Saturday 23 November
Tonight's programmes were viewed by a British public shocked by the news of the assassination of US president John F Kennedy the day before. Or rather, some of the viewing public would have been shocked by it: it's safe to assume that plenty of others didn't feel particularly emotionally affected by the event at all. It seems likely this included a large chunk of the intended audience for BBC TV's new family sci-fi serial, if only because they were too young to grasp its significance.
While the Kennedy assassination would have immediately seemed like history in the making, the start of that early evening serial certainly wouldn't. 55 years on, though, it's achieved a historical significance all of its own. Beginning with a dance of weird, fluid shapes accompanied by a sound more otherworldly than anything previously heard at Saturday teatime (a theme by Steptoe and Son's Ron Grainer transformed beyond recognition by Delia Derbyshire, one of the mad geniuses of the BBC's radiophonic workshop), and a weird blurry title that keeps us in suspense about what it's going to be before finally resolving itself...
BBC TV, 5.15pm
And it seems like that theme's going to go on forever: after the titles have faded and the show's begun with a policeman going about his nightly rounds, it still keeps on and on. And it doesn't stop until another sound becomes more important: the strange hum coming from a police call box located in, of all places, a junkyard.
With that curious puzzle outstanding, we're whisked off to the perfectly normal environs of Coal Hill School, somewhere in London, where frazzled history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) seeks out the sympathetic ear of science master Ian Chesterton (William Russell).
Barbara's been driven to distraction by Susan Foreman, a 15 year old prodigy whose knowledge of history leaves her in the shade: it's got to the point where she finds herself wanting to do the young pain a mischief. Ian's having the same problem with her in his classes: it's not simply that she's an annoying swot - there's a real mystery about the girl. Barbara suggested to her she specialise in history, but home tuition was vetoed thanks to her grandfather, who doesn't like strangers. This seems especially odd as he's supposed to be a doctor, but even odder is what Barbara found when she went to pay the old man a visit: nothing. The address on file for Susan doesn't exist: where it should be is just a junkyard.
Barbara's keeping Susan waiting in her classroom for a book she's promised to lend her, and with Ian along to lend moral support she decides to follow the girl home to find out just where she goes. As played by Carole Ann Ford, the strange, ethereal Susan suits the episode's title down to the ground. We first see her grooving along rather spookily to some chart sounds (about which Ian proves surprisingly well-informed) on her transistor radio.
Refusing a lift from her teachers ("I like walking home in the dark - it's mysterious"), Susan has a quick flick through Barbara's book (which she claims she'll have read by the following day, even though it's quite a chunky tome). "That's not right," she exclaims on scanning one of the pages. Does she have knowledge of the past greater than the author's? Has she just spotted a typo? Or has Barbara put the wrong book inside the clearly homemade dust jacket? (Her shelves must be a nightmare if she makes these for all her books - especially as she hasn't put anything on the spine).
Waiting in the car outside the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, Barbara gets rather peeved by Ian's suggestion that the two of them are there because they're just a pair of busybodies.
She insists there's more to it than that: Susan's a genuine enigma. It's not really that she's a know-it-all: there are things she really should know that she seems not to. Like how many shillings are in the pound, for instance. Quizzed on this, Susan professes she thought Britain was on the decimal system - a system which, she recalls to herself, hasn't started yet. The troubling thing here is not so much the lack of present knowledge or the implication she knows about the future, but the fact that she's clearly never bought anything. Ian recalls a couple of similarly strange incidents involving science problems - including her insistence on the inclusion of the fourth and fifth dimensions: time and space. Ian and Barbara's flashbacks here are brilliantly realised by director Waris Hussein: as we see Susan from the teachers' point of view, it feels like it's us she feels awkward and embarrassed in front of, and it's pretty unnerving.
"Funny, isn't it?" asks Barbara, leading us suddenly into horror movie territory. "I feel frightened. As if we're about to interfere in something best left alone." Now Susan enters the yard, looking like the heroine of a gothic novel, and even the junk itself seems macabre.
Down-to-Earth Ian merrily pooh-poohs Barbara's fears: "I take things as they come," he says, uttering Doctor Who's first double entendre. But even he's perturbed by the sight, sound and especially touch of the police box we saw earlier. "It's alive!" he cries, amping up the spooky atmosphere by channeling Colin Clive as Universal's Frankenstein.
But although Ian and Barbara clearly saw Susan enter the yard, there's now no sign of her anywhere. There's a sublime moment of unintentional comedy as the pair hear the approach of a clearly male hacking cough and Barbara exclaims "Is that her?" Unsurprisingly it isn't: the cougher is an outlandishly dressed old man (William Hartnell), from whom the teachers hide, emerging to confront him when they hear Susan's voice, apparently coming from the box.
The old man's less than keen to help: he insists he heard no girl, and that there's nothing strange going on (a claim which is undermined a tad by his tendency to talk to himself in loud asides - "Pupils? Not the police then..."). Convinced Susan's being held in the box against her will by this unsavoury character, Ian and Barbara are about to head for the police when, hearing the girl's voice again, Barbara pushes her way into the box, and finds something she certainly wasn't expecting.
