The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, the Dr Thorndyke episodes

I’ve written before about Thames Television’s superb 1971-73 series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes which comprises adaptations of some great stories written in late Victorian and Edwardian times by authors who were contemporaries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the moment I want to talk about the two episodes adapted from R. Austin Freeman’s Dr Thorndyke stories. Freeman wrote countless novels and stories featuring this character including masterpieces such as The Mystery of 31 New Inn and The Eye of Osiris. 

The first truly scientific detective in crime fiction, Dr John Thorndyke is a Professor of Medical Jurisprudence. He is not a detective as such. He does however take an interest in criminal cases that call for his particular talents. He does not interview suspects nor does he take the slightest interest in motives. He concerns himself purely with forensic evidence, usually but not always of a medical nature.

The first of the Dr Thorndyke episodes is the first episode of the first season, A Message from the Deep Sea. John Neville stars as Dr Thorndyke. One of Thorndyke’s former students, Dr Hart, has obtained a position as assistant to the Police Surgeon. The Police Surgeon not being immediately available Dr Hart finds himself called to the scene of a murder and being overwhelmed by the responsibility prevails upon Dr Thorndyke to accompany him. A prostitute has been murdered and to the police it appears to be an open-and-shut case. A fellow prostitute, May O’Brien, seems destined to face the hangman.

John Neville as Dr Thorndyke in A Message from the Deep Sea

It is fortunate indeed that Dr Hart had managed to persuade Dr Thorndyke to become involved as both the investigating police officer, Detective Sergeant Bates, and the Police Surgeon, Dr Davidson, are the kinds of bumbling fools who jump to conclusions and are very likely to end up sending innocent people to the gallows. Dr Thorndyke spots some vital clues that they have overlooked, the types of clues that would be meaningless to anyone without a rigorous scientific training. Dr Thorndyke reveals the identity of the real killer in a dramatic courtroom finale.

This episode captures the spirit of Freeman’s stories very well. The police have found a suspect with an obvious motive but Dr Thorndyke demonstrates that the actual physical evidence tells a very different story. It is fortunate that Thorndyke has a good working knowledge of the minute marine organisms of the eastern Mediterranean (Freeman liked to throw in some obscure and esoteric elements such as this) and it is equally fortunate that Thorndyke and his assistants understand the crucial importance of noting every piece of evidence even if its significance is not immediately apparent.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes has the very studio-bound feel you expect in a British TV series from 1971 but this is more than compensated for by a superb cast and Philip Mackie’s entertaining and intelligent script. John Neville captures both the arrogance and the amiability of Thorndyke. James Cossins is excellent as Thorndyke’s junior partner Jervis, who displays an uncanny ability to spot all the vital evidence without being able to make the slightest bit of sense out of any of it. Paul Darrow, who would later find fame in Blake’s 7, is the keen but hopelessly out-of-his-depth Dr Hart. Terence Rigby makes a fine bumptious policeman as Sergeant Bates and Bernard Archard is wonderful as the arrogant but obtuse Police Surgeon.

Barrie Ingham (left) as Dr Thorndyke in The Moabite Cypher

The second of the Dr Thorndyke episodes, The Moabite Cypher, came towards the end of the second and final season. This time Dr Thorndyke is played by Barrie Ingham while Peter Sallis steps into the role of Jervis. Having totally different actors and a different writer and director (this time Reginald Collin fulfills both roles) from A Message from the Deep Sea means that we can expect a rather different treatment.

A suspected anarchist bomber is found dead and in his coat pocket is a very strange letter. It is written in an ancient variant of Hebrew and in a cypher of some description. Scotland Yard can make nothing of this puzzle and they have high hopes that Dr Thorndyke can help. While the puzzle yet remains unsolved Thorndyke and his partner Dr Jervis receive a desperate plea for assistance from a man who is convinced that his brother is being poisoned by his young wife.

Dr Thorndyke does of course crack the cypher, in a rather unexpected way, and unravel the mystery which is both more and less than it originally appeared to be.

