The Doctor and his grudging companions have now been on the planet Skaro for six weeks (considering children are such a key part of the show's demographic it's worth bearing in mind that's the length of summer holidays, which seem at the time to stretch on and on forever), and the strain of keeping a storyline going so long is showing. This week's episode is little more than 26 minutes of padding (highly entertaining padding though some of it is), agonisingly leading to next Saturday's final confrontation with the Daleks.
You may recall that last week's instalment finished with fairly anonymous Thal Elyon facing death at the appendages of some nameless thing emerging from the lake of mutations. The thing remains unseen as well as unnamed, The Ordeal beginning with Elyon's companions discovering that he's already been dragged beneath the lake's inhospitable surface.
It's a shocking discovery for all of the team planning to attack the Daleks from behind, but especially for Antodus, such a nervous wreck from his previous visit to the lake that you wonder what on Skaro possessed his brother Ganatus to bring him along on such a dangerous mission.
Meanwhile, a second group, led by the Doctor and including Susan, Alydon and Dyoni, are planning to approach the Dalek city by the front door, but cause havoc for the metal-clad mutants along the way. There's a welcome return appearance for the Doctor's amazingly pointless binocular spectacles, here demonstrated by Susan.
The relationship between Barbara and Ganatus seems to be coming on apace this week, the pair taking time out from fretting over the perils of their expedition to giggle together like a pair of schoolchildren. Interestingly, they seem to have chatted extensively offscreen about manners: when they approach a narrow, hazardous-looking tunnel, Ganatus reassures Barbara that "We won't use one of the customs of your planet... ladies first!" He also asks her, somewhat resentfully, "Do you always do what Ian says?" "No!" she vehemently protests.
The Doctor's very chuffed that his plan to block the Daleks' rangeoscopes (which enable them to track their attackers' movements) by getting a bunch of Thals to stand on a hill with big mirrors has been a success. In fact, the challenge of defeating the Daleks has made the Doctor far jollier than we've yet seen him. "We mustn't diddle about here!" he memorably admonishes Susan and Alydon as he trots off on his way to vanquish the baddies. He seems almost to be addressing the camera as he chuckles to himself, "We'll teach them a thing or two!"
The Ian and Barbara-led party carries on stoically through various gloomy caverns, with only committed wet blanket Antodus letting the side down by begging to be allowed to go back.
The Doctor's thoughtfully brought along a great big club to gleefully bash all the instruments positioned on the walls of the city and play havoc with the Daleks's systems: "That'll teach the Daleks to meddle in our affairs!" (If we're being fair, it was actually the Doctor's crowd turning up at the Dalek city that precipitated all the trouble).
But despite the Doctor's blithe insistence that he can easily defeat the Daleks with "A few simple tools, a superior brain..." he seems rather less confident when the creatures themselves turn up to investigate what's going on.
The group in the caves comes to a crevasse they can only pass by jumping. The ever heroic Ian makes it over without breaking much of a sweat, as does Ganatus, with whom he shares a tender moment...
Having, somewhat oddly, made their captives sit on the floor of their control room, the Daleks reveal to them their latest plan: having decided that making a neutron bomb was too much of a faff, they've decided to re-irradiate Skaro by simply exposing the planet to the contents of their nuclear reactors. In the process of this revelation, they consolidate their catchphrase:
Doctor: That's sheer murder!
Dalek: No! Extermination!
Next, to make any Nazi analogies viewers may have picked up over the preceding weeks explicit, the Daleks raise their plungers in salute and announce: "Tomorrow we will be the masters of the planet Skaro!"
Barbara also makes it across the crevasse (Ian embraces her even more enthusiastically than he did Ganatus), and Kristas (who I imagine practically everyone had forgotten was there) does too.
Antodus, not surprisingly, goes into hysterics at the thought of jumping over the gap, and misses it. In literal terms, it's a perfect cliffhanger, though it 's hard to see many viewers being especially bothered whether this deeply annoying character should survive or not.
I'm ashamed to note that I've only just realised the opening titles to Sergeant Cork have changed. The tedious piece of film showing Cork arriving at Scotland Yard, mounting the stairs and sitting down in his office has been truncated so it ends with him going in the door (having written the above, I realise the hypocrisy of me describing anything else as tedious).
In what seems almost certain to be a nod to the recent Great Train Robbery, Cork this week investigates a daring raid on the night mail from Bristol to Paddington. Tonight's episode also sees the culmination of the background plot that's been murmuring away since the start of the series, regarding the refit of the CID offices (I think it's safe to assume this was not the main reason for viewers tuning in). This week we finally meet the new boss, Superintendent Rodway (Charles Morgan), a jovial Welshman who's been friends with Cork for years. Cork is stunned to find that, despite his previous insistence on keeping his dingy upstairs office, Rodway persuades him to move to the modern offices below. The Superintendent's modernising ways have seen the introduction of the new-fangled telephone device to the force, something permanently flustered porter Chalky White is having a devil of a time coping with.
Anyway, the case. Cork and Marriott head to Paddington, where they're met by obfuscatory official Mr Little (Paul Dawkins) and wily railway policeman Mr Bilson (Lane Meddick), who Cork takes an instant shine to (much to a jealous Bob Marriott's resentment).
This episode has a larger than usual cast of characters, which, as most are male, means a larger than usual range of facial hair types. The show seems at pains to convince us that no two men in the Victorian era trimmed their sideburns in the same way, and as such becomes almost a guide to what it's possible to have hanging off your face if you so desire. A particularly fine moustache is sported by the episode's best character, railway guard Joseph Jenkins (Alan Foss), whose fanatical devotion to trains amounts almost to religious mania ("I work in the position God called me to and rest content," he tells Cork in his sonorous voice when the Sergeant questions why, after 27 years of working for the Great Western Railway, he's still a guard). The highlight of the episode comes when a frustrated Cork questions Jenkins over the stops the train made.
Cork: Mr Jenkins, when I asked you if the train stopped anywhere except the five mainline stations you said it stopped nowhere.
Jenkins: Well that was true, Sir.
Cork: My information is that it stopped at Ealing for three minutes.
Jenkins: That wasn't a stop, Sir.
Cork: Well, what was it?
Jenkins: A delay.