The reveal of the impossibly vast interior of the police box is one of TV's most magical moments: even 50 years later it can take the breath away. Primarily the work of designer Peter Brachacki, the bizarre room in which Ian and Barbara find themselves is the equal of the show's opening sequence in its striking oddness. The fusty old man, in his Edwardian garb, seems utterly incongruous within this interior but dominates it totally. He's Susan's grandfather, and this is their home ("And what's wrong with it?" he indignantly asks in response to Barbara's astonished question of whether this is where Susan really lives).
Susan's named this impossible structure the TARDIS - it stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. "I thought you'd both understand when you saw the different dimensions inside from those outside," she says, disappointed by her teachers' bewilderment.
Susan's grandfather only gives out information to the interlopers as it pleases him, gradually revealing that the TARDIS can travel in time and space ("This doesn't roll along on wheels, you know!") and that he and Susan originate from another time and place ("The children of my civilisation would be insulted!" he chortles cruelly when Ian complains he and Barbara are being treated like children). "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it," the old man snorts. "Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day... one day!" Hartnell's particularly brilliant here as he drifts off into a reverie then shrugs himself out of it with that last, upbeat "One day!"
The poor schoolteachers are still having trouble crediting their senses, Barbara trying to convince Susan (but really herself) that it's all a game the girl and her strange guardian are playing, while Ian harrumphs "Free movement in time and space is a scientific dream I don't expect to find solved in a junkyard!" But what's to happen to them? Ian's attempt to open the door leads to a nasty shock...
Susan begs her grandfather to let them go, but he insists that if they do she and he must depart as well, the revelation of the TARDIS to the public something he could not tolerate. Susan sulkily tells him she'll go with them as she now feels 20th century England's her home. Susan leaving him's clearly an idea the old man can't even begin to think of, as rather than try and reason with her he simply makes the rather rash decision to take off with Ian and Barbara aboard (is he planning to chuck them out at the first stop, wherever it may be?). As the ship thunders to life we hear another ear-bending noise, a wheezing, groaning cacophony. Ian and Barbara are knocked unconscious, the bright lights of London zoom into the distance, and the strange shapes we saw in the title sequence take on a new significance as we see them superimposed over Susan and her grandfather's faces.
And we see the police box again, in a location far more incongruous than a junkyard - with the shadow of peril quite literally looming over it.
I don't know if there's ever been a more perfect first episode of anything than An Unearthly Child. At the end of its 25 minute running time you really feel like you've been whisked up from your mundane existence and plonked in a new universe with entirely different rules, where absolutely anything might happen. Next week we'll find out exactly what does.
And how do you follow that? Well, with this.
BBC TV, 5.40pm
The Telegoons is, as the name suggests, a television version of radio's seminal Goon Show, with Spike Milligan's scripts edited down to 15 minutes and enacted by puppets, voiced by original stars Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers.
Tonight's instalment is a gothic spoof which casts the show's regular hero, Neddie Seagoon (Secombe), whose puppet looks disconcertingly like Tubbs from The League of Gentlemen, as one of the many adopted children (by many adopted wives) of series villain Grytpype-Thynne (Sellers), here an amateur brain surgeon who sleeps in a coffin and occupies a forbidding mansion next to a canal. Their reunion features a prime bit of telly-bashing dialogue that's an obvious legacy of the show's radio origins:
Neddie: You've changed! You look tired, weary, your eye have sunk back in your head, bloodshot and red-rimmed. What's caused this?
Every mention of "the canal" is greeted by a burst of sinister music, and well it might be - as Grytpype-Thynne is intending to chuck the unwitting Neddie into it and then collect on his life insurance. But after Thynne and his accomplice Moriarty (Milligan) knock the sleeping Neddie out with a hammer then throw him in, they're horrified when he returns a short while later, wet but completely unperturbed.
The rest of the episode involves various other unsuccessful attempts to off poor Neddie, the funniest part being the constant calls Thynne makes to the insurance company to update Neddie's life insurance policy with various increasingly unlikely causes of death.
How entertaining this all is depends on your tolerance for Goon humour and slightly ropey puppetry. Personally I enjoy jokes like "I come of mixed parentage - one man and one woman," and I think the puppets have a rubbery charm of their own. Spike Milligan supposedly wasn't a fan of the show, and it's easy to understand why - the freewheeling, surreal nature of his scripts is brought down to Earth just a bit too much by the limitations of The Telegoons. A good example of this is when Eccles (here Grytpype-Thynne's idiot son) clears his "things" out of his room to make way for Neddie, there's a cacophony of bizarre noises that would allow a radio listener's imagination to run riot. On TV, this is illustrated by a very basic animation of some zoo animals rushing out of the room.
There are several, er, regrettable moments in "The Canal". One of two sinister doctors who visit Neddie at one stage is Dr Yamamoto, a Yellow Peril stereotype (with voice to match), and when Neddie arrives at the mansion we briefly glimpse a grotesquely caricatured black manservant. We don't see him again, but in an especially unfortunate moment later on, aged lock keeper Henry Crun makes a reference to something which sounds a little bit like "bigger mixture", and which I'm not going to Google in case I'm placed on a register somewhere.
