User Reviews

Harold Tinker is a mild mannered man. Haunted both by the bullying he experienced at School, branded 'The Stinker,' and the effects of his bully of a father. Tinker one day meets Jack Cutler, the instigator of his bullying at School, randomly offers him a job. His nagging, domineering, younger wife Phyl pushes him into accepting the job, he agrees. A dinner Party is given by Jack and his wife Blanche, Phyl gets very drunk, Jack continues to call Harold 'The Stinker,' and anger begins to build up inside Harold, he believes Jack and Phyl have begun an affair, the events are catastrophic.

Two of the Countries finest actors go head to head, Joss Ackland is a brilliant, charismatic performer, so strong, he's wonderfully well contrasted against Denholm Elliot, who gives a much milder, almost softer performance, both are commanding. Patricia Quinn and Diane Holland are excellent too.

Very high quality episode, with a great nasty back story, you can sense the tension building throughout.

Top notch, 8/10

Tales of the Unexpected: The Stinker starts with a chance meeting between two people, lowly accountant Harold Tinker (Denholm Elliott) & rich businessman Jack Cutler (Joss Ackland) who went to school together many years ago. Harold remembers Jack as a bully who gave him the name 'Stinker Tinker' which stuck with him & had to endure years of hell as everyone else in school started to call him it, however Jack remembers things differently & he puts it down to teenage silliness. Jack offers Harold a highly paid job which at first he turns down but his wife Phyl (Patricia Quinn) makes him change his mind. Harold has never liked Jack & when Jack starts calling him 'Stinker Tinker' again all the bad memories from his childhood come flooding back...

This Tales of the Unexpected story was episode 7 from season 3 & originally aired here in the UK during December 1980, the third of ten Tales of the Unexpected episodes to be directed by Alan Gibson this one is actually pretty good like a lot of the early episodes are from this generally quite variable series. The story by Julian Symons was dramatised by Julian Bond & like most Tales of the Unexpected episodes The Stinker succeeds or fails with it's twist ending, I am pleased to report that the twist here is quite good. Sure it's not astoundingly original or breathtakingly amazing but it works well enough & I have to say I didn't guess it so it must have done something right because usually they are pretty obvious & predictable. The Stinker with it's theme of old bullies & their victims meeting up many years later in the middle of their lives is not new to Tales of the Unexpected & The Stinker feels like Galloping Foxley (1980) from season two, only difference is The Stinker is more memorable & has a much darker & effective twist ending. Having said that until the ending The Stinker felt like a fairly dull & slow moving moral drama as Harolds insecurities from his past comes back to haunt him & for the first 20 odd minutes there's no crime, no devious scheming or supernatural elements so you will definitely have to stick with it as the whole 25 minutes rests on the twist ending.

This is one of those episodes which was originally shot entirely on location using 16mm film & has no videotape or studio inserts so it looks pretty good throughout. Usually Tales of the Unexpected is pretty tame but someone gets a bullet in the head here, there's plenty of people seen smoking & someone even dares utter the word 'b*stard'. I have said it before & I will say it again some of the actors they managed to get to appear in this series is incredible, here we have Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland & Patricia Quinn. When you consider Tales of the Unexpected was a low budget regional program (it was originally made by Anglia Television a subsidiary of ITV which now only make regional news programming) some of the cast members who agreed to appear in it better know for their film work & who did very little TV are amazing.

The Stinker is a decent Tales of the Unexpected episode which I liked, there's the usual good cast & a solid twist which wasn't always the case with this series. fans should check it out & I could see more casual viewers also enjoying it.

I never really believed Phyl Tinker (Patricia Quinn) was cheating on her husband Harold (Denholm Elliott) with the new boss. Her gold-digging manner persuaded Harold to take a new job with a tormentor from his childhood still weighing on his mind. Jack Cutler (Joss Ackland) apparently felt no such shame in the way he bullied Tinker, looking to let bygones be bygones. The catalyst for Harold's jealousy was that small dinner party hosted by the Cutler's, with Phyl getting sloshed enough to require a lift out of the boss's car. Although there was no come-on offered at the time, I pretty much figured right away that it was the chauffeur who would be taking up with the much younger wife. Too bad for Harold, it really secured the idea that he was a loser in life. That ending sure was a stinker.

Series 3 is for me Tales Of The Unexpected's pinnacle because it covers such a range of writing styles and emotions. This - together with A Girl Can't Always Have Everything - broke my heart at seeing what deep, long lasting damage can be done to the best people by the worst behaviour.

Children's bullying often is worse than adults' because they have more of a gang mentality and less concept of how their words hurt. Any childhood victimisation also hurts more deeply because kids have less life experience and self knowledge to dismiss brainwashing.

I felt so sorry for Harold that his feelings about the bullying were just cast aside - Jack acted like it had all been harmless fun and Phyl treated them as inconvenient to her own ends. The way Jack behaved like such a lech with Phyl and her lapping up of it showed just how oblivious to Harold they were.

It really wasn't Harold who failed but other people who failed him and ruined his life. But he was bound not to see it that way when they were so numerous and so often giving him harmful messages.