Lonelyheart 4122 - and Outnumbered

I was disappointed by the first episode I watched of Murder Most English, the 70s mystery series now on DVD, so I’m glad to report that the second was a distinct improvement. This was Lonelyheart 4122, in which Inspector Purbright (Anton Rodgers, warming to the role) is called upon to investigate the unexplained disappearances of two respectable middle-aged women.

Before long, the detective decides that there is likely to be a connection between the missing women and an upmarket matrimonial agency run by a Mrs Staunch. But attempts to establish a link between the women and a particular male client of the agency get nowhere. So Purbright decides to keep an eye out for other potentially vulnerable women.

He lights upon Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime, newly arrived in Flaxborough. She is a woman who intrigues him, and she is less than frank about the fact that not only has she signed up with the agency, but she has also met up with a rather predatory chap who says he is a retired naval officer. But it soon becomes clear that Miss Teatime is not as naïve as she seems, and that anyone who crosses her path needs to be very sharp-witted indeed.

I found this episode entertaining, though not up to the high level of the very enjoyable book by Colin Watson upon which it’s based. Brenda Bruce (who apparently was a notable classical actress, and the first victim in Michael Powell’s film Peeping Tom) is a charismatic Miss Teatime, while John Carson, once a familiar figure on British TV (usually as a smooth villain), is appropriately awful as the gruff old salt.

Coming right up to date, I also wanted to mention Outnumbered - a UK series which had its Christmas special edition last night. This is a comedy, not a crime show (although the special did feature the aftermath of a burglary and a possible insurance scam) but I find it hugely entertaining, and I do admire the writing. It's the work of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin (the latter also wrote for the superb time travel crime series, Life on Mars), and their scripts are both funny and, at times, poignant. There is much for anyone interested in the craft of writing to learn from scripts like these - the way that humour flows from character and situation, which the added twist, in this case, that the lines of the three young children who star in the show (and 'outnumber' their hapless parents, very believably played by Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner) are not fully scripted. The scenes featuring the kids' grandfather in particular are almost invariably funny and moving. Last night's excellent special was well up to standard.

Murder Most English

Adapting crime fiction into successful television is a task that demands a great deal of skill. This is all the more so when you are talking about humorous crime fiction. Humour on the page doesn’t always translate effectively on to the screen – and humorous television can also become dated very quickly.

With this in mind, I started watching my new box set of Murder Most English with a degree of trepidation. This is the series based on Colin Watson’s deservedly acclaimed Flaxborough Chronicles. I missed it when it was first shown during my student days, so I wanted to see what I had missed.

The first episode is Hopjoy was Here – I covered the book in a favourable review a few months back. The screenplay was written by Richard Harris – not the actor, but a highly experienced tv scriptwriter, whose many credits include Adam Adamant Lives! The Avengers, Shoestring and Outside Edge. The lead detective role was taken by the late Anton Rodgers, backed up by a young Christopher Timothy.

Unfortunately, I was rather underwhelmed by the show. Rodgers and Timothy do a likeable job, but some of the acting of the supporting cast, including the prime suspect and the forensic pathologist, struck me as sub-optimal, to put it kindly. That trepidation seems justified. I will, though, give the other episodes a try.

Forgotten Books - Hopjoy Was Here

My latest entry in Patti Abbot’s series of Forgotten Books comes from the pen of the late Colin Watson. For many people, Watson’s name is most closely associated with his study of Golden Age fiction, Snobbery with Violence, a jolly good book if rather meandering. But I think his best work came in The Flaxborough Chronicles.

Julian Symons reckoned that Hopjoy Was Here was the best entry in the Chronicles, featuring Watson’s regular cop, Inspector Purbright. The book was first published in 1962, and spoofs early James Bondery, along with a teasing mystery about the disappearance of a lodger named Hopjoy – has he been hammered to death and then had his body dissolved in acid?

The story enjoyed a new lease of life when the Flaxborough books were televised as Murder Most English with the late Anton Rodgers playing Purbright in the late 1970s. My paperback edition is a tie-in from that time, although I didn’t get to watch the show, and I don’t know how good it was. It only ran for one series, comprising seven episodes.

You get a flavour of the Watson style from the opening paragraph:

‘Never before had the inhabitants of Beatrice Avenue seen a bath carefully manoeuvered through one of their front doors, carried down the path by four policemen, and hoisted into a black van. Everybody watched, of course….A postman was frozen in silent contemplation five doors farther up. A butcher’s boy and two window cleaners huddled in temporary comradeship with a rate collector on the opposite kerb…Twenty or more children, mysteriously summoned by their extra-sensory perception of odd goings-on…savoured the affair with the discrimination of experts, comparing it with…last summer’s impaling of the greengrocer’s horse, and the wonderful, blood-chilling entertainment in Gordon Road the previous Easter when Mrs Jackson had gone bonkers and thrown all the portable contents of the house…down upon some men from the council.’

What lover of English mysteries could resist reading on?