Following The Telegoons on the BBC is Juke Box Jury, with a panel made up this week of the tantalising combination of Cilla Black, Sid James and Anna Quayle, along with DJ Don Moss. But I'm heading over to the commercial channel for the rest of the evening.
ATV, 7.30pm
Now, from a dank canalside we head to the more hospitable climes of the Bahamas. Hospitable for holiday makers, that is - less so for a group of retirees who've bought plots of land out there to find they're little more than swamp...
ITC's The Sentimental Agent follows the adventures of the charming Carlos Varela (Carlos Thompson), an import-export agent (first seen in a previous ITC show, Man of the World) who, despite being a bit of a rogue, has an innate decency that sees him get into various scrapes as he tries to help out his clients.
The above-mentioned land was sold by ruthless businessman Mr Lamont (Paul "Steve Zodiac" Maxwell), but the prefab houses to go on it were supplied by Carlos Varela, who fortunately has a bit more ruth. On learning of the potential damage the affair could wreak on Mercury International's reputation, not to mention its finances, Carlos dashes out to Nassau. The journey out's made a nightmare by obstreperous fellow passenger Jessie Robins (scenes like this make me mourn the ground unwieldy boxes of chocs have since lost to more portable forms of confectionery).
"A real live wire, him," Carlos's unwanted companion comments of his rather frosty demeanour. "If they're all like him in the Bahamas I might just as well have stayed in Blackpool."
On arrival Carlos checks in at a hotel where his secretary Susie Carter (Clemence Bettany) is fending off the angry attentions of swindled landowners (the desk clerk's played by jobbing Canadian actor Donald Sutherland).
Shortly afterward Carlos collides with a beautiful young woman played by up-and-coming Shakespearean actress Diana Rigg, in her first credited TV role. She can offer nothing in the way of conversation other than profuse thanks, leading Carlos to muse to Susie, "Funny people, the English. When they find themselves at a loss for words they keep on saying thank you. You can almost see Charles I saying thank you to his executioner."
But when Carlos meets the young lady again in a few short minutes, she's got a lot more to say for herself. Her name's Francy Wilde, and her father's one of those who've been cheated into buying land he can't build on. Francy's angry, but Colonel Wilde (William Mervyn) is absolutely livid: "You're a scoundrel, Sir!" he cries. Then punches Carlos in the face.
Carlos professes his innocence, and his intention to find a decent resolution for Lamont's dupes. "With every failure, I die a little here," he insists, indicating his breast. "In my wallet."
Carlos pays a visit to Lamont's office to confront the swindler (wheedling his way around the man's secretary (Dorothea Phillips), an, er, not classically beautiful woman: "Has anybody told you you have the same colour eyes as Deborah Kerr?"), then delivering a gift from the Colonel when he gets to meet Lamont in person.
With Lamont refusing to reimburse those who've paid him a fortune for useless land, Carlos hatches a plan, which involves Alfie Prentice (David Healy), as absurd a comedy Texan as you could hope to find. Despite Carlos's assurance that he wants to help her father Francy Wilde's still deeply mistrustful of him, especially with the arrival of this strange new character. As to what that thing with sunglasses suspended from the ceiling is, I would not like to hazard a guess.
As Francy, who coolly decides to investigate just what exactly Mr Varela is up to, Diana Rigg is clearly several cuts above the usual decorative starlet cast as love interest of the week in ITC shows. She's crying out to have a regular leading role, and the writer of A Very Desirable Plot, a Mr Brian Clemens, would play an important part in getting her one. However, despite Francy's suspicion of Carlos, she is the love interest of the week, and so ends up snogging him despite her better judgement.
Stumbling across a discussion between Carlos and Alfie, Francy leaps to the conclusion that they've discovered gas on the misbegotten land. Lamont, however, having sent a henchman to steal a soil sample from Alfie, is convinced there's oil under it.
It's all part of a trap Carlos has set, of course, the next phase of which involves his manservant Chin (Burt Kwouk) masquerading as a Chinese millionaire from Trinidad and buying up the remaining plots of land.
Next, Carlos offers to buy all the plots of land from the people Lamont sold them to - he needs a loan to do so, though - and it's provided by an anonymous donor (Lamont, in fact). Before Carlos's plot (the episode title's got a double meaning, you see) reaches its fruition, we're treated (or not) to the sight of him having a shower.
The swindled investors gather together to sign their land over to Carlos: enter Lamont, trying to undercut his price. This being exactly what Carlos wants, he drives the price up before surrendering to his rival. Susie's chosen this occasion to debut a new hairstyle, but nobody pays it any attention.
Once Lamont's paid vastly over the odds for the land, he learns that there's no oil after all - Alfie's a scientist who was doing a study of marine vegetable life, and the sample Lamont's man obtained was a comparative one from Texas.
Now Lamont's been roundly defeated and his victims have got their money back, Carlos and Francy decide it's time to get to know each other a little better.
Thanks to a sparkling script from Brian Clemens (as good as anything he was writing for The Avengers at the time) and adorable performances from Diana Rigg and Carlos Thompson, A Very Desirable Plot is one of the most fun episodes of a very fun series.