Barrie Ingham is very good although I think he seems just a little young to be convincing as such an eminent man. Peter Sallis on the other hand is much too old, in fact two decades too old, for the role of Jervis who is after all supposed to be one of Thorndyke’s  ex-students. There’s nothing wrong with his performance, he’s just too old. Some of the supporting players are just a bit too hammy and there are some perfectly outrageous accents on display. On the other hand it’s a fine story with plenty of twists.

A Message from the Deep Sea is I think closer in spirit to Freeman’s stories. Both John Neville and Barrie Ingham give interesting interpretations of Dr Thorndyke although it’s John Neville who strikes me as being closer to the character as described in the books. Both episodes are however very entertaining and well worth seeing if you’re a fan of Freeman’s stories, and of course The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes as a whole is a must-see series.

Moonbase 3 (1973)

In 1973, at the time they were enjoying great success with Doctor Who, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dick decided they wanted to do a totally different kind of science fiction television series. They persuaded the BBC to give them the go-ahead. The result was Moonbase 3.

Moonbase 3 was conceived as a kind of anti-Doctor Who series. Doctor Who was aimed mostly at kids, scientific accuracy was never a consideration and there were lots of monsters. Moonbase 3 would be aimed at an adult audience, it would aim for scientific plausibility and it would steer clear of the guy-in-a-rubber-suit kind of monster. In fact it would aim at a degree of gritty realism and would focus on psychological drama.

It ran for only six episodes and failed to ignite any real audience interest. Terrance Dicks later felt they’d overdone the gritty realism aspect.

The opening episode sets the tone. Moonbase 3 is the European lunar base. There are also US, Russian and Chinese bases. The atmosphere at Moonbase 3 is a little tense and it’s about to get considerably more tense. Space exploration is inherently dangerous and accidents will occur but when they do they have to be thoroughly investigated. In this case an accident investigation puts the personnel at Moonbase 3 under a great deal of stress. There is a suspicion that a number of key personnel may have made errors of judgment that may have contributed to the accident. The errors of judgment, if they occurred, were rather minor in themselves but a succession of minor mistakes can have catastrophic consequences. In this instance the difficulty for a board of enquiry is that nothing about the accident is clear-cut. Perhaps there weren’t any actual mistakes made at all. Perhaps it was simply that decisions were made that were perfectly sound in the light of the information available at the time but that, with the benefit of hindsight, proved to be the wrong decisions.

The arrival of a new director for the base creates even more tension, especially given that Dr David Caulder (Donald Houston) has a very different style of leadership compared to his predecessor.

The second episode, Behemoth, brings more trouble for Moonbase 3. There’s a series of serious accidents but the worrying thing this time is that they are quite inexplicable. In fact the circumstances are positively mysterious. Astronauts being killed in accidents is one thing but when they disappear without trace that’s another matter. A sudden catastrophic depressurisation of a laboratory might have a rational explanation but when the wall of laboratory has been smashed and a scientist ripped apart that’s a mystery that is worrying indeed. And there are tracks leading to the laboratory where there could not be any tracks. It’s absolutely impossible. After all there’s nothing living on the Moon. Or is there?

In episode three, Achilles Heel, Moonbase 3 personnel seem to be making costly and very uncharacteristic mistakes. Nobody has been hurt but these mistakes have cost the European space program a lot of money and the lunar base is already facing severe budgetary squeezes. Deputy director Dr Michel Lebrun (Ralph Bates) believes the answer is to tighten up discipline, but then Lebrun always believes discipline should be tightened up. 

The fourth episode, Outsiders, was a remarkably bold story for a science fiction TV series. Written by John Brason, it’s quite cerebral and deals with metaphysical and even religious themes. Two scientists at Moonbase 3 are on the verge of major scientific breakthroughs but is scientific progress enough to make life worthwhile and how great is the price to be paid? It’s a clever and original story but it’s hardly the sort of thing that would be likely to have mass audience appeal.

If the whole series had been as good as the fifth episode, Castor and Pollux, then Moonbase 3 might well have been a major success. This episode provides some real excitement and some real suspense. A routine repair job on a satellite goes wrong and one of Moonbase 3’s shuttle spacecraft is not only in dire peril but seems to be doomed, with the astronaut facing certain death. A rescue in space in this instance seems quite impossible. There’s just one very slim chance but even that appears to be hopeless since there’s no way permission would be granted for such an attempt. 

