching her knitting.
Auntie's broker friend, Mr Telliter (John Wentworth) seems even more of an old queen. When he meets with Pam she's stunned by the revelation that the shares she and her husband own in Scott-Furlong now number 250,000 each, and that between them they have more than anyone else.
As the end of the year approaches and Wilder receives no notification of his longed-for knighthood, Revidge closes in, and demands the Managing Director's resignation: he plans to move him to another company Albertson's has an interest in - in Australia. Wilder, who knows full well how many shares he owns in the company, threatens to sell his and Pam's all at once, leaving the door open for a takeover bid. Revidge says he's prepared to take the risk in order to be rid of Wilder, but the announcement of the news that a quarter of a million shares have just been released on the market reveals he was bluffing: he agrees Wilder (who conceals the fact he knows nothing about it) can stay on if he'll just stop the sale of any more.
A delighted Wilder returns home to discover his unwitting saviour is Pam, who's been having a wild adventure on the stock market, encouraging Mr Telliter to sell, buy, sell and buy back all afternoon. She's ended the day as Scott-Furlong's biggest single shareholder: "Doesn't this make me your boss, in some kind of way?"
On that unexpected note, we wave goodbye to 1963. I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings here: there's more to come in '64. And I wish you a very happy new year!
Wednesday 1 January
Happy New Year! There's no special New Year's programming on BBC TV, though tonight's Festival play is The Comedy of Errors, with an impressive cast including Donald Sinden, John Welsh, Ian Richardson, Alec McCowen, Clifford Rose, Janet Suzman, Susan Engel and (in only her second TV appearance) Diana Rigg.
Thursday 2 January
- "Captain Dart and his men are in orbit around Uranus"
-"How does Uranus look, Husky?"
-"I keep thinking about that light Husky said he saw on Uranus"
-"There's nothing on Uranus. Nothing!"
Yes, tonight's episode of Space Patrol brings us once more to the seventh planet of the solar system. And I thought I'd get the most sniggery lines out of the way first, as this is a deadly serious episode. Sort of. It's Space Patrol's own characteristically strange take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers motif.
As Galasphere 347 orbits Uranus, crewman Husky's convinced he sees a light glowing on the supposedly uninhabited world. His crewmates scoff, but it turns out he's quite right...
Viewers who've been following Space Patrol's various ongoing plotlines may remember the discovery of walking, telepathic plants native to Uranus. Well, this week it emerges that the previously only-just sentient vegetable beings have recently undergone a massive and mysterious increase in intelligence (it's the second episode in a row to feature a species who've experienced a huge evolutionary leap, oddly enough): they've now built a spaceship and their embiggened brains are set on the one goal of all good malicious extra-terrestrials - the invasion of Earth.
The people of that ever-desirable planet are oblivious of the impending arrival of their would-be conquerers. Professor Haggerty's busy irritating Colonel Raeburn with the unpleasant-looking products of his recent fruit-combining experiments. There's the pinepear, the grapegoose and the plunge. All likely to be coming to a Waitrose near you soon. A hurtful remark by the colonel about the Professor's receding hairline sets him on the path of creating a machine to make it grow back.
During all these hi-jinks, the Uranians have been piloting their ship toward Earth. They now call themselves the Duos, seemingly due to their ability to split their minds from their bodies. Their master plan is to hide their craft and conquer the planet by using their mental forms (which look like wisps of cotton wool) to possess human beings.
As there are only about five of them, it's important to pick the right human beings to possess. Scientific genius Haggerty, the man most likely to prevent their invasion, is their prime target. But while they manage to take over his daughter Cassiopeia, the Duo attempting to enslave the professor has his mind electrocuted by Haggerty's elaborate hair-restoring machine.
The main hallmark of people who've been possessed by a duo is increased surliness. Slim and Husky are very rude to Husky's Gabblerdictum bird when they get their minds taken over, the possessed Raeburn insists on calling a startled Marla stupid, and Larry Dart, possessed while Haggerty explains what's going on to him, responds with a curt "Oh, I can't be bothered with such nonsense."
What can be done to save the Earth from the Duos, and more importantly, an epidemic of bad temper? Well, the only thing that can destroy their mental forms is electricity. The gooey effect of a Duo's body melting when its mind gets fried is brilliantly done.
Haggerty manages to ruin the plans to welcome the Duos to Earth (all the possessed characters are very keen on welcoming their masters - I'm not sure what this would consist of: possibly a finger (or tendril) buffet would be involved) by shooting everyone with a gun that gives them an electric shock.
The one Duo left alive after this massacre makes his escape, but is tracked down by the gallant crew of Galasphere 347, who send his ship up in flames, and quite possibly commit genocide in the process. Still, they started it.
And now on ITV...
This week's Saint is a tremendously fun romp with a top-drawer guest cast. It's set in the fictional Middle Eastern state of Sayeda, where Brits John McAndrew and Harry Shannet (Jack Lambert and Alfred Burke) have struck oil. McAndrew's working together with Sayeda's ruler (Ferdy Mayne, in another of those Arabic parts he was given on a mysteriously regular basis) and his annoying teenage son Prince Karim (Louis Raynor) on plans for using the wealth oil will bring to improve life for the people of Sayeda.
These plans are interrupted by the arrival of rebel leader Abdul Aziz (Alec Mango) and his troops, who swiftly shoot down both McAndrew and the Emir: Prince Karim escapes, injured. Aziz assumes leadership of Sayeda, with the slimy Shannet at his side. It looks like the wellbeing of the common man may not be a prime concern of theirs. Military chief Major Hussein (Patrick Westwood) seems reluctant to carry out their orders to find and kill the prince, though.
Elsewhere, Noel Purcell gives his usual turn as an excitable Irishman with a gargantuan beard, called, in case the performance wasn't clue enough to his Celtic origin, Mike Kelly (it's actually a fairly subdued performance for Purcell). An employee of the oilmen, he's shocked to learn of the events at the palace from local trader Ahmed (Fireball XL5 and Dalek voice artist David Graham). But only a few moments later he finds himself tended to the wounded prince (despite the Emir earlier voicing his concerns about the Westernisation of Sayeda, it appears it's already made it as far as his son's hairdo).
They meet up with Kelly and the Prince at the guesthouse of Kelly's old friend Mrs McAlister (Renee Houston). She certainly knows how to deal with all this Middle Eastern angst. As the prince swears to Lilla McAndrew that "The death of our two fathers shall be avenged! I shall fight, and I shall raise an army!" in sweeps the merry Scottish widow: "Have a nice cup of tea first!"
Like a lot of this episode's cast, the actor playing Mrs McAlister's sinister servant Habib is uncredited, but I think it might be Henry Soskin/Lincoln (see my ramblings on The Avengers' Death a la Carte for more information). Anyway, he's a bad penny who reveals the whereabouts of the Prince to an even worse penny (John Bennett - this episode is teeming with Caucasian actors who made a living from being vaguely "foreign" looking).
Bennett and his men invade the guesthouse but are beaten off (not like that) in the customary mid-episode fight scene. It's an especially vicious one this week, with Simon booting some poor sod right in the face.
This excitement over with, Simon puts into action his plan to restore Prince Karim to power. It involves him going undercover as gloriously supercilious oil buyer J Pierpoint-Sykes. Roger Moore clearly has a whale of a time in this somewhat queeny persona: "They always manage to discover oil in the most uncomfortable places." He conveys even more discomfort as he reluctantly chomps on a sheep's eye (which looks more like a mini marshmallow than anything else).
When he's not being Pierpoint-Sykes, Simon's either busying himself in the persona of a rabble-rouser predicting the imminent return of Prince Karim with a vast army...
...or marshalling that army, consisting of the prince, Kelly, Lilla McAndrew and Mrs McAlister, himself (it's rather wonderful seeing Renee Houston in Cathy Gale mode). They're attempting to convince Aziz's forces there's a lot more of them by throwing fireworks and making lots of loud noises.
And as all the troops seem to be just as useless as the one played (uncredited) by David Graham's fellow Fireball XL5 voice John Bluthal, it appears they may well succeed.
The same can't be said of this listless pair of extras (are these really supposed to be Arabs?) who Simon shares his cell with.
All ends well when it turns out that Major Hussein's still loyal to the prince, and happily guns down the country's new prime minister. So that's that.
The prince gets his throne back, Kelly gets a job as minister of the interior, and Lilla gets half the oil money. But will Mrs McAlister get her man...?
Friday 3 January
Tonight, courtesy of Granada, we bring you our first new show of 1964. The wonderful opening credits, accompanied by Derek Hilton's jazz theme (probably inspired by Johnny Dankworth's work on The Avengers) need to be seen to be appreciated, but here's my attempt to give you a flavour of them.
It's Dark Outside is a spin-off from a previous Granada crime series, The Odd Man, and focuses on William Mervyn's conspicuously erudite Chief Inspector Rose. Here he's teamed with hot-headed, working class Sergeant Swift ( a young Keith Barron). So far, so much like any other odd couple detective series - but It's Dark Outside is lent an extra dimension by two other regular characters. Barrister Anthony Brand (John Carson) is an old friend of Rose's who often tussles with him professionally in his role as head of the Human Rights Organisation, who keep a beady eye on the police's treatment of its suspects (so it turns out human rights aren't just something that have been foisted on Britain by Brussels in the period since political correctness went mad after all); Brand's journalist wife Alice, meanwhile, is chomping at the bit to chronicle the police's misdemeanours in the Sunday papers.
The question at the heart of the show: Are the police systematically disregarding people's human rights, or are they being hindered in their quest to bring criminals to justice by clueless do-gooders? has never seemed more relevant than in the opening decades of the 21st century, and in many ways It's Dark Outside seems far more modern than its contemporary police series.
The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk begins with Rose and Swift arriving at the scene of a child murder. It's certainly an attention-grabbing start to the series, and seems a world away from the stolen handbags and misunderstood juvenile delinquents that more often characterise 60s crime shows. Rose (the living embodiment of the word "urbane") takes it all in his stride, but it proves a bit much for Swift, not yet sufficiently dry behind the ears.
Once Rose is satisfied his assistant is up to the task, he leaves him to look after the body, and endure the clucking of the garrulous neighbours who found the body.
The scene changes, to a hammy rendition of music hall staple "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" by the Brothers Tulk, Arthur (Richard Butler) and Harry (Aubrey Morris, in drag). As their performance goes on, it becomes clear there's no audience: much to Harry's distress, their days on the halls are long over, and they just run through their well-worn routines at home for old times' sake.
It appears their lack of success stemmed partly from the oddly macabre nature of their act, and Harry's convinced that changes in comedy fashion mean their time's come at last: "It's all the rage now, our kind of humour... you know, jokes about dead bodies. Sick, they call it."
"Sick" is exactly the word Arthur's wife Joan (Jane Barrett) applies to the brother-in-law she unwillingly lives with: "I'm sick of the neighbours talking about him, calling the kids into the house when he walks down the street. I'm sick of that loony creeping about the place. Sick of it, sick, sick, sick!" For his part, Harry thinks Joan's jealous that he looks better in women's clothes than she does. "Ugly old bitch!"
It wouldn't have been possible to find a better fit for the role of Harry than the incomparably seedy Aubrey Morris. The scene where he gazes longingly at a ghostly display of shop window dummies is undeniably creepy. It ends with him apprehended by a policeman for loitering.
Things get worse for Harry when he's taken to the police station, and a glove embroidered with the name of the dead child, Doreen Bates, is found in his pocket. The interrogation Sergeant Swift subjects him to is not exactly gentle. The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk is full of memorable lines, none more so than Swift's assessment of Harry: "You wear perversion like an overcoat, Tulk, it's stinking and it suits you down to the ground" (an ideal description of Aubrey Morris's screen persona, in fact).
The fact that Harry's clearly gay ("We had a name for your sort... rough trade!" he tells Swift, and his pockets contain photos implied to be of naked men), only convinces Swift further that he's a murderer of little girls (a pervert is a pervert, after all). The more worldly Rose sees it as a good reason for thinking he's not ("Chacun a son gout"). "He enjoyed killing that kid!" Swift insists. "I doubt it," drawls Rose, "I doubt it very much. The English almost always take their pleasures sadly."
As Harry's locked up in a cell, Anthony Brand drops in to pay Rose a visit. Rose explains Swift's hostility on learning who his guest is: "We like to think of ourselves as a public service and you keep insisting we're a public menace."
There's a shock end to the episode's first act as Harry Tulk's found dead in his cell. Not only do things look black for Swift but with Brand privy to the find there could be a major PR headache...
But, as Brand explains to his wife, until someone makes a complaint to the Human Rights Organisation about Harry's treatment, there's not much he can do. The word "yuppie" didn't exist in 1964, but if it had there'd have been nobody more suited to it than the Brands. They're a far from flattering characterisation of a middle class liberal couple: Alice is brimming over with excitement at the prospect of writing an article about a death at the hands of the police (she talks about writing for "the Sunday papers" - the Observer seems the most likely place she'd be published in). The social gulf between the Brands and those they professionally stick up for is at it's clearest when Alice jokes that a mysterious letter had made her think her husband had a mistress. "In Balham?!" he cries in disbelief.
The Tulk business sees Swift suspended from the force pending investigation. His heated exchange with Rose (who he believes to be behind the suspension) sets the terms of reference for their relationship: Rose, embodiment of the old boys' network, is despised by his chippy subordinate. Rose accepts his insults with little more than a raised eyebrow: "Do stop shaking, Swift. You're giving me double vision."
The suspended sergeant is tracked down by Alice Brand to a caff where she finds a knickerbocker glory to be the only vaguely appetising item on the menu (even that doesn't merit more than a mouthful). He proves resistant to her attempts at an interview.
Joan Tulk, stricken with guilt over her mistreatment of her brother-in-law, calls in the Human Rights Organisation to look into his death. But when Brand comes to visit her, he's puzzled by the strange familiarity of her husband. Arthur, for his part, disappears shortly afterward. The discovery of a photo of Arthur in a policeman outfit leads Rose to the conclusion that he disguised himself as an officer on canteen shift, and - seen by Brand as he arrived at the police station - delivered his brother's very last meal.
Hiding out in the basement of a derelict house, Arthur's brought food by Joan, and explains that he was compelled to kill Harry in order to prevent him from attacking any more children.
As you've probably realised, it's all a lie. It's Arthur who's the danger to young girls (the word "paedophile" was barely known in 1964), as illustrated by the arrival of young Sally (Elna Pearl), who runs into the basement after her ball...
You can see full Radio Times listings of the week's BBC programmes here.
And to play us out...
It's Freddie and the Dreamers, at number 3 in this week's chart with "You Were Made for Me" (the Beatles still occupy the top two spots). You can see the full chart here.
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