Nex tonight, Carlos Varela's intricate plot against Lamont seems benign in comparison to what Ada Larkins has planned...
ATV, 8.25pm
The Larkins were a Cockney family whose various domestic trials were chronicled in a sitcom running from 1958-1960. In 1963 the show was revived, but with all the cast except for workshy dad Alf (David Kossoff), frankly terrifying mum Ada (Peggy Mount) and ditzy neighbour Hetty Prout (Barbara Mitchell) jettisoned. Alf and Ada now run a cafe (or cayfe, as Ada insists on calling it), with assistance from Hetty.
This week Alf and Ada's 31st anniversary is looming, and it looks almost certain that Alf's forgotten. Not that Ada's upset by this: as she explains to Hetty, there could be no better excuse for indulging in her favourite pastime of making her husband's life hell.
Cast your eyes for a moment over the medley of clashing patterns in that above photo. It's just a terrible shame we're denied the opportunity of seeing them in colour. Anyway, Hetty tries to talk Ada into giving her husband a subtle reminder, so he can arrange a romantic evening for them. Ada, however, is unable to imagine anything much more horrific than a romantic evening with her husband. If it didn't occur in an obscure 1960s TV show few people have seen, Peggy Mount's face in the image below would have become a meme long before now.
Ada's got no need to worry: Alf's got no idea it's his anniversary on Friday, and has arranged to play darts that evening. It's a grudge match against the team from the Blue Boar, led by the pugnacious Vic (Victor Maddern), with whom Alf makes a bet of £50 on the outcome of the match.
Things get complicated when Hetty, fearing the worst for Alf, tries to remind him of the upcoming occasion. She's not very subtle, but he still fails to get it.
Barging in partway through their conversation, Ada's stunned to be told "We're going out Friday." Confronted with the possibility that Alf might actually be doing something nice for her, she changes her tune. Strangely enough, the sight of a happy Peggy Mount is even more frightening than that of an angry one.
As his wires become uncrossed, Alf realises he's committed to both playing darts and taking Ada out for a romantic meal on the same evening. Lodger and fellow wastrel Osbert convinces him to try and shift his date with Ada to another evening. Despite smoking jacket, box of chocs (not on Ada's diet), flowers (that bring on her hay fever) and "genuine empire ruby red port style wine" it's not a resounding success: Alf's inability to remember the details of their first meeting doesn't help.
Friday comes, and Alf's team, including the Larkins' lodger Osbert (Hugh Paddick) and bus driver Lofty (David Jackson, later Blake's 7's Gan) wait impatiently at the pub for him.
Plan A - Alf locking Ada in the woodshed - has failed ("I do not want to see the dry rot in the woodshed - it's bad enough seeing you all evening"), so Osbert rushes home to try and implement an alternative, with the Larkins' nephew Georgie (Hugh Walters) pretending to be ill in order to distract Ada's attentions. However, one glance at "50,000 Curious Ailments" leaves Alf convinced he's got all of them.
Ada, suspicious as always, locks Alf in Georgie's bedroom (which has some stupendous rocket wallpaper), his attempt to escape via the window resulting in a sprained wrist. When Alf fesses up about the £50 in the balance, Ada heads off down the pub and single-handedly wins the darts match for him. What a woman (mind you, although we cut to the dartboard revealing Ada's scored three trebles in a row, we clearly hear Peggy Mount's first dart bounce off the board and clatter on the studio floor).
And, happily, they get their romantic dinner, though Ada has to cook it herself. At least the service is decent.
The Larkins is usually followed (after the news) by ITC anthology series Espionage (the title's self-explanatory) - but this week it's replaced by extended coverage of the events in the US.
ATV, 10.05pm
Lastly tonight, it's The Avengers, midway through its third series (the second to feature Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale). Tonight's episode's not one I've seen listed among especially memorable ones - on watching it, that comes as a bit of a surprise. It is to Mrs Gale what the infamous A Touch of Brimstone would later be to Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, fetishising her almost to the point of delirium. It's not what you'd expect of a simple story of counterfeit medicine...
The episode begins in startling fashion with the murder of a woman, Tu Shu Yung, while she visits a sauna. "What was Miss Tu doing in London?" Cathy Gale asks John Steed (Patrick Macnee), as if the idea she might just live there is unthinkable. Mind you, Cathy's somewhat distracted by Steed using her legs for putting practice (he's had to take up golf rather than his preferred sport of polo as his two ponies are showing more interest in each other than the game).
Miss Tu was in fact over from Hong Kong to locate the source of cheap beauty products and medicines being passed off in the East as originating from respected British firm Willis-Sopwith (with minor alterations for copyright reasons).
But why on earth would something so mundane lead to murder? Steed wants Cathy to head down to the Regency Turkish Baths and investigate. It's ladies only on Mondays and Thursdays. "Today's Thursday," he responds when she asks why he doesn't do it himself. "Precisely," she fires back.