This story is not just exciting but is also a study in the pressures of command. Both David Caulder and Michel Lebrun will be tested to the limit as risks have to be balanced and terrifyingly difficult decisions taken. This is the first episode that really gives Ralph Bates as Lebrun a chance to demonstrate his acting chops and he does so quite impressively. There’s some actual character development here. Lebrun has always had very strong views on the subject of command but he’s always had the luxury of being second-in-command and therefore of not having to take ultimate responsibility. Now he has to make a crucial decision which will not only mean life or death for the astronauts but could end his career if his decision turns out badly, and the responsibility is his and his alone.

Sadly it all falls apart badly in the sixth and final episode. Up to this point they’d avoided the preachiness that afflicted so much 1970s BBC TV sci-fi (including at times Doctor Who). In this episode the preachiness is all too apparent but it’s not the only problem. I don’t want to reveal spoilers but this story incorporates plot devices that always exasperate me.

This series has an interesting cast. Donald Houston had had quite a successful career in film. Ralph Bates, who plays deputy director Dr Michel Lebrun, is best remembered for starring roles in a number of Hammer horror movies. The third major character is psychologist Dr Helen Smith (Fiona Gaunt). Fiona Gaunt had a fairly busy career in British television in the 70s before disappearing without trace. All three leads are fairly effective and the characters are reasonably well developed and, more importantly, they’re all fallible. That’s true of the minor characters as well. Astronauts might be carefully selected but they still have human weaknesses. In fact this group of space explorers has lots of human weaknesses!

The chief difficulty this series faced is a tough one. If you’re going to do a science fiction series without aliens and monsters how do you provide the action and the suspense that science fiction fans are going to be looking for? The writers manage to meet this challenge with reasonable success although one can’t help wondering how long they could have continued to do so had the series enjoyed a longer run.

If there’s one major criticism that can be levelled at Moonbase 3 it’s that for a serious science fiction program it doesn’t have much in the way of really meaty science fiction content. The focus is almost entirely on the psychological dramas that arise among the crew. It’s no coincidence that one of the three main characters is the base’s resident psychologist, Dr Helen Smith. The psychological dramas are quite interesting though and the emphasis on the peculiar kinds of stresses that arise among a group of people isolated in a hostile environment is quite effective and it does take full advantage of the setting. Of course they could have achieved the same results by setting the series in a remote part of the Earth (such as the Antarctic) but at least by setting it on the Moon they can throw in a few spaceships. On the other hand what science there is is much more realistic than one expects in TV sci-fi.

The production values are what you expect from the notoriously penny-pinching BBC in 1973. In other words they’re pretty awful. The sets and the special effects look very very cheap indeed when compared to something like Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999.

Moonbase 3 was for quite a few years believed to have been another victim of the BBC’s insane policy of destroying practically every archived series they could get their hands on. Fortunately a copy was not only eventually found, it was in pretty good condition and even more fortunately it was a colour copy. The complete series of six episodes has been released on DVD by Second Sight (and I believe it’s an all-region DVD set). There are no extras but image quality is quite good.

Moonbase 3 had potential and even if that potential was not fully realised it has some good moments. It’s intriguingly and daringly different in tone from most television science fiction. It doesn’t always quite succeed but it’s a brave attempt. I think it’s definitely worth a look. Recommended.

Callan - The Richmond File (1972)

Multi-episode story arcs were relatively unusual in television series in the 1960s and 70s but they were certainly not unknown. Callan (1967-72) featured several, including The Richmond File which occupied the final three episodes of the fourth season.

In the first installment of the Richmond File, Call Me Enemy (written by George Markstein), Callan has to debrief a Soviet defector at a safe house out in the countryside. The defector is Richmond, a colonel in the KGB. Rather unusually Callan is assigned to the job on a completely solo basis. He has no other agents to back him up. It’s just the two of them. Considering that Richmond’s KGB career includes a number of killings it seems like a very risky procedure but Callan’s boss Hunter has his reasons for doing it this way.