Cork: Well the train stopped moving forward, the wheels stopped turning. And that's not a stop?
Jenkins: Oh no, Sir. Not as we use the term on the railways. It was a delay. A stop is at a station.
As Jenkins is at pains to inform the baffled detective, "Trains are special things, Sir. You can't talk of them in ordinary terms!"
The most likely suspect seems to be one Tom Pocock, a former railway employee nursing a grudge since he was fired. Mr Bilson heads off in search of him, interviewing his hypochondriac former landlady (Ann Way, best known as one of the victims of Fawlty Towers's Gourmet Night).
The discovery that someone made a copy of the key to the bag where all the money was kept on the train leads Marriott to a keycutter (William Forbes), whose methods should perhaps be brought back to make a branch of Timpson's a much more exciting place.
The keycutter reveals it was a Mr Little who came to him to have the key copied, but when he fails to recognise the indignant traffic controller in an identity parade it becomes increasingly clear that the culprit was Jenkins, collaborating with Tom Pocock in the robbery. Despite his talk of resting content it's all down to Jenkins' burning resentment at the incompetent Little being promoted above him due to his contacts within the company. "Do you know what he did the other day?" he fumes to his wife (Brenda Cowling). "Sent out a dirty train!"
The rather dandyish Pocock (Jeremy Wilkin), turns up at the Jenkins residence for his share of the loot, accompanied by an avaricious doxy (Patricia Denys), who encourages him to take Jenkins' as well. After beating the unfortunate railwayman to a pulp, he does so.
Brenda Cowling's performance on discovering the body is entirely apt, as it's as absurdly overdone as anything you might expect to see in a Victorian melodrama.
It all ends with Cork hiring a special train to catch up with Pocock on his way out of the country, collaring him in the best "You're nicked, Son" style. By this time Jenkins has gone to ride the big choo-choo in the sky, so the charge is one of murder.
From the pen of Arthur Swinson, who also wrote last week's instalment of The Plane Makers, The Case of the Bristol Mail is a middling Cork, but was considered good enough to be translated into prose by Swinson, along with several other episodes, for the first of a pair of tie-in paperbacks.
The Arthur Haynes Show's format seems a bit restless at the minute. Tonight's episode adds a new innovation, with sketches prefaced by mocked-up newspaper headlines. Could it be an attempt to engage the nation's interest in satire, piqued by Beyond the Fringe and That Was the Week That Was? If so, it's a bit heavy-handed, particularly as the sketches themselves are pretty unimaginative, the show having done much better topical gags previously.
This montage of headlines (interesting as screenshots more for the snippets of genuine news stories surrounding them), accompanied by a mournful arrangement of "The Sunny Side of the Street", leads to a retread of the ancient price war gag, with neighbouring grocers Haynes and Parsons vying to undercut each others' detergent prices (strange image of someone going into a shop and requesting "Some detergents, please"), until Parsons' are so cheap that Haynes buys up the lot and sells it at full price.
Cleo Laine sashays on early to add a touch of class to proceedings.
Class of a different kind is central to the following sketch (it's a shame I wasn't around back then to write the TV Times billings), which features a rare sighting of Dermot Kelly outside his tramp guise (well, his outfit's different, the performance is just the same), as he and Arthur play shop stewards who've been elevated to places on a committee alongside factory owners Nicholas Parsons and Robert Mill.
It's bog-standard "A plague on both your houses" stuff, with the unions and the bosses depicted as equally corrupt, Haynes and Kelly resenting the owners' perks only as long as they can't get them themselves. The sketch ends with the whole lot of them donning symbolic bowler hats prior to going for lunch at a swanky hotel. The best lines revolve around Dermot's living situation, in a one-room flat with a wife and 15 kids. "It's not my fault you have 15 children," says Parsons, condescendingly. "He knows it's not," Arthur chips in. "If he thought it was he'd have a lot more to say about it."
The final sketch this week sees Arthur and Dermot bothering housewife Rita "Ratbag" Webb in the midst of her window cleaning. The way she's doing it looks like an accident waiting to happen, and indeed she's left at the tramps' mercy when she realises she's stuck.
The two are given carte blanche (well, obviously Rita Webb doesn't say carte blanche) to raid Rita's kitchen as long as they'll set her free. They promise to do so, after they've had a good feed. Though it's hard to imagine anything more likely to put you off your food than the face of Rita Webb glowering at you through a window.
But, as Rita eventually succumbs to Arthur and Dermot's manhandling, it becomes abundantly clear there are worse things in life than having your kitchen raided...
Tonight's episode of The Avengers brings us to the remote Cornish village of Tinby. A funeral's taking place in the parish churchyard, and among the mourners is a rather perplexed John Steed...
After the funeral, three of the mourners, Dr Macombie (John Le Mesurier), Roy Hopkins (Philip Locke), and the deceased's son, John Benson (Robert Morris), meet up to discuss matters - principally the money Benson owes the other two for arranging his father's death. It seems Macombie and Hopkins have built up quite a trade in getting wealthy relatives bumped off and buried in Tinby - something Macombie has a few niggling Hippocratic doubts about. He wants to pack it all in, but Hopkins convinces him to accept one more client: "aspiring widow" Mrs Turner...
Aboard his floating home, festooned with women's discarded garments ("A visit from the YWCA"), young Benson receives an unexpected visit from Steed, a former comrade of his father's who suspects foul play in the old man's demise. Benson, while rapturously sniffing an item of hosiery, assures Steed that it was all down to natural causes.
Steed's unconvinced: young Benson insists his father was buried in Cornwall to honour a dying wish of his Cornish mother, but Steed knows full well the old man couldn't stand his wife. In order to enlist Mrs Gale's aid in getting to the bottom of General Benson's death Steed shows Mrs Gale a newspaper article. "Joey, a king penguin at Edinburgh Zoo, spent 56 days trying to incubate a currant bun." Of more immediate interest is the story on the other side of the clipping, giving notice of a funeral in Tinby. Steed shows her several more from recent months. As Tinby's a ghost town these days, and all the deceased resided in London, it all seems very mysterious.
Cathy pays a visit to Tinby, taking photos of the most recent gravestones, and all the while being watched by a sinister sexton (wrestling star Jackie Pallo).
George Benson (not the soul singer) is hugely engaging as the jolly vicar, epitome of the ecclesiastical eccentric. He rejoices in the almost Carry On name of Reverend Whyper ("There's been a Whyper here ever since Queen Anne!" he boasts). It's clear that Cathy's utterly charmed by him (and he makes the only passing reference to the episode's title when he tells her of the legend that there's a screaming mandrake root in the churchyard).
Cathy hangs around long enough to meet Hopkins, who's visiting the church with Mrs Turner (Madge Ryan), to select a suitable plot for her husband. Philip Locke's an actor whose face was certainly his fortune, the unique arrangement of his eyes making him look shiftier than just about anyone else who's ever appeared on TV.
Outside the church Cathy overhears Hopkins and the sexton (a recent arrival from London, pining after saveloy) discussing the possible need to get rid of her...
Later, Hopkins and Macombie interview Mrs Turner about dispatching her husband. Hopkins clearly takes a very keen interest in his new client. Sexist though the camera's drooling focus on Mrs Turner's legs may be, it's at least refreshing to see a woman in her 40s shown as sexually desirable (Mrs Turner's described as being 43 but looking younger, Madge Ryan was 45 and doesn't, especially). In a few months Ryan would originate the role of Kath in Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane, which was rather less kind about the charms of older women.
For £10,000 the sinister pair provide Mrs Turner with a tasteless, scentless poison that will get rid of her husband within an hour. Her willingness to get rid of the man she's married to doesn't seem to deter Hopkins, who very clearly wants to take his place.
Cathy shows Steed the fruits of her visit to Tinby; he has a wonderful time annoying her by clicking his fingers to request a change of slide.
Taking Cathy's brief encounter with Hopkins as a lead, Steed checks the phone book and finds just two Roy Hopkinses listed in London: one an accountant, one the owner of a Christmas cracker factory. Perhaps sensing it's the more Avengers of the two prospects, Steed heads to the shop attached to the cracker factory, where he encounters the lovely Judy (Annette André), who shares her sandwiches with him after he helps her with an especially heavy. The chemistry between these two is so fantastic that it's a shame it was a one-off appearance for André (aspiring actress Judy would've made a great replacement for Venus Smith). In the kind of scene that would become the show's meat and drink, Steed poses as a buyer of crackers for an old people's home ("They mustn't crack too loud"), and the pair try out crackers that bang at various different keys.
When Judy tells Steed that her boss inherited the business from an uncle who died in Cornwall, we know he's on the right track. Patrick Macnee's facial expression as he's asked if he wants anything else is a picture (this scene's also notable for a reference to "Lsd", which at this time meant pounds, shillings and pence to viewers and nothing else).
Cathy determines to pay a visit to Dr Macombie's London practice. "What shall I have wrong with me?" she asks Steed. "I can offer any amount of bruising." In the end she opts for a tale of being hit in the eye with a hockey stick. Her visit proves a success when the doctor reacts with stark terror to her claim that she lives near Tinby.
Heading back to the village, Cathy has something of a contretemps with the gravedigger, culminating in her pushing him into an open grave. Famously, Jackie Pallo was genuinely knocked out at the climax of this fight, later grumbling, "I want it to be made clear that this was an accident. I have never been beaten by a woman and never intend to be."
Recovering from her bout with the sexton, Cathy's shocked to discover the charming old vicar pointing a gun at her...
Prior to the death of the unwitting Mr Turner, Hopkins treats the prospective corpse's wife to a champagne lunch. Despite wearing an unflattering scarecrow-wig hat, Mrs Turner comes across as an unexpectedly sad figure, entreating Hopkins not to quibble if they've been overcharged: she's endured too many years of her husband arguing about the price of brussels sprouts.
Meanwhile, Steed's checked the medical record Dr Macombie supplied for General Benson, which he knows full well is a fake due to being on assignments with the dead man at times he's supposed to have been ill. Steed's at his most dangerous when he threatens Benson Jr, obtaining the information that Hopkins picks up clients for his scheme by hanging out in every club in London.
We're left hanging for long enough after seeing Rev Whyper point his pistol at Cathy for it to come as a delicious double-bluff when we realise he's on the level after all, and is absolutely horrified to learn how Macombie and Hopkins have used him. All he got was a few guineas to help his brother's missionary work in Congo: "Good heavens - Congo children educated on blood money! This is an evil business, Mrs Gale!" With the Rev's help, Cathy gets to the bottom of the villains' scheme: as it's near an old tin mine, Tinby's soil is infused with arsenic - which would make the poison impossible to detect in any body that was dug up.
Cathy suggests the vicar's pistol as a means for rounding up the crooks. He confesses he confiscated it at choir practice.
After promising Judy a leg up in her acting career by taking her to a top restaurant in Soho ("The smell of garlic wafting from the kitchen..." "But I don't like garlic." "Some of the best known theatre producers eat there." "Well, I don't actively dislike it") Steed proves unable to deliver. Steed promises they'll meet again, however...
Mr Turner now having been offed, the widow and her helpmates gather for the funeral in Tinby, with Hopkins' hopes comprehensively crushed by Mrs Turner's assertion that "As far as I'm concerned, Mr Hopkins, you're just another tradesman." Both are equally crushed, as is the doctor, by the arrival of Steed and Gale, announcing that the coffin contains two bags of sand, the real body having been taken for an autopsy that has confirmed arsenic poisoning. The villains are ushered off by the sexton, who gives Mrs Gale a wink. Turns out she's given him £100 to change sides. "You could have given him 50," winces Steed.
You just need to read a synopsis of Mandrake to know it was written by star Avengers writer Roger Marshall. It might not be his wittiest script, but the lines are delivered so splendidly by its wonderful cast that it hardly matters (admittedly Jackie Pallo was probably not cast for his facility with lines). My own favourite is delivered with heavy irony by Madge Ryan during Hopkins' cack-handed attempt at seducing Mrs Turner: "Lunching with a prominent cracker manufacturer anything is possible." An absolute delight.
Next tonight, Espionage, a show whose lead actors have included such internationally famed performers as Dennis Hopper, Fritz Weaver, Martin Balsam and Ingrid Thulin. Tonight there's an unlikely but very welcome new addition in George A Cooper, future caretaker of Grange Hill.
Cooper plays Leo Winters, renowned during the war for his daring exploits as a Royal Navy diver, but whose life in Civvy Street has consisted of a series of dead end jobs and a rented room (we first see him telling his landlady's sons about his wartime adventures - in his version he was solely responsible for the allied victory).
Learning that his former commanding officer (Cyril Luckham) has been promoted to the admiralty, Winters goes to see him, to take up his offer of being recommissioned. But that offer was made nearly 20 years ago, and the admiral has to inform a distraught Winters that he may be as good a diver as ever but, at 45, he's on the scrapheap as far as the navy are concerned (Cooper was in fact only 39 at the time, but looked like he was in late middle age for the entirety of his decades-long acting career). But after Leo leaves, the admiral clearly has a thought, and calls a colleague to announce that in Leo he thinks he's found the perfect man for a job they've got going...
Meanwhile, life goes on for Leo much the same as ever. He leaves his current job as a furniture salesman - as he has so many jobs beforehand - because he's fed up with it. His long-suffering girlfriend Janie (Rhoda Lewis) despairs.
Leo manages to get work in the amusement arcade owned by Janie's brother, an old shipmate of his, but Admiral Bond and Secret Service mandarin Roger Upton (Ronald Adam) are formulating other plans for him. Upton sends his underling Davenport (Peter Madden) to make contact with the former diver. Director Robert Butler is clearly fascinated by his actor's faces - the grisly visages of Adam and Madden in particular are presented to us in the most unsparing of close-ups.
Leo spends most of his time in the pub, and it's here that Davenport approaches him with an offer of government work. Suspicious at first, it's not long before he leaps at the chance to serve his country once more (and, more importantly, show the world he's still got it). Davenport whisks him away to Portsmouth Harbour and instructs him to take photographs of an American vessel. The Brits and the Yanks are the best of friends, of course - but it doesn't hurt to keep close tabs on your friends as well as your enemies.
The assignment goes tits-up when a fault with his oxygen supply forces Leo to the surface, where he's spotted by the Americans. A potential scandal is in the offing, and Upton decides the best way to deal with it is to hide Leo altogether for the time being.
To his extreme bemusement, Leo finds himself a prisoner in a Portsmouth hotel, with Davenport his gaoler. Despite his forbidding looks, Davenport turns out not to be so bad, even fixing up an old radio to keep Leo entertained. The two eventually bond over the fact that they both lost both parents in an air raid.
In London, Janie's sick with worry about Leo's disappearance. Rhoda Lewis gives a wonderful performance as this woman who can still see the hero in the self-aggrandising wastrel she loves. Her appearance, and her acting style, make her seem remarkably like a dowdier Barbara Murray (in fact, at first I thought she was Barbara Murray, stripped of her usual glamour). Robert Butler's clearly very interested in her careworn face too (Janie's meant to be 38, but Lewis herself was only 30 when she appeared in this).
Eventually Janie talks to the press, forging exactly the link between Leo's disappearance and the mystery frogman that Upton was trying to avoid. The official story given out is that Leo was indeed the diver spied but the Americans, but that whatever he was doing was totally unconnected with the government.
Receiving curt instructions from Upton about what he must do next, a heavy-hearted Admiral Bond goes to see Leo in the hotel, where he explains to the bewildered diver how problematic it would be to have him roaming around.
"What do you want me to do?" Leo asks, incredulously. "Go back and drown myself?" He's even more incredulous when he hears the Admiral's response: "Yes".
The Admiral hastens to add that he's speaking figuratively: the thing is, the press have been told that Leo's dead. The best solution might be to send Leo to the Falkland Islands for a couple of years, until the whole thing blows over...
An epilogue, set a year later, sees Upton meeting up with an American admiral for a drink and a chortle over the Portsmouth Harbour Affair: it turns out there was nothing special about the ship Leo snapped - the whole affair was intended to draw attention away from another one, that had a new nuclear propeller. Thanks to the furore over Leo, the tests on that one went ahead without anyone knowing. Leo, you see, was given faulty breathing apparatus on purpose. And where is he now? Happily settled in Santa Barbara with Janie.
Whatever Happened to Leo Winters? may lack an American lead, but both writer and director are natives of the US. The script's by Art Wallace, later to become best known for his work on cult gothic soap Dark Shadows. Robert Butler went on to direct the pilot episode of Star Trek, as well as Disney comedy The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.
Sunday 26 January
Jimmy Edwards and Alma Cogan guest on The Billy Cotton Band Show, and tonight's Dr Finlay's Casebook's another lost one, which is a great shame as the guest cast includes Sonia Dresdel, Renee Houston and Ballard Berkeley.
Monday 27 January
Tonight's Adventure on the BBC has the enticing title Cave of Bats, while Come Dancing sees the West Midlands pitted against the North West.
Tuesday 28 January
By means unknown, Harold Steptoe has gained access to an exclusive block of flats in order to pester the residents about selling their junk. We learn just how exclusive the place is when Harold has a door opened to him by a forbidding butler (Frank Thornton), who tells him to hop it in no uncertain terms. "You capitalist lackey!" snarls the rag and bone man, "You wait till the election!"
Harold gets a warmer reception from Gwendolyn Watts as French au pair Monique (her English isn't very good: "Me scrubber!" she announces by way of explaining what she does around the place).
Despite the language barrier Harold's instantly smitten, and works up the nerve to ask her out. "Me not always look like this," he tells her, in classic "loudly addressing a foreigner" style, "Me dead sharp when dressed up."
At the Steptoe residence, Albert's cutting a rather bizarre figure dressed up in some African tribal gear he's bought. This vignette, and the "African" arrangement of "Old Ned" that accompanies it may well have been influenced by the opening of Zulu just a few weeks previously.
Arriving home to see his father in this unusual garb, Harold finds the spectacle risible to say the least: "You must admit it's a bit kinky, isn't it? I dunno, there's a definite touch of The Avengers about you sometimes." (I think this might be the first time one of the shows I write about here has referenced another).
It's strangely poignant when a sheepish Albert tells his son he was "Just having a little try-on, a little pretend."
This scene seems to take place some weeks after the first one, with Albert questioning Harold about why he's been out every night, and finally deducing it's all because of a bird. The dialogue here's almost identical to that from the earlier episode "The Bird", and the hearty laughter from the audience may be because some of them had become familiar with it through multiple listens to the massively popular Steptoe and Son LP, which included an audio recording of that episode.
Having failed to get Albert out of the way for the evening, Harold has to endure the old man's ridicule when he puts on a Teach Yourself French record. Albert thinks there's no point to learning languages: "What are you trying to do, get us into the Common Market? Gonna take Mr Heath's place, are you? Or are you going totting around Paris, you great fairy?"
Harold explains that his new girlfriend is French ("I see, you can't get hold of an English bird, so you have to get hold of a wog!"). According to Harold, Monique is from a wealthy landowning family, and he has dreams of running their vineyards for them. Albert's a tad sceptical, and even more so of Harold's claims to be in love with Monique.
Harold decides that as he's serious about Monique, he'll have to take the plunge and introduce her to his father. He begs Albert to be good when she comes round: "I promise to be the soul of discretion," Albert says, shiftily.
Next evening, Harold's amazed to see how beautifully Albert's done up the parlour, with Union Jack and Tricolore on display.
Monique and Albert get off to a dodgy start ("Ah! So this is old Misery Guts!" she exclaims upon meeting him), but Harold's soon horrorstruck by the revelation that Albert is fluent in French, and so can converse with Monique far better than he can (it's a brilliant pay-off to Harold's earlier taunts to Albert that he was stationed in various countries in World War 1 but didn't pick up any of the lingo).
Much to Albert's enjoyment, Harold's utterly humiliated, and rushes to his French dictionary for help. "Et que voulez-vous boire, mon petit?" Steptoe Sr asks his son at one point. "I beg your pardon?" asks a flustered Harold. "What do you want to drink, you great pillock!"
Harold takes his father aside for a moment to take him to task for concealing his facility with the French language (and for stealing his bird). Albert tells him he learned the language when he was billeted in a French village: "I've been out with French birds too, you know. That's where I learned it. Much better than records!"
But there's a shock in store for the Steptoes: in his conversation with Monique Albert learns she's from the same village he stayed in. Getting out his photos of the period, he's alarmed when Monique recognises a woman in one of the pictures as her grandmother.
A stunned Albert realises that this means he's Monique's grandad: he and her grandmother had been in love and planned to marry but were separated by the war: later he learned she'd had a little girl. Obviously Albert's just assuming she didn't have any children with anyone else, but Monique seems convinced by the story, and is overjoyed at discovering her long-lost Grandpére. On learning the news Harold's slightly less enthusiastic: "I find the whole sordid affair entirely repugnant!"
Invited to join in the celebration, Harold can only sit and let the horror of having planned a future married life with his own niece wash over him.
"She looks like me, don't she?" Albert asks him. "She's got my nose, and my eyes." "Yes," responds Harold. "And when she goes home you're going to get my bleeding fist!"
It looks like Scott Furlong's ruthless managing director John Wilder might finally have met his match, in the unlikely form of a 69-year old spinster. Miss Geraldine Pettifur (Marie Lohr) owns two large properties that Scott Furlong plans to annexe in order to expand the operations. But despite her hatred of the noise made by the planes constantly flying over her house (which she constantly writes to make the company aware of), Miss Geraldine refuses to sell. A relic of the pre-World War 1 era who refuses to live in the present, she was born in her house and is determined to die in it. The other owners of land surrounding the Scott Furlong factory have been easy enough to buy out, but as Wilder notes, there's little point just offering Miss Geraldine money: "She's enough to buy us out!" If its plans are to stay on course, Scott Furlong needs the Pettifur property in just over a week.
A long stream of Scott Furlong executives have gone to plead their case to the old lady, only to return with ears boxed and tail between their legs. Wilder's decided the man for the job is Nigel Carr (Jeremy Burnham), the company's biggest smooth talker. He arrives at the Pettifur residence at 12 pm, which unfortunately is when Miss Geraldine has her lunch every day (in keeping with tradition it's always the same thing: the rather mind-boggling dish of eggs and brandy). Miss Geraldine's long-suffering companion Harriet (Ruth Kettlewell) announces the gentleman's arrival. The old lady's response tells you everything you need to know about her character: "At luncheon time? A gentleman? You're using the language loosely again, Harriet!"
Despite his reputation for getting any female eating out of his hand in two seconds flat, Nigel Carr fails miserably with the formidable Miss Pettifur: "Oh, I do hope they haven't sent a nincompoop just to dispense flattery!" she frets. Carr's patronising treatment of Geraldine as a fluffy old dear turns out to be a huge misjudgement. She lets him twinkle away, before apprising him of exactly what the situation is regarding her land: "I want it, and you want it. Unfortunately for you, I have it."
A sheepish Carr reports back to Wilder, embarrassingly worse for wear after an accident at the Pettifur residence. Wilder is incandescent at his underlings' inability to talk Miss Geraldine round.
"Am I surrounded by idiots, Miss Lingard?" he asks his secretary, who's sporting yet another new hairstyle. "Yes, Sir," she calmly responds.
Deciding it's the only way he'll achieve his aim, Wilder heads off to see Miss Geraldine himself. Perfectly friendly toward her sworn enemies, the old lady plays him at croquet (the genteel croquet lawn with massive jet in the background is the episode's most potent image). Wilder proves useless at the game, though Miss Geraldine, having sized him up in a moment, tells him "I'm sure there are many games that you invariably win at."
A strange kind of flirtation develops between the two - Wilder (who, by way of setting the two up as opposites, tells her his job requires him to live in the future) takes the tack of being deadly earnest with Miss Geraldine about his motives: he describes the way her house will be demolished, with "all this beauty" eventually replaced by "an efficient box". "I hate your progress," she tells him plainly. "If you moved from here, with our help," Wilder responds, "You'd be rid of that noise forever." He's caught totally off guard by her response: "Then what would I have to complain about?"
Geraldine, dwelling, as ever, on the past, tells Wilder he reminds her of her old sweetheart: his death in the First World War led to her current Havisham-esque existence: "It wasn't only Arthur who died that weekend, it was everything." Geraldine tells Wilder of the half-life she's lived for the past 50 years, and that it's only her running conflict with Scott Furlong that's given her something to live for once more. He's utterly gobsmacked when she reveals the result of his own intervention:
Geraldine: I think I might very well have faltered.
Wilder: You mean, sold out? To us?
Geraldine: Yes, if I hadn't met you personally.
Wilder: If you hadn't met me?
Geraldine: Yes. It's only when one meets the best of the opposition that the game becomes really fun, don't you agree?
The flirtation analogy becomes explicit when Miss Geraldine arrives at Scott Furlong for her first ever flight, in a Sovereign jet. Wilder urges Auntie Forbes to treat the old lady as if it was a love affair - utterly baffling to Auntie, who's clearly never had one.
The old lady's overwhelmed by her first trip in a plane, but eventually enjoys the experience immensely. "But are we any better off for it, Mr Wilder?" she asks. Wilder, in perhaps the show's best insight so far into what makes the character tick, talks of the sense of pride and fulfilment he gets from running a successful company. She sums it up as "power", a word Wilder rejects as too loaded (though it will prove an important one in the character's trajectory on TV).
Miss Geraldine gets a grand tour of the Scott Furlong works. Her hibernation from progress for the past 50 years is precisely what makes her so fascinated by every new piece of technology she sees as she travels this palace of modern marvels.
One of the episode's highlights sees Miss Geraldine embarrassing Wilder by enthusiastically greeting a group of workmen whose names he proves unable to tell her. Wonderfully, the elderly aristocrat happily joins them in a cup of tea, deciding "I must send Harriet here to take lessons about how to make tea, good and strong."
After he sends Miss Geraldine back home, Wilder instructs his men to press on with their development plans, secure in the knowledge that he's won. On his next visit to Miss Geraldine's he lessens the charm a bit to spell it out to her. If she doesn't sell up she'll have a runway at the bottom of her garden and an engineering works at the end of her orchard. Besides, the factory's defence work means he could probably get a compulsory purchase order anyway. "You're no gentleman, Mr Wilder," Miss Geraldine scolds him. "You take all the fun out of it." She graciously accepts defeat, but not before she's secured double Scott Furlong's original offer.
The minute Wilder's gone Miss Geraldine gets on the phone to her broker, and insists that her entire share fund be ploughed into Scott Furlong...
Miss Geraldine is a terrific Plane Makers, with Patrick Wymark getting a rare chance to make John Wilder a likeable character. And it's hard to imagine anyone being more perfect than Marie Lohr in the episode's title role. A stage star since the Edwardian era, Lohr's best remembered today as the society matron who dies protecting her village from Nazis in the Ealing classic Went the Day Well? Her role in The Plane Makers is almost a reprisal of that part, but with the forces of progress the new invaders, and ones that prove far more implacable.
Wednesday 29 January
The usual Wednesday night Festival play on the BBC is replaced this week with coverage of the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Over on ITV, pop programme They've Sold a Million sees Alan Freeman meeting the Ronettes.
Thursday 30 January
This week, a character we've never seen before (actually one of the scientists from Jupiter, with a beard stuck on), whose job is to look at the sun all day (must go for the eyes a bit, I would've thought) notices an explosion taking place.
The upshot of the explosion is an uncomfortable rise in temperature on Earth and, especially, on Venus, where the president is contacted by a certain Dr Duncan, head of a research lab on Ganymede. Duncan's a very odd-looking character: from the front he looks like a pale-eyed Desmond Tutu; in profile he just looks utterly bizarre. It's a shame that the first Space Patrol character to have fairly dark skin should turn out to be a total rotter: Duncan and his fellow Ganymede colonists are unhappy with the conditions on the moon, so the scientist sent a freighter of barillium (whatever that might be) into the sun in order to heat things up on Earth and Venus and blackmail those planets into making Ganymede a nicer place to live. As the Venusian president sums up: "What a disaster! Earth and Venus at the mercy of a mad scientist!"
On Earth, Colonel Raeburn approaches Professor Haggerty about the crisis, asking him the rather vague question "Do you know a scientist called Duncan?" Fortunately Haggerty knows exactly who he's talking about: Duncan's a former employee of the professor who was sacked after he tried to steal one of Haggerty's inventions. As such, Haggerty is far from his biggest fan. Raeburn reveals the new information that Duncan wishes to be "dictator of the galaxy", and has hi-jacked a convoy of barillium freighters, meaning he can now cause another 40 solar explosions. Something must be done.
Raeburn wants to send troops to apprehend Duncan, but General Smith thinks it'd be a better idea just to blow the whole Ganymede colony up. Raeburn's worries about killing innocent colonists are all quickly assuaged by the general's insistence that they're probably all just as bad as Duncan (I imagine this is pretty much what happened with the war in Iraq).
But Raeburn suggests they try one more thing: sending Larry Dart and his Galasphere crew out to Ganymede for peace talks with Duncan. The seemingly sensible objection that it might be better to send actual diplomats for that kind of job is countered with Raeburn's secret plan to have the astronauts sabotage the freighters while they're at it. On arrival, Larry and Husky go for a chat with Duncan, while Slim sneaks off (the usual rule that one person needs to stay on the ship seems to have been forgotten this week) to neutralise the barillium threat and trip over guards.
Slim sets the robot control on the freighters to send them back to Earth, leading to his imprisonment alongside his shipmates.
But Professor Haggerty has an idea: he's invented a device which will make the freighters explode before they reach the sun should Duncan send them in that direction. Once the devices are fitted the freighters are sent back to Ganymede. After Raeburn refuses to meet any of Duncan's demands the villainous scientist aims the whole lot at the sun, and the colonel and Professor Haggerty watch contentedly as they all blow up long before reaching it.
Troops are sent out to Ganymede to arrest Duncan for his crimes, his attempts to escape the planet foiled by his own henchman, who's less than impressed with the way things have worked out.
Explosion in the Sun is the last episode in the present run of Space Patrol, but don't worry, it'll be back in a few weeks.
Now for tonight's Saint, an episode packed with incidental pleasures. As Simon drives around London being patronising about female drivers ("Bless 'em!") we get a good look at a rather splendid Guinness ad.
An interior shot of Simon's car reveals the alarming fact that the street behind him is entirely still: there's even a man who appears frozen in the act of walking...
Strangely, the apparent halting of the world behind Simon is not at all commented upon - instead we plunge straight on with Simon nearly colliding with a car being driven by surly chauffeur Julian Glover (this was before Glover's nose job, and his then-bulbous conk gives him a bit more of a thuggish look than he'd possess in later years). The chauffeur, Hilloram, is employed by Countess Morova (Dawn Addams), London's most famous society hostess (Simon surreptitiously nicks one of her gloves from the back seat). Although they've never met, she and Simon recognise each other immediately thanks to their mutual fame:
That evening the countess gives a party for the crustiest of London's upper crust, and afterwards we learn that she, Hilloram and butler Sanders (Ronald Ibbs) are all crooks: while the countess entertains the nobs, Hilloram pops out and nabs their jewels. On this particular occasion he's brought back some spectacular diamonds but had to knock out a troublesome butler - much to the countess's disgust: she hates violence and remembers all too well the occasion when Hilloram sent a night porter to an untimely end.
While they're examining their loot, Simon turns up with the glove (which he insists the countess dropped). She invites him and before you know it they're off out dancing the night away. Simon confesses that both the glove and the car accident were intentional, and reels off a series of robberies he knows she was involved in. She attempts to justify her life of crime by explaining that her late husband left her penniless, but he claims that all he's interested in is joining her gang.
The countess (Audrey to her intimates) is instantly smitten with Simon, but gives him a test to prove himself. When she accompanies an aristocratic couple to the theatre, he's dispatched to go and empty their safe. From the brief glimpse we see of it we can deduce that the play they've gone to see is a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that was staged at the Old Vic in 1957, with Coral Browne as Titania and a concealed Frankie Howerd (whose instantly recognisable voice was not one I ever expected to hear in The Saint) as Bottom.
The robbery's a success (far more of a gentleman than Hilloram, Simon just locks the butler in a cupboard), but on his return home Simon finds Inspector Teal waiting for him, positively glowing at the opportunity to arrest his old adversary. The discovery that the call about the burglary from a strangely well-informed neighbour was from Simon himself dims him a bit. Simon explains that he's inveigled his way into Audrey's gang to bring them to justice: not because of any interest in reuniting toffs with their treasures but because he knew the porter Hilloram killed, and wants justice on behalf of his grieving wife and children. In exchange for the opportunity to carry on with his plan, Simon tells Teal that Sanders will be leaving for Amsterdam with the jewels the next day. Here, for anyone interested in such things, is some vintage airport signage, as well as a rather splendid Welcome to Britain poster seen behind the inspector as he sends his men off after the dodgy butler.
Hilloram sees the men going after Sanders, and realises they're the police. He voices his concerns to a dismissive Audrey, then makes an ill-advised attempt at ravishing her. She's now hopelessly in love with Simon, and Hilloram's consumed with jealousy.
However, they all need to work together (along with a shifty Frenchman named Jacques, played by John G Heller) on Audrey's latest scheme: a yacht trip with three super-wealthy couples who will, during the course of the voyage, be relieved of their most valuable possessions (she's made up a story about a party invitation from Princess Grace of Monaco to ensure they bring their best jewels).
Simon goes ashore for a bit to meet up with a friend, Dickie Tremaine (David Sumner) - who he catches in the middle of chatting up a rather unresponsive French girl. Simon engages Dickie's help in catching the gang.
Here's a close-up of David Sumner (not to be confused with the lead character in Straw Dogs), for no reason other than that he's the most handsome actor we've seen round these parts in a good while.
Hilloram, trailing Simon, spies on his conversation with Dickie: "Who's he?" he bluntly asks Simon when the Saint spots him. " A friend." "Oh?" "Yes, some people do have them."
It's not easy to have any sympathy for the three couples Audrey plans to rob, as they're all ghastly. Sir Edras and Lady Levy (Gerald Young and Edith Saville) won't shut up about their tedious family; Lord Braden (Michael Gover - strangely uncredited, as is Clare Kelly as his wife) is a a right-wing bore, while Lady Braden's a miserable alcoholic (not surprising really); George Ulrig (Stuart Saunders) is a hopeless hypochondriac, while his much younger wife May (Anne Sharp) never does anything but gripe.
The plan to rob this rotten lot involves a drug which will be put in their coffee after dinner one night aboard ship, rendering them helpless, with Audrey explaining to them after they awaken that they were all the victims of pirates, while Hilloram heads to Italy with their ill-gotten gains.
Hilloram is overjoyed to learn that his suspicions of Simon were right: and that Sanders has been arrested in Amsterdam. Audrey, on the other hand is devastated, and decides to move the jewel theft forward so any capture Simon's got planned will be thwarted.
The following night, the guests all collapse after their coffee, with Simon having been slipped the drug as well. Unfortunately Audrey's also had it, Hilloram having decided to get revenge for her throwing him over. But, as always, the Saint is one step ahead, only pretending to be drugged, and having signalled to Dickie to come aboard and help early. Together they make short work of Jacques and Hilloram, with the latter ending up plunging overboard to a watery grave.
I should like to point out that the way Simon and Dickie then admire the beauty of the unconscious Audrey is downright creepy.
Simon sees that the guests get their jewels back (though all have to make a hefty charity donation), and doesn't let on that Audrey was behind the theft, instead relieving her of all her own jewels except for those which will raise her enough money to start a new life in South America.
Friday 31 January
In a dingy alley adjacent to the Green Man pub on the Old Brompton Road, an old woman (Marie Hopps) sits slumped against the wall, her clothes conspicuously swanky for an old drunk. She's approached by a rotund figure that would later become instantly familiar to viewers of The Avengers' final series, that of actor Patrick Newell. The man surreptitiously places something in the woman's handbag, and then hurriedly conceals himself on hearing a noise. A shabby Irishman (Liam Redmond) now appears on the scene, and after a preliminary enquiry into the woman's health, deftly snatches her bag (in the unlikely event you're wondering, the tatty poster on the wall is for Between Time and Eternity, a West German film from 1959 starring The Sentimental Agent's Carlos Thompson). As the other man shambles off after the thief, the old woman emits a loud snort, and expires.
We learn from Inspector Rose that the dead woman was Lady Geraldine Mosher, the very wealthy widow of an eminent historian. How this upstanding citizen happened to become so much the opposite is a mystery, which deepens when Sergeant Swift learns that, despite the conspicuous amount of alcohol in her body, she was not an old soak but a campaigner against the evils of booze. In recent months she'd been in the habit of drawing out large sums of cash, but nobody knows what she did with any of it.
Meanwhile, Alice Brand (whose relationship with her husband is fast decaying as her relationship with Swift continues to heat up) is working on an article about the job prospects of ex-convicts. To this end she's sitting in on an interview held by an employment officer (Gerald Sim) - whose client happens to be the bag snatcher we saw earlier on. Mr Swallow, for that is his name, has been regularly in and out of prison since he was demobbed after the war. He's desperate to find gainful employment, but sadly there's nothing on offer for him.
Alice thinks she might be able to put some money Swallow's way by getting him to collaborate with her on her article, but before she has a chance to approach him he's been offered another job - by the same man who followed him earlier on. This fellow, who goes by the name of Lucian Claud, is chair of the British Spiritualist Society, and when he's not performing nefarious deeds on old ladies in alleyways he's fleecing them out of money by pretending to get messages from their dead relatives. For reasons related entirely to the contents of Swallow's suitcase, he invites the overjoyed ex-con to keep house for him. As the employment officer puts it to Alice: "He's working as a house servant for a bachelor in Kensington... yes, it does seem rather a change, doesn't it?"
After showing Swallow to his new quarters, Claud waddles off to meet a new client, Mrs Lamp (Noel Hood), hoping to get in touch with her recently deceased son. Derek Bennett's direction makes the most of Claud's plethora of mediumistic tricks (spooky voices, revolving walls, etc), by superimposing a close-up of Claud's face, supposedly in a trance state, over a longer shot of he and Mrs Lamp at the table: the effect's brilliantly spooky. I'm not sure if the fluid Patrick Newell's face is drenched in is meant to be sweat or ectoplasm: either way it's very disturbing. Having come to pay Swallow a visit and secure his aid, Alice learns he believes fully in what Claud's up to, and is terrified of the spirits the corpulent conman supposedly evokes.
The spooky atmosphere's unexpectedly but hilariously cut through by the unsympathetic Mrs Lamp's no-nonsense attitude toward the son she believes she's talking to. The spooky voice (is it meant to be Claud's or is there supposed to be an accomplice off-stage somewhere? It's never made clear) complains of the difficult transition to the spirit world, only to be told he just needs to get used to it and stop being a baby. Writer Marc Brandel has created a delicious character in Mrs Lamp, based on the highly original and very funny premise of someone with a firm belief in the spirits of the dead taking the lack of evidence of their activity to simply mean that death has made them all lazy, and they need to buck their ideas up. She insists her son should make use of his ethereal state to get her inside information on the stock market: "It's about time he made himself useful!" And frustratingly for Claud, the demands the "spirit" makes that Mrs Lamp helps him by donating huge sums of money to the spiritualists falls foul of her belief that people must help themselves. Claud is, to say the least, taken aback.
Alice offers Swallow £2 for his time, but turns out only to have a fiver on her. He cheerily offers to change it, producing (for the camera's benefit) an enormous wad of cash that can surely only have come from one place...
At the station, Rose good-humouredly chaffs Swift about wearing the bow tie Alice bought for his birthday. The inspector's full of indulgent chortles about his subordinate's relationship with Mrs Brand, but he must surely be aware that it's not going to end well.
Swift calls on Alice to take her out, but the flowers he brings her were bought in the course of his investigations: the florist received one of the notes stolen from Lady Geraldine Mosher, and Alice has been pinpointed as its source. When Alice proves evasive about where the note might have come from Swift cancels their evening out and heads off to arrest Swallow, having read about him during a nose at Alice's unfinished article.
Searching Swallow's suitcase, Swift finds various items including a bag of sweets and a suicide note, purportedly from Lady Mosher. Later, Rose is delighted to find the sweets - they're his favourite kind of chocolate liqueur, and he merrily polishes them off ("Finders, keepers!").
Although William Mervyn's the first-credited member of the cast (and the show's credits revolve around the emblem of the rose), Inspector Rose has been kept largely in the background so far, so it's wonderful seeing him come to the fore as the episode progresses, particularly as we find the normally terribly self-assured Rose subjected to a number of indignities. First, he has to listen to a subordinate reading out the testimony of a cab driver who received another stolen note: the gentleman who gave it to him was "About 50 years old... bald, stout, seemed very pleased with himself. I think he was a bit tiddly, he kept telling me terrible jokes in rather a pompous manner." The cab was parked outside Rose's club, and the inspector's face on realising who the fare was is a picture: "In rather a pompous manner?!"
The note Rose gave the driver was one he'd won from Anthony Brand at a game of bridge, Brand in turn having been given it by Alice. So much is clear but, whilst interviewing Swallow, Rose suddenly begins to feel queasy... and only then learns the origin of the chocs he wolfed down. Twigging why Lady Mosher had alcohol in her body, Rose asks Swift, as politely as circumstances allow, to get him a doctor immediately.
Alice has made some deductions of her own that have led her to the conclusion that Claud killed Lady Mosher, and she foolhardily visits the charlatan in the guise of someone seeking contact with a dead relative - only to announce it's Lady Mosher she wishes to speak to.
Quite how Alice expected this all to end is unclear - in actual fact she ends up bound and gagged, only rescued by Swift when he turns up to arrest Claud just before he scarpers. The professional busybody's attitude to her knight in shining armour is not the most welcoming: "Will you please stop rescuing me?"
We end with Rose recovering in hospital, a considerate Swift bringing him grapes. Turns out Alice has given testimony which has got Swallow off the hook for any wrongdoing.
Wake the Dead is splendidly odd stuff, though the scene with Mrs Lamp suggests great potential for a one-off black comedy about spiritualism (maybe an episode of Armchair Theatre), and it seems a shame it had be squeezed (somewhat awkwardly) into a detective show format - even the format of a detective show as idiosyncratic as It's Dark Outside.
You can see full Radio Times listings for this week's BBC programes here, and read a full copy of the week's TV Times (for the London region) here.
You can see full Radio Times listings for this week's BBC programes here, and read a full copy of the week's TV Times (for the London region) here.
And to play us out...
It's Gene Pitney, at number 5 in this week's hit parade. You can see the full chart here.