Steed, meanwhile, pays a visit to Willis-Sopwith, meeting two generations of Willises (there are no Sopwiths to be seen). Young Geoffrey (Peter Barkworth) runs the business machine-like efficiency - he's just fired a secretary for not cleaning the teeth of her typewriter. His ageing playboy father John (Newton Blick) is relieved to have the running of the business off his hands, giving him more time to find things of his own to do with the secretaries.
One secretary John keeps his hands off is the matronly Miss Dowell (Joy Ward), just as scarily efficient as Geoffrey, and positioned beneath a rather marvellous art deco-style corporate mural (The Medicine Men features some fantastic design from David Marshall).
Talking of design, Willis-Sopwith have a new look in store for all their products in an attempt to foil their imitators. It's charming in its simplicity.
But unfortunately someone in the organisation is ferrying pictures of the new designs out to action painter Frank Leeson (Harold Innocent, whose name is a perfect match for his cherubic face and a stark contrast to his sepulchral voice), middle man for a sinister foreign power, who arranges to have copies printed by the weaselly Mr Taylor (John Crocker). And this time there are to be no changes to the design to circumvent copyright law.
In his day job, Leeson's schtick is to create paintings via naked women rolling about on giant canvases. While being rubbed down by masseuse Brenda Cowling (she's getting the most comprehensive treatment possible at the baths, all at Steed's expense), Cathy learns that Miss Tu had often come in covered in paint, from which we can infer she was a former model/paintbrush of Leeson's. Cathy then takes a shower next to another paint-spattered lady, Leeson's latest muse, Fay (Monica Stevenson), who Cathy recognises as "The Lilt Girl", whose face was everywhere in a Willis-Sopwith ad campaign a few years back.
It's now Cathy's turn to visit Geoffrey Willis, in the guise of a business efficiency expert who wants to turn the company around (it's strange the way that despite them always going undercover Steed and Cathy never bother to change their names). Geoffrey's instantly smitten with Cathy and gives her the run of the place. Within a few minutes she's come across the body of the company's designer...
Fay may no longer be the Lilt girl but she keeps up an association with Willis-Sopwith: she's Willis Sr's girlfriend ("When she's not out spending his money she's a model for an action painter" Cathy tells Steed. "Who provides the action?" he muses). Fay's horrified when Leeson informs her that his current client plans to disguise poison as Willis-Sopwith medicines in order to stir up anti-British sentiment in a tiny but crucial Arab state. But Fay's attempts to inform her boyfriend of what's going on are overheard by Miss Dowell, who's both the mole within Willis-Sopwith and Leeson's employer. She arranges for Fay to be kidnapped but the unfortunate model's discovered by Steed and Cathy when they investigate Taylor's print works - after a tussle with a pair of heavies. It's an unusually brutal fight, in which Steed bashes his adversary over the head with a cash box and Cathy ends up with a black eye from hers...
...leading to her concealing it when she turns up at Willis-Sopwith the following day. The sight of a leather-clad Honor Blackman is always a striking one: the addition of an eyepatch makes her look like some kind of pirate dominatrix.
It's in its final act that The Medicine Men goes completely potty. Patrick Macnee has a splendid time in one of his infrequent comedy characterisations, as an art buyer who claims he can make Leeson "the toast of Reykjavik". It's not often you see two astrakhan hats in the one evening.
Steed sends Cathy along to Leeson as a potential new model ("She's a very elegant young lady, if sartorially a little avant-garde". "I'll get you a drink and then I'll... put you in the picture," Leeson drools to her when she arrives (a line you can tell he's used many times before).
Inopportunely, evil Miss Dowell now turns up, exposes Cathy, and restrains her. I once stumbled across a rather disturbing Youtube channel devoted to female Avengers stars being tied to chairs. I imagine its creator must get very excited indeed about this scene.
While this is going on, Steed learns the identity of the real boss behind Miss Dowell's organisation: it's Geoffrey Willis! Perhaps wisely, writer Malcolm Hulke eschews any explanations for this - instead Steed just shoots Willis, Peter Barkworth camping up his demise splendidly.
Steed gets to Leeson's studio in time to save Cathy, though this being Cathy Gale she's not doing too bad a job of it herself.
Putting Cathy in an eyepatch and focusing almost indecently on her body and (especially) her famed boots, The Medicine Men is mind-bogglingly kinky stuff.
Sunday 24 November
ATV, 8.25pm
Tonight we learn, somewhat unexpectedly, that modern day Robin Hood Simon Templar (Roger Moore) considers himself something of an expert on modern drama, as he holds forth to us on how absolutely dreadful a play shortly to open in the West End is going to be.
The money to put this abomination on the stage comes from Rick Lansing (David Bauer, last seen as another ruthless businessman in The Saint just a few weeks back): it's one of a series of plays he's backed as vehicles for his actress wife Iris (The Plane Makers' Barbara Murray). Ferdy Mayne plays the production's arrogant director, Stratford Keen, less than impressed with Lansing's withering judgement.
Iris meanwhile, shows her gratitude for her husband's generosity by conducting an affair with the play's leading man, Mark Belden (John Ronane).