Partly the idea is that Callan and Richmond are in a way equals. Callan is the top operative for the ultra-secret British counter-intelligence agency known as the Section and he has more than a few killings to his credit. He’s a very experienced and very senior operative. Richmond is equally experienced and equally senior. There are even some uncanny similarities in their backgrounds. With someone as experienced and as tough as Richmond  a conventional interrogation might succeed. If Dr Snell (the Section’s specialist in such things) were put in charge of the interrogation it would certainly succeed but Snell’s methods have an unfortunate tendency to leave the subject permanently damaged. Callan on his own might well have a better chance of finding out what Richmond is really up to.

And Hunter strongly suspects that Richmond is up to something. The possibility that his defection is genuine cannot be ignored but Hunter is inclined to think it’s a setup. 

The stage is set for a battle of wills between two men who are both hardened professionals and both exceptionally strong and devious personalities. Callan’s task is to find a weakness or spot some tiny error that will tell him whether or not Richmond is a genuine defector; Richmond for his part is equally keen to break down Callan’s resistance, either to persuade the Section that he should be given political asylum or to achieve some unknown objective for his KGB masters.

While other series regulars make brief appearances this story is mostly played out by Callan and Richmond. This puts considerable pressure on the two actors involved. Fortunately both Edward Woodward and T.P. McKenna (as Richmond) are equal to the task.

Do You Recognise the Woman? (scripted by Bill Craig) forms the second part of this story arc. Hunter has come up with a typically devious plan to use a Soviet agent currently serving a long sentence in a British prison as a means of trapping Richmond. Since there in no chance that the agent in question, Flo Mayhew (Sarah Lawson), will co-operate voluntarily she will have to be tricked into doing so. Callan always gets the dirtiest jobs so it’s not surprising that he lands this one. He has a bit of a personal interest this time - Flo Mayhew was captured while carrying out an operation for the KGB, the purpose of the operation being to kill Callan.

Despite this he discovers that spies have quite a lot in common. There’s a certain strange camaraderie. He also discovers that even KGB killers have human weaknesses and emotional lives. Even KGB killers as ruthless as Richmond.

In the third installment, A Man Like Me (written by James Mitchell), the net is closing on Richmond but that merely makes him more dangerous. 

The Section is so determined to get him that Hunter is even prepared to resort to using a computer. The computer does provide some leads but Callan’s much more old-fashioned methods provide the vital break.

Of course the climax is going to be a final duel between Callan and Richmond but it manages to provide an ending that is both slightly unexpected and totally satisfying, both dramatically and emotionally.

In The Richmond File Callan finds himself having to confront several Soviet spies as individuals rather than as mere enemies. It’s a somewhat uncomfortable experience. Callan is always uncomfortable when he may have to kill someone after getting to know them (that’s part of the business of counter-espionage) but he’s never had to confront the problem with actual KGB officers before. It’s particularly disturbing when he finds himself not only understanding them but liking them.

T.P. McKenna was a very fine character actor and he does a superb job as Richmond. He makes him believable and sympathetic without sentimentalising him. We never forget that while Richmond is intelligent and charming he is also a killer. Just as Callan is a killer. McKenna and Edward Woodward really do work together magnificently in these three episodes. With two actors so perfectly cast and with such very strong scripts you really can’t go wrong.

The Richmond File provided a top-notch finale for the fourth season, which turned out to be the finale for the series as a whole. Callan certainly went out on a very high note indeed. Essential viewing. 

The Owl Service (1969)

The Owl Service is a 1969 mini-series from Britain’s Granada Television. It’s a children’s program although it’s obviously aimed at what would probably today be described as the young adult market. In fact it deals with a few concepts that very definitely qualify as adult themes. It’s a fantasy series in a contemporary setting although the supernatural elements are subtle and ambiguous. 

Alan Garner wrote all eight half-hour episodes. He adapted the series from his own novel.

Clive (Edwin Richfield )and his new wife Margaret are holidaying in a remote very rural Welsh valley. Both had been married before. Clive has a teenage son, Roger (Francis Wallis), from his previous marriage while Margaret also has a teenager, Alison (Gillian Hills), from her previous marriage.  Their housekeeper Nancy (Dorothy Edwards) and Nancy’s son Gwyn (Michael Holden) complete the household, apart from a gardener named Huw (Raymond Llewellyn), a strange character who may be a bit touched in the head.

Investigating odd scratching noises coming from the attic Alison and Gwyn discover an old dinner service (this is the owl service of the title). The pattern on the plates is a little puzzling but after tracing the design Alison finds that it comprises flowers and that when put together the flowers make an owl. She starts, rather obsessively, to make paper owls from the tracings. The paper owl models seem to have a rather disturbing effect on Alison.

The plates have some kind of connection to a local legend involving a romantic triangle that ended in a strange double murder, one of the murders being committed by a dead man. There’s also a mysterious stone near the house with a hole through it, allegedly made by a spear cast and also connected with the legend. This legend also tells of a woman made from flowers who turns into an owl.

The plates have a surprising property. After Alison copies the design on one of the plates the design disappears from the plate.

There’s a good deal of tension between the various characters, at least some of this tension being emotional or sexual in nature. There’s an obvious attraction between Alison and Gwyn while the relationships between Alison and some of the other characters are slightly unsettling (I did say this series touched on some adult themes).

There are other complications with roots in both the distant and the recent past.

The pacing is leisurely, which is a polite way of saying that it’s slow. I’m inclined to think this story might have worked better as a six-part rather than an eight-part series. There’s not quite enough plot to sustain eight episodes and while it’s useful to develop the characters and the atmosphere of unease at a deliberate pace it really is unnecessarily slow.

Of course a potential problem with a series in which the key characters are children or teenagers is that it makes heavy demands on inexperienced actors. The big problem here is Francis Wallis who fails completely to get a handle on his performance as Roger. Roger ends up being not only a character the viewer doesn’t care about - we also can’t imagine any of the other characters caring about him or even bothering to notice his existence. Michael Holden gets the brooding intensity right as Gwyn. Gillian Hills (who at 25 should have been much too old to be playing a teenager) does pretty well in what is a formidably demanding role.

In some ways The Owl Service strikes me as the kind of series that adults would imagine that teenagers would like. I suspect that actual teenagers might have preferred a bit more spookiness or a bit more excitement, and possibly just a touch of humour. As it stands the series has at times a bit of a dour kitchen-sink drama feel to it. There’s a teen romance angle that would obviously appeal to girls but I can’t imagine most teenage boys lasting beyond the first couple of episodes. That’s not to say that this is a bad series. It’s just terribly serious and intense, and slow.

At the time there were those who felt that the series was quite unsuitable for children and I have to say I agree with them. It’s wildly unsuitable material. Alan Garner’s original novel was apparently not actually intended as a children’s novel although it ended up being labelled as such. It’s probably better (and less disturbing) not to regard The Owl Service as a children’s series at all.

It also has a feature that is, alas, rather common in British television of its era - it pits cruel snobby wicked upper-class people against a noble long-suffering working-class hero. This is always tiresome and in this case it also seems like an unnecessary distraction from the main story.

The inspiration for both the novel and the TV series was a Welsh legend from The Mabinogion. A wizard creates a woman named Blodeuwedd out of flowers, and as a punishment for betraying her husband (and causing two murders) she is turned into an owl. The central premise of The Owl Service is that the tragic romantic triangle of the legend is destined to repeat itself over and over again.

Rather surprisingly for the period this series was shot mostly on location in Wales. It was also shot in colour at a time when this was still unusual for British television. Unfortunately it went to air in December 1969 in black-and-white and was not seen in colour until 1978.

Network’s DVD release contains all eight episodes and image quality is pretty good. There are some worthwhile extras as well. There’s a documentary film on Alan Garner which left me determined not to read any of his books. More interestingly is the accompanying booklet which includes an incredibly detailed essay on the production of the series, interviews with Gillian Hills and Raymond Llewellyn and a brief but enthusiastic appreciation by Kim Newman.

The Owl Service was a wildly ambitious project. Not surprisingly it’s not always a complete success. Producer-director Peter Plummer approaches the series more in the spirit of an art film than a popular television series and on occasion he gets a little carried away (the surreal touches in the final episode seem out of place). At times it’s heavy going and it has severe pacing problems but it’s still a fascinating if somewhat pretentious attempt to do something different in the field of television fantasy. If you have a higher tolerance than I have for artiness and you can overlook some clumsy “social commentary” then it’s worth a look.

Dangerous Knowledge (1976)

Dangerous Knowledge is a fairly gritty six-part mystery thriller serial made by Britain’s Southern Television and originally broadcast in 1976.

Bill Kirby (John Gregson) has been in France on business and is returning to England. He wants to leave the car ferry unobtrusively and attaches himself to Laura Marshall (Prunella Ransome). He attaches himself in a rather obvious way but Laura is more amused than concerned.

Kirby is trying to avoid two men. He claims they have been following him. In fact it’s pretty obvious that they are following him. He also claims that they mean to do him harm.

Kirby’s later explanations to Laura, after they reach her luxurious cabin cruiser (although it’s actually Daddy’s cabin cruiser), are evasive to say the least. He tells her that he is an insurance salesman but he was in France for unspecified private business - all he tells her is that there are different kinds of insurance and that he has obtained some information that may be valuable. The viewer is entitled to suspect at this point that Kirby’s business in France may not have been entirely kosher. As Laura remarks, it could be anything from industrial espionage to blackmail. And Bill Kirby might be a crook, or an undercover cop, or a spy or possibly even an insurance salesman who has stumbled across something lucrative but dangerous.

This is a series that takes its time letting us know what is going on. We find out a little bit about Kirby in the second episode. He is divorced, the divorce was amicable, he is staying at his ex-wife’s house and he has money troubles. He also drinks rather a lot. 

Kirby’s problem (or at least one of his several problems) is that he’s short of reliable allies. In fact it looks like Laura Marshall might be the only ally he has but it’s doubtful whether he can trust her either. Laura’s stepfather, Roger Fane (Patrick Allen), is a senior civil servant. It’s not entirely clear what he does but it seems to have something to do with security or counter-espionage. Fane seems to be rather interested in Bill Kirby.

By episode five we’re still not sure what is really going on, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and what the motivations of the major characters might be. The mystery is maintained without resorting to willful obscurity. We’re not actually misled, we’re merely handed one piece of the jugsaw puzzle at a time. 

The emphasis is on atmosphere and tension, and a considerable degree of 1970s paranoia, rather than action. 

John Gregson had a reasonably successful film career in the 50s. By the 60s he was working mostly in television, with considerable success. He starred in the hit cop show Gideon’s Way. Tragically he died suddenly at 56 shortly after filming Dangerous Knowledge. Gregson was perhaps getting a bit old, and a bit portly, to be starring in thrillers by this time but then that’s really the point of the series - Kirby really is too old to be getting mixed up in these sorts of activities but he needs money badly and he had no idea it would turn out to be this dangerous. Gregson does an effective job. He’s gruff and grizzled and cynical but sympathetic as well. At the same time we’re not entirely confident that he’s an honourable man. We like him but he could be a hero or a rogue, or even an out-and-out villain.

Prunella Ransome is very good as Laura. Laura is a woman who is not sure where her sympathies should lie or where they actually do lie. Ransome doesn’t try to play her as a femme fatale. She’s simply a reasonably intelligent woman thrust into a situation where she’s out of her depth.

Patrick Allen is perfectly cast. He could play smooth villains or trusted authority figures with equal assurance and he’s suitably enigmatic here in his portrayal of Roger Fane.

Ralph Bates (best remembered for his appearances in some extremely interesting early 70s Hammer films) as Sanders makes a surprisingly good heavy. He gets virtually no dialogue. Mostly he just looks menacing but in an ambiguous way, as if he could be a cold-blooded hitman or an equally cold-blooded spy or undercover cop. He does the menacing part extremely well. 

Producer-director Alan Gibson did a great deal of television work but also directed a couple of Hammer horror films - the notorious Dracula A.D. 1972 and the underrated The Satanic Rites of Dracula. He also directed the obscure but interesting Goodbye Gemini.

N.J. Crisp’s career as a television writer was prolific and varied. He wrote all six half-hour episodes and his scripts are literate and cunningly contrived to keep us guessing. What’s particularly impressive is that he does this without over-complicating the plot. The main plot outline is quite straightforward, if only we could be sure who is betraying whom and why.

Simply Home Entertainment’s Region 2 DVD release is a single disc without any extras. The transfers are however very good. There's also a Region 1 DVD, from VCI.

Dangerous Knowledge is typical of the best British television of its type of the 60s and 70s, fairly low-key and slow-burning but tense and absorbing. It’s well-written and extremely well-acted. Highly recommended.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1979 BBC adaptation (made in association with Paramount) of John le Carré’s celebrated 1974 spy novel of the same name. Alec Guinness stars as the masterspy George Smiley.

Things are not going well for the Circus. The Circus (so-called because it has its headquarters in Cambridge Circus) is le Carré’s fictionalised version of Britain Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes known as MI6. An operation in Czechoslovakia went horribly wrong with a British spy ending up with to bullets in his back. Eighteen months later another disaster followed with the defection of two high-ranking KGB officers ending in another fiasco. The Circus officer involved, Ricki Tarr (Hywel Bennett), spent six months on the run but now he’s surfaced in London and he has a disturbing tale to tell. Tarr’s story makes it clear that there is a Soviet mole (code-named Gerald) in the Circus. Worse than that, the mole must be one of the five top-ranking men in the Circus. That means that an internal investigation would be completely pointless. The investigation will have to be carried out by someone who is both an insider and an outsider. Someone like George Smiley, formerly the number two man at the Circus and now retired.

The former chief of the Circus (known only as Control) had had strong suspicions and Smiley had shared those suspicions. Control had narrowed the field down to five suspects. The first is Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge), a man whose skills at political manoeuvring are vastly more impressive than his skills as an intelligence officer. For the purposes of his ow investigation Control has given Alleline the code name Tinker. The second is the brilliant and urbane Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson); Control has dubbed him Tailor. The third suspect is the boisterous and somewhat unstable Roy Bland (Terence Rigby); he has been given the code name Soldier. Number four is the ambitious Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepton) - he is Poor Man. Control’s final suspect is George Smiley - Beggarman.

Control is now dead and the new chief is Alleline. George Smiley is no longer a possible suspect - he was forced into retirement and it is clear that the mole is still in the top echelons of the Circus. 

Smiley’s investigation is official but it has to be undertaken without the knowledge of any of the four remaining suspects or anyone else in the Circus who might alert the mole.

Smiley’s greatest assets are his patience and his thoroughness, and most of all his remarkable memory. His memories are crucial since his investigation is in fact a journey into the past. At times the distant past. The mole might well have been working for the KGB for decades. Smiley’s memories of Karla may be important as well, Karla (Patrick Stewart) being the KGB spymaster who recruited Gerald. Smiley had encountered Karla twenty years earlier - in fact he’d tried (with a striking lack of success) to recruit Karla as a double agent.

Memory is also important in the sense that the Circus is in a sense living in the past, trying to recapture the glory days of the Second World when Britain was a great power. Those glory days are long gone. To many in the Circus this seems like a kind of betrayal. They started their careers with high hopes and high ideals but now they are simply a rather unsuccessful intelligence agency of a third-rate power.

Betrayal is of course the other major theme. The original novel was obviously partly inspired by the spectacular real-life act of betrayal by Kim Philby, the senior MI6 officer who was a Soviet spy for the whole of his lengthy career. In fact one of the many MI6 operatives whose cover was blown by Philby was John le Carré, who worked as a real-life spy for MI5 and later MI6 until the early 1960s. Betrayal was something le Carré experienced at first hand and this doubtless goes a long way to explain George Smiley’s relentless pursuit of the mole in the novel. 

The book deals with betrayals on multiple levels - not just actual treason but betrayals of hopes and ideals and also personal betrayals. The TV adaptation is surprisingly successful in translating these complex interlocking themes to the small screen. This is a very cerebral spy drama with very little action. The lack of action could have been a problem in a seven-part TV serial but the psychological tension and the suspense are sufficient compensation and on the whole it works very well. The one criticism that could be made is that the final episode, much of which is a kind of epilogue, drags a little. This doesn’t matter so much in the novel but for TV I think it should have been tightened up a little. On the other hand it does offer the opportunity to make Gerald’s motivations much clearer.

The adaptation is remarkably faithful to the novel, both in terms of plot and characterisation. 

I was not entirely convinced by Terence Rigby’s slightly caricatured performance as Roy Bland and I thought that Bernard Hepton made Toby Esterhase much too English (he’s supposed to be Hungarian). On the whole though the acting is fine. Alec Guinness is physically not quite right as Smiley but he captures Smiley’s quirks of character so well that it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. Michael Aldridge (who was so delightful in the 60s spy series The Man in Room 17) is perfect as the rather oily Percy Alleline. Ian Richardson plays Haydon with an admirable sense of style and self-assurance. Anthony Bate is excellent as the Circus’s political master Sir Oliver Lacon, a typical politician  whose main concern is to limit the political damage to the government.

The co-production deal with Paramount meant that the BBC had plenty of money to throw around on location shooting and the result is a very handsome production.

The only real weaknesses are in fact reflections of weaknesses in the source novel - the identity of the mole is a little too obvious and the emphasis on Smiley’s train wreck of a private life is such that there is at times a danger that the viewer will start to regard with contempt rather than sympathy.

The DVD includes a fine documentary on John le Carré in which the author takes at length about his own experiences as a spy. The documentary also includes some fascinating comments from a former very senior KGB officer and also from the former head of the East German secret police (who spent his leisure hours in the 1960s reading John le Carré spy novels).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is engrossing television. Highly recommended.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents - And So Died Riabouchinska (1956)

And So Died Riabouchinska was broadcast in 1956 as the twentieth episode of the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It’s based on a Ray Bradbury story and boasts an interesting cast headlined by Claude Rains and a young Charles Bronson.

I’m particularly fond of horror and mystery stories featuring ventriloquists’ dummies -they always make for lots of creepiness.

Claude Rains plays Fabian, a vaudeville performer at a time when vaudeville was not exactly booming. A man is found murdered in the theatre where he is appearing. The man had apparently been trying to get to see Fabian, for some important but unknown purpose.  Detective Krovitch (Charles Bronson) is the investigating officer and he finds that interviewing Fabian is a slightly odd process since Fabian’s doll Riabouchinska insists on being part of the conversation. Krovitch is doubtful as to whether Fabian is being entirely truthful but he suspects that the doll is telling the truth.

The doll was modeled after a real woman, a young and very beautiful woman with whom Fabian was acquainted. Possible quite well acquainted although this was more than twenty years earlier so what connection could it have with the murder of the stranger in the theatre?

Mel Dinelli adapted Bradbury’s story for the small screen. Dinelli was not a prolific screen writer but he did have a few rather impressive credits including the suspense classic The Spiral Staircase. As for Bradbury I’ve always had mixed feelings about him as a writer although I do admit that at his best he could be very atmospheric and very subtle. 

And So Died Riabouchinska is the kind of story that Bradbury did very well and the television adaptation works pretty effectively. It’s typical Bradbury in that it suggests something supernatural but it remains only a suggestion.

Claude Rains gives a very fine performance, managing to be quite disturbing without being too excessive about it. Charles Bronson hadn’t yet found his feet as an actor although there are signs of his later minimalist acting style. In this TV play he’s at his best when he tones his performance right down.

There are better television and movie ventriloquists’ dummy stories but And So Died Riabouchinska is still a worthy example of an odd little sub-genre. It’s certainly worth seeing for the terrific and surprisingly restrained performance by Claude Rains. Highly recommended.

The first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is of course easily obtainable on DVD in all markets.