Simon's drawn into the orbit of this frightful lot thanks to his girlfriend of the week Mary Hardy (April Wilding - Pauline Collins' co-star in that fascinating slice of Great British trash cinema Secrets of a Windmill Girl), who's also acting in the play. Coincidentally her father (Cyril Luckham) is a former business partner of Lansing's who considers him to be an outright crook.
And he's not wrong: Lansing runs a protection racket targeting the shopkeepers of London town - and trouble's looming on the horizon after he and his henchmen (Barry Linehan and Larry Taylor) start a fire in the shop of a newsagent who refuses to pay them (Meadows White), causing the old man to have a fatal heart attack.
Lansing now finds himself the target of phone calls from a blackmailer who knows all about the incident - and who sounds suspiciously like Simon Templar. A punch-up between Simon and the heavies ensues, though he's finally able to convince Lansing that someone was imitating his voice.
As Templar and Lansing uneasily decide to work together to unmask the blackmailer, Jack Hardy finds himself the latest target, thanks to some dodgy documents he'd previously produced for Lansing (in good faith).
To catch the blackmailer in the act Simon works together with his old nemesis Inspector Claude Eustace Teal of the Yard (after a succession of other actors appearing in the role Ivor Dean would now take it over permanently), staking out the impersonator's choice of drop-off point for the money, Battersea fun fair (which it's great to see).
The blackmailer proves elusive, but Simon's worked out who it is anyway, and the final confrontation takes place during rehearsal as he reveals Iris and her boyfriend as the culprits. Barbara Murray (always a rather camp figure) goes to town as she spits out the truth of how much she loathes her crook of a husband. Simon only just prevents this from being the last fit of pique of her life.
Solidly written by Bill ("Zarbi")Strutton and directed by John Gilling (the man at the helm of some of Hammer's most interesting horror movies), and decently acted by all concerned (though Roger Moore's talking in a peculiar mid-Atlantic accent at this stage, possibly in an attempt to help overseas sales), Iris is a more than usually involving Saint episode. It is, however, chiefly notable for two things. One of these is the succession of peculiar hats Barbara Murray sports throughout...
...and the other is the screen debut of an uncredited but instantly recognisable 19-year old Margaret Nolan, later to achieve cult fame thanks to her appearances in Goldfinger and the Carry On films, as Lansing's secretary. It's a small role, but she's certainly not easy to miss.
Monday 25 November
The high point of tonight's viewing on the BBC is the Golden Awards for Dancing. Categories include Jive 'n' Twist and most original and attractive dance dress. Judith Chalmers supplies the commentary. This is followed by a documentary on alcoholism.
Tuesday 26 November
Associated-Rediffusion, 8pm
The Plane Makers, you may not be surprised to learn, is about a company (Scott-Furlong) that makes planes, focusing especially on the machinations of the company's Managing Director, John Wilder (Patrick Wymark). But as the episode's title implies, there's no sign of Wilder this week - he's found a convenient business trip to Australia to slink off on upon discovering Sir Gordon Revidge has been appointed Scott-Furlong's new chair. We discover all this during a breakfast conversation between sales director Don Henderson (Jack Watling) and his wife Pat (Anthea Wyndham), who it's apparent he didn't marry for her towering intellect.
"That cute little man with the accent," is how Pat refers to Scott-Furlong's general works manager, Arthur Sugden (Reginald Marsh). Arthur's got a lot on his plate at the moment: a pair of time and motion men (Simon Oates and Paul Dawkins) are stalking the factory's corridors, and the grapevine has it that it's all part of a plot by Wilder to get Sugden out. What's more, there's news from up north that his sister Phyllis is dying. The display of stiff upper lippery from Arthur and his wife Mary (Sheila Raynor) in the face of the news is more affecting than any wailing or gnashing of teeth could be: "I always liked your Phyll." "Aye, she's a good soul."
Unfortunately, along with Wilder has gone any real sense of drama. Coronation Street writer John Finch does a good job with the working relationships between the men on the factory floor and Arthur's uncertainty of how much he's still one of them, but it's all too plainly an episode that's marking time until Patrick Wymark returns. Still, there's a few things in its favour, like the always welcome sight of Arthur's Fag Ash Lil secretary Margie (Elizabeth Begley), plus the return of factory sage Ernie Lucas (Frank Crawshaw), while John Junkin makes his debut as new union convener Dusty Miller.
And then there's the remarkable hairdo sported by Wilder's secretary Kay Lingard (Norma Ronald) this week.
It's just a shame that the main thrust of the episode's so uninvolving. Arthur, due to travel to Phyllis's bedside, is detained at the factory due to a squabble over who stole one of the time and motion men's notebook, but (and I know I sound like I'm contradicting myself here) we never see sufficiently beyond his stiff upper lip to suggest that leaving's a matter of real urgency to him. Once the matter's sort-of resolved (Eddie Fish, due to retire the next day, is covering for his colleague Alec Reed, but Arthur decides not to question the old man any further about it), Arthur gets home to be told Phyllis has died already, and he wouldn't have had time to get there anyway. Sighing, he and Mary settle down to a cup of tea. It could have been a quietly touching way to end the episode, but this scene, the whole point of which is its ordinariness, is ruined by a bizarrely inappropriate swell of dramatic music before the usual closing theme.
The high point of tonight's viewing on the BBC is the Golden Awards for Dancing. Categories include Jive 'n' Twist and most original and attractive dance dress. Judith Chalmers supplies the commentary. This is followed by a documentary on alcoholism.
Tuesday 26 November
Associated-Rediffusion, 8pm
The Plane Makers, you may not be surprised to learn, is about a company (Scott-Furlong) that makes planes, focusing especially on the machinations of the company's Managing Director, John Wilder (Patrick Wymark). But as the episode's title implies, there's no sign of Wilder this week - he's found a convenient business trip to Australia to slink off on upon discovering Sir Gordon Revidge has been appointed Scott-Furlong's new chair. We discover all this during a breakfast conversation between sales director Don Henderson (Jack Watling) and his wife Pat (Anthea Wyndham), who it's apparent he didn't marry for her towering intellect.
"That cute little man with the accent," is how Pat refers to Scott-Furlong's general works manager, Arthur Sugden (Reginald Marsh). Arthur's got a lot on his plate at the moment: a pair of time and motion men (Simon Oates and Paul Dawkins) are stalking the factory's corridors, and the grapevine has it that it's all part of a plot by Wilder to get Sugden out. What's more, there's news from up north that his sister Phyllis is dying. The display of stiff upper lippery from Arthur and his wife Mary (Sheila Raynor) in the face of the news is more affecting than any wailing or gnashing of teeth could be: "I always liked your Phyll." "Aye, she's a good soul."
Unfortunately, along with Wilder has gone any real sense of drama. Coronation Street writer John Finch does a good job with the working relationships between the men on the factory floor and Arthur's uncertainty of how much he's still one of them, but it's all too plainly an episode that's marking time until Patrick Wymark returns. Still, there's a few things in its favour, like the always welcome sight of Arthur's Fag Ash Lil secretary Margie (Elizabeth Begley), plus the return of factory sage Ernie Lucas (Frank Crawshaw), while John Junkin makes his debut as new union convener Dusty Miller.
And then there's the remarkable hairdo sported by Wilder's secretary Kay Lingard (Norma Ronald) this week.
It's just a shame that the main thrust of the episode's so uninvolving. Arthur, due to travel to Phyllis's bedside, is detained at the factory due to a squabble over who stole one of the time and motion men's notebook, but (and I know I sound like I'm contradicting myself here) we never see sufficiently beyond his stiff upper lip to suggest that leaving's a matter of real urgency to him. Once the matter's sort-of resolved (Eddie Fish, due to retire the next day, is covering for his colleague Alec Reed, but Arthur decides not to question the old man any further about it), Arthur gets home to be told Phyllis has died already, and he wouldn't have had time to get there anyway. Sighing, he and Mary settle down to a cup of tea. It could have been a quietly touching way to end the episode, but this scene, the whole point of which is its ordinariness, is ruined by a bizarrely inappropriate swell of dramatic music before the usual closing theme.
BBC TV, 9.10pm
Now this is going to be a bit of an odd one. Although a big hit, the BBC's adaptations of George Simenon's detective stories have to date only been released on DVD in Germany - with only a dubbed German soundtrack available. Which is the only version of tonight's Maigret I've seen. And I don't speak any German. I have, however, read the book that it's based on, and done a Google translate on the DVD booklet, so I should be able to give a rough synopsis.
Tonight's episode is called The Judge's House, a direct translation of the original book's French title. The book wasn't actually translated into English until 1978, when it was titled Maigret in Exile, as it sees the detective reassigned from Paris to Normandy. In the TV version, though, he just happens to be staying in a Normandy village (along with his assistant Lucas, who isn't in the book) after having wrapped up another case there.
Although they're all dubbed into German in the version I saw it's still always a pleasure to see top British character actors, and few faces are more welcome than the wizened visage of Patricia Hayes, peeping out from a French peasant headscarf. She's Didine Gulot (her surname's Hulot in the book - presumably by 1963 this was thought too closely associated with Jacques Tati), a village busybody who collars Lucas (Ewen Solon) with a remarkable story.
Didine lives opposite a Judge Forlacroix, and claims that through an upstairs window of his flat she has spotted a corpse lying on the floor. The judge is meant to be away until that evening, and a sceptical Lucas and Maigret (Rupert Davies) nonetheless agree to wait outside the house that evening with Didine's husband (Edwin Finn) to see if anything happens.
Sure enough, the little judge (Leslie French, Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert's first choice for that show's title character) emerges dragging what's clearly a corpse sewn up in some sacks, and attempts to get it into a boat.
Confronted by Maigret and Lucas, the judge seems unperturbed - in fact quite relieved. He invites them into his house for some Armagnac, and claims to have no idea who the dead man is - he just wanted to get rid of the body to avoid any embarrassment.
The judge has two children - Albert (Dyson Lovell), a strapping and surly lad who's become a fisherman as a protest against his father's genteel lifestyle, and Lise (Lyn Ashley), who lives with the judge and is mentally disturbed (among the German dialogue I distinctly heard the phrase "dementia praecox", though in the book the exact nature of her problem is left vague).
We soon learn that Lise is also a nymphomaniac, and that to quiet her down Albert has arranged for his friend Marcel (Terence Bayler) to make regular visits to her room. The dead man, it turns out, was a doctor Albert called in to diagnose whether Lise was pregnant (she was). Albert, who didn't want to deal with the problem of Lise once his father was dead, was keen to marry her off to Marcel, and, we eventually discover, killed the doctor when insisted that Lise's condition meant that he could not allow her to marry. It all climaxes in a huge wrestle between Albert and Marcel (in the book at least there's a deeply homoerotic undercurrent to their relationship).
Although much of the episode was sadly unintelligible to me, Rupert Davies' magnificent facial expressions speak a thousand words in any language.
Wednesday 27 November
The play in the BBC's Festival strand tonight is Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Prima Donna, starring Alison Leggatt, Laurence Hardy, Peter Sallis and Coral Atkins. This is followed by a report on traffic congestion with the not-at-all alarmist title Our Strangled Cities.
Thursday 28 November
Associated-Rediffusion, 5.25pm
Space Patrol was an attempt by Gerry Anderson's former colleague, puppeteer Roberta Leigh, to capitalise on the success of his Fireball XL5, following the adventures of Captain Larry Dart and his crewmen, Slim, a Venusian, and Husky, a Martian. It looks a lot more primitive (and a hell of a lot cheaper), but it has an entirely bonkers charm all of its own.
"Where's that dreadful noise coming from?" asks Space Patrol chief Colonel Raeburn, which seems a rather harsh way of describing F C Judd's electronic music until we realise he's referring to a peculiar buzzing sound permeating the whole of Space Patrol HQ. The Colonel asks a passing robot named Mac about the noise, and receives a rather grumpy response: "I cannot hear anything, but everyone is asking me the same question".
But if the noise is a nuisance for Raeburn and his colleagues, it seems to be at its worst in - of all places - France, whose panicked Lady President contacts Raeburn for help. The noise has rendered the population of France incapable of working, and this has led to the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre! And the thieves come from space!
One person who hasn't even noticed the noise is Professor Haggerty, who's too busy working on his latest invention to pay attention to such things. He's created a time machine! Sort of. It's actually something he calls a "time watch" (I don't think he's fully thought that one through), which slows down time for whoever's wearing it, meaning they're able to do everything at incredible speed. Space Patrol being a children's programme, the application for this invention everyone's most excited about is it means children can accomplish all their schooling within just a couple of years. Haggerty demonstrates the watch on his daughter Cassiopeia, who he sends to tidy up his lab within a minute (but hang on a minute, with women getting all their housework done in just a few minutes what are they supposed to do with the rest of their time?)
Meanwhile, more art thefts have taken place all over the world - and the culprit is revealed as Tara, a Venusian millionaire who lives on Jupiter's moon Callisto. He lives, surrounded by art treasures, with a big-haired companion.
Wicked Tara refuses to give the stolen art back when requested by Raeburn. So it's up to CaptainLarry Dart to go and get it - aided by the time watch (time watch - I ask you). He learns about the device at a launch party Professor Haggerty's holding for it. The Prof's home looks very swish indeed, but it doesn't look like much of a party.
Raeburn tests out the watch by going for a ride in a monobile while wearing it (which sounds thoroughly dangerous to me, though he gets back in one piece). Dart sets off for Callisto, planning to slow down time for the two minutes Tara's palace doors are open when he goes on his daily inspection of his gold mines. Highlight of the episode is the lawnmower-like contraption Dart piles paintings up on willy-nilly to wheel them out (we're later told he managed to get a load of sculptures out of the palace too. The mind boggles).
The Galasphere escapes with the art treasures aboard, but Tara sends missiles after them (I don't think Gerry Anderson's got anything to worry about here).
Fortunately Dart and his crew manage to outpace the pursuing rockets and return the art treasures safely to Earth. So that's the end of another 20-odd minutes of agreeable nonsense. I'll leave you with plain-speaking crewman Husky's thoughts on art to ponder on: "The Mona Lisa's nice to look at, but I'd much rather eat a Martian sausage."
Friday 29 November
William Mervyn, who was in Saturday's The Sentimental Agent, pops up again in tonight's Here's Harry (Worth) on the BBC, alongside Anthony Sharp, another perennial establishment figure.
You can find the full Radio Times listings for this week's BBC programmes here.
In the news
The week's news is dominated by the assassination of President Kennedy and its aftermath - the deaths of both C S Lewis and Aldous Huxley on the same day being rather overshadowed. Given the debut of Doctor Who this week, I think it's fun to note that the UK's first ever UFO conference took place the same weekend. Here's the Times report:
At the pictures
Films opening in the UK this week include the melodrama Toys in the Attic, starring Dean Martin and Geraldine Page, and the Vincent Price horror Diary of a Madman.
In the charts
At number 1 this week it's Gerry and the Pacemakers with "You'll Never Walk Alone". You can see the full chart for the week here.
But strangely not mentioned on the official chart is the twangtastic sound of John Smith and the Common Men, up from 19 to 2 this week:
