Reviews

Like the reviewer of 'Room 13', I too watched this series at a tender age (eleven), and the entries (particularly this one) petrified me, too!

The host, Richard Beckett, shelters from the rain in the doorway of a house in Victorian London which has a strange reputation. The viewer then sees an interior shot of a Dr. Jones canoodling with his mistress before they are quite clearly surprised by his wife - but the viewer sees nothing of the latter...

The main action of the story then commences as we see the Tippins family, a young relation named Ann, and a lodger, Turner, take up residence at the address, quite unconcerned by a house agent's lighthearted and throwaway remark about the place having the reputation of being haunted.

One of the strengths of the adaptation is the way in which the supernatural element is introduced very gradually. First, Lucy Tippins becomes aware that a lower corridor of the house is unnaturally cold and the atmosphere unpleasant even on a warm day. Then, a maid abruptly leaves the Tippins's employment claiming she won't spend another minute in the house after what she has seen - but the viewer is not told what this was. On a night shortly afterwards, the Tippins's young son, John, leaves his bed to tell his mother that he has been visited by a woman with black hair and a white face - John speculates that she might have been a witch. His mother gently suggests he share his parents' bed for the rest of the night. Finally, Ann, who is somewhat neurotic and is staying with her relations to get a taste of London life, is actually visited by the ghost and her screams wake the entire household! Again, the viewer sees nothing supernatural. Ann is given a sleeping draught by Turner, who has medical knowledge, and is assured that 'nothing' will wake her - let alone 'a silly old nightmare!' I can still remember the fear I felt a minute or two later as a dark shadow fell across Ann's bed and she again awoke screaming - as terrified as I was! THE most frightening scene of the adaptation followed as, on the wall of the staircase, the enlarged black shadow of the ghost of Mrs. Jones's beckoning hand and arm (no more) - briefly but unforgettably - guided Turner and Dick Tippins to a hidden alcove on the lower floor out of which tumbled her remains. She was quite obviously considerably older than her philandering husband. 'Mrs. Jones!' says either Turner or Dick. 'What's left of her,' is the reply.

The ghost of Mrs. Jones terrified me partly because I did not realise that her aim was NOT to terrify but to guide the household to the place where her murderous husband had consigned her body. She was a superb combination of both the missioned spirit and the supernatural avenger. This was presumably the reason young John Tippins was, despite being shaken, more intrigued than terrified by the ghost's manifestation to him. With the indefinable intuition of childhood, he presumably sensed that it meant him no harm.

The characterisation was excellent throughout and the Tippins family portrayed most sympathetically. I still remember such dialogue as has been indicated above and Lucy Tippins's concerned remark to Ann as the former realised that there was something unnatural in the house - 'Dick's out at his cab business all day - he doesn't have to cope with this.'

I have never forgotten that Saturday night in October, 1966, and it is a tribute to the quality of the adaptation that, never having seen it since, I can remember as much of it as I have tried to indicate here. I feel it is a very great pity that this splendid version of Elizabeth Riddell's story of the supernatural has been lost. The host, Richard Beckett, concludes it by informing the audience that justice did indeed catch up with Dr. Jones. He had been living comfortably on his dead wife's wealth. 'Ah,' concludes Beckett,'the rain appears to have stopped.' He can be on his way.

Rather as one had feared, this adaptation suffered from the necessity of compressing an excellent but FORTY-PAGE short story into half-an-hour's airtime. This was a pity, as the depiction of the mummy itself as a shadowy (indeed barely-seen) object of deadly menace was realised very well. Credit to actor James Swanton for his convincing portrayal.

Had the events of Lot No. 249 (set in the fictitious Old College at the University of Oxford in the May of 1884) been allowed to slowly but surely unfold as they do in the original short story, a much more satisfactory result might have been achieved. As it was, the excision of characters such as Jephro Hastie (Abercrombie Smith's old schoolfriend), Harrington of King's College (William Monkhouse Lee's colleague) and, most egregiously, Dr. Plumptre Peterson (quite unnecessarily transformed into a young Sherlock Holmes) detracted significantly from the production. These excisions, plus the omission of such elements of the plot as Edward Bellingham's engagement to Lee's sister, the real cause of Bellingham's grudge against Long Norton and Smith's erroneous inference after hearing Bellingham apparently talking to himself, all contributed to a disappointing (if not entirely unexpected) outcome.

Half-an-hour is simply not long enough to do justice to this story and its development of the three principal characters and especially of the way in which the stolid, rational and unimaginative Abercrombie Smith, during that fateful month, gradually becomes aware of the terrible secret that Bellingham, through his obsessive research into Egyptology, has succeeded in uncovering. An acceptably-brief narrative voiceover, at the beginning and end of the production, could have introduced the setting and main characters and, more importantly, concluded the tale as Doyle wrote it. (After being forced by Smith to destroy the mummy, Bellingham immediately leaves the college and is last heard of in the Sudan, while Smith and Lee , who incidentally is NOT of mixed-race, remain unharmed). Such an ending, of course, would not have made as good television as Bellingham revealing both a second mummy and second roll of papyrus to enable him to wreak vengeance on his two foes. Mark Gatiss has again, as in his adaptation of 'The Mezzotint' two years ago, changed a story's ending in order that a protagonist or, in this case, TWO protagonists, come to a sticky end.

In conclusion, I appeal to the BBC to allow sufficient airtime for a dramatist more faithfully to adapt such a fine tale of the supernatural. I would also recommend reading the original story (first published in 1892 and regarded as the prototype 'mummy revenge' tale). I first read it at the age of fourteen and it remains one of the 'top ten' - or certainly 'top twenty'! - stories of the supernatural I have ever come across. Among other qualities, Doyle's tale paints a superbly-idyllic background picture of late nineteenth-century undergraduate life at Oxford in the springtime and this, contrasted with the slowly- unfolding horror and then terror occasioned by the animation and actions of Lot No. 249, only adds to the story's overall effect.

The setting is a real and very small town (pop. -1,000) in the French Pyrenees in the year 1883. The total number of characters in the story is also small, barely reaching double figures. The theme of the story is that of a demonic bargain of two centuries before and the power such has over a descendant of the individual who made that bargain. This is the very barest outline of 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' - the ONLY one of the eight stories in M. R. James's first and best collection - 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' - that I have NEVER seen dramatised. In my view, the story contains sufficient plot and backstory and the three main characters are well enough developed for the creation of a successful forty-five minute adaptation WITHOUT additions or subtractions. I feel that the ending of last year's offering, 'The Mezzotint', was marred by the final scene which was quite unlike anything James wrote. This type of conclusion (in which the main character HAS to come to a sticky end) also somewhat spoiled the ending of 1974's adaptation of James's 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' - however effective in itself that conclusion might have been! It is worth noting that the above fate befalls the leading character in only three of the eight stories in 'Antiquary': 'Lost Hearts', 'The Ash-tree' and, yes, 'Count Magnus'.

The three main characters referred to above are an Englishman named Dennistoun , who is a typical, well-educated Jamesian protagonist, the sacristan of the cathedral church of St. Bertrand de Comminges (and, by implication, a descendant of the titular character) and the sacristan's daughter. The three scenes of the story are the cathedral church itself, the home of the sacristan and his daughter and the hotel at which Dennistoun is staying - all within a hundred yards of each other and forming, as well as one can judge, the points of an imaginary isosceles or even an equilateral triangle! This arrangement of internal settings enables the events of the story to be recounted in a taut, increasingly tension-filled fashion leading to a denoument in which, as one would expect of James, the ultimate manifestation of horror is of the briefest but nevertheless hideously intense duration.

I would very much like to see Mr. Mark Gatiss bring this unacknowledged classic (either the first or second ghost story M. R. James ever wrote) to the screen for perhaps the very first time ever!

The previous reviewer writes, 'This one looks like a Sherlock Holmes type mystery' and quite rightly describes the solution as 'a fiendish howdunnit'. In point of fact, the solution to the mystery is remarkably akin to that of the Holmes short story 'The Problem of Thor Bridge'. This tale (perhaps the best of those Holmes stories published after World War One) also features an attempt to frame a character (in this case, a love rival) for murder when in fact the cause of death is suicide. The perpetrator in the Holmes story also plots for the potential victim of the frame-up to be incriminated by arranging a meeting with her at the spot where the body is later found. A handgun (with the help of a cord and counterweight) is caused to 'disappear' (in this instance into the river which flows beneath Thor Bridge) as opposed to up a chimney as in this very good Father Brown story.

Aged fifteen, I first watched this film on late-night television in the autumn of 1970 and, like several other reviewers, found it both entertaining and frightening, especially with regard to Vanessa Whitlock's two appearances in the Lanier house! Having seen the film only once or twice since, I recently acquired the DVD and, in common with the majority of the film's previous reviewers, was very pleased to see how well the production stands up more than fifty years after first being released. Several of your previous reviewers have recorded succinct and lucid synopses of the plot of 'Witchcraft', and my purpose in adding this review is to point out a small way in which I feel the production could be improved. 'Witchcraft' depicts, a little clumsily to my mind, THREE generations of Laniers and I feel that, in the interests of taut and precise characterisation and plotting, these could profitably have been reduced to TWO. Given the ages of the actors and actresses involved, Malvina Lanier could quite easily have become Bill's and Todd's MOTHER rather than grandmother and Helen Lanier could almost as easily have become an older, unmarried sister to the two sons. Such an adjustment of relationships would also, I feel, have given more dramatic impact to the stated suicide of Bill's and Todd's father, as such a device could logically and sequentially have been employed as the reason for the reclusiveness of Malvina Lanier. As the film stands, Helen's father and Bill's and Todd's mother are somewhat airbrushed out of the proceedings. However, 'Witchcraft' remains a film that I would thoroughly recommend.

After more than forty years I can still recall the narrative voice-over which opened this serial: 'England, the West Country, 1685 - REBELLION! The rebels, including myself though scarce fourteen, were those who rallied to the standard of the PRETENDER to the throne - the Protestant Duke of Monmouth.' (I was not sufficiently aware that James II was a Catholic and wondered why Monmouth's religion should be mentioned!) There was plenty more in this opening narrative about the stout-hearted farmers and peasants of the West from whom the Duke recruited his ragtag army, the bloodthirsty Colonel Kirke who commanded King James's infamous Tangier regiment (Kirke's 'lambs')and the Duke's German gunner Joachim 'with whom I came to share so many adventures'. The preamble concluded dramatically thus, 'My mother had appeared to tell me on her deathbed that my father was the Duke! Obsessed by this idea I set out with my sister Perfect to find him. We too became PRETENDERS.'

The following ten episodes followed this quest for the Duke which concluded with the climactic battle of Sedgemoor, the failure of the rebellion and its aftermath. The full cast list for this serial is noticeable both for its overall length and for the number of characters who appeared in only one episode. From this it may be deduced how effectively the much slower pace of seventeenth-century life was conveyed as Joachim, Elam (the narrative voice-over when as an old man he was recalling these dramatic events from his childhood) and Perfect plodded the West Country on foot (one episode even saw them across the Bristol Channel in Wales) and met and mingled with its inhabitants in the search for Monmouth. In point of historical fact, less than ONE MONTH actually passed between Monmouth landing at Lyme Regis on June 11 and the defeat at Sedgemoor. The fact that the serial was filmed across the West Country itself and at the same time of year as the original uprising also lent authenticity to the production.

The gradually escalating tension across the area as the rebellion gathered momentum and built up to Sedgemoor was also well conveyed as was the battle itself, with the impression given that Monmouth came considerably closer to victory than is generally believed. The viewer was, in the final episode, left to draw the conclusion that Elam's father was NOT in fact the Duke of Monmouth but instead an actor who resembled him and with whose band of strolling players the children's mother had been associated.

The performances of all five leading characters were very good (although Elizabeth Robillard's Perfect did not have to do much except look and sound sweet, angelic and innocent) while Curtis Arden as Young Elam gave a fine evocation of a boy who now believed he was born to better things than the life of an itinerant actor. Jonathan Newth as Monmouth was suitably kingly (as he believed he was entitled to be!) but the material position of his ragtag army (although in fact outnumbering the King's troops at Sedgemoor) was well encapsulated when Elam said, 'Give me a pistol and I'll die for you' and Monmouth replied, 'Would that I had one to give!'

Despite his savagery towards the rebels (Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys's Bloody Assizes were shortly to take place) Hamilton Dyce's Colonel Kirke's loyalty to his regiment was demonstrated when he snarled at a captured rebel, 'You have killed Kirke's men this day - not KING'S men but KIRKE'S men!' There was also a moment early in the battle when Joachim's cannon were doing fell work and Kirke commented, 'Would that their gunner were ours!' However, when Joachim was captured he was condemned by Kirke to hang until 'his face was blacker than black!' Thankfully, the children were able to rescue him before this terrible death by slow strangulation reached its culmination.

The serial concluded with Joachim (a fine performance by Frederick Jaeger combining soldierly hardnosedness with compassion for two motherless children) virtually adopting the pair as all three left England for Hamburg. The serial was repeated in 1985 to mark the tricentenary of the Monmouth rebellion and one hopes its DVD (the release of which continues to experience delay) will eventually become available. Postscript: I'm very pleased to report that the DVD of this serial finally became available on 18/09/17 and is now obtainable.

Well, here IS another one! To me, one of the achievements of this show was the way one suspended disbelief and forgot that Ollie and Fred WERE only glove puppets. This was in no small part due to the way Muriel Young interacted with them as if they were as human as she was. Some performers who would have been entirely at place in a music show for adults (Manfred Mann, Sandie Shaw, the Searchers and Herman's Hermits to name only four) also entered entirely into the spirit of the programme and made for a thoroughly entertaining half-hour or so. I watched an episode of this on Tuesday, April 13, 1965, immediately before the first episode of 'Orlando' (q.v.) and remember the contrast between Ollie's and Fred's treatment of guest host Jon Pertwee with that they had accorded his predecessor Stubby Kaye. The latter, with his bluff American wit and bonhomie, was beloved not only by the eponymous hosts but by everybody else involved in the show. For some reason, Ollie and Fred took against the unfortunate Pertwee as soon as he took over from Kaye and mocked and derided Jon almost throughout his tenure! On one occasion Pertwee attempted a song that sent owl and dog into fits! "Hey Fred, we could get a programme going with Pertwee - something like 'Music Down the Drain'!" chortled Ollie. "Yeah, or 'Bottom of the Pops'!" responded Fred, who compared Jon's voice to the sound made by a steam engine going through a tunnel backwards. Oh, to be nine years old again!

I missed the first two episodes of this serial but picked up the final three. It was so long ago now but I do remember that in that third episode, 'The Giveaway', the family who ran the guest house accidentally stumbled across something (it may have been a handgun) which revealed the gang (a father, daughter and son-in-law) as something other than just another family of guests! The tension as the two families (who had got on remarkably well previously) adjusted to the changed situation was most marked. Arthur White, who played the gang leader, desired no further violence but faced the dilemma of the host family knowing that he and his two accomplices were criminals on the run. I'm afraid I can't remember HOW the issue was resolved but as far as I remember the gang was apprehended at the B and B without bloodshed. A memorable aspect to the production was the developing relationship between Madeleine (June Brown), the teenage daughter of the host family (and who had literary aspirations) and the twenty-something female gang member played by Frances Tomelty - the latter ultimately regretting that her arrest was going to prevent a closer and deeper friendship developing between them. There was also the typical squabbling relationship between Madeleine and her younger brother Mark which improved somewhat as they jointly faced up to the peril to home and family. I would love to see this released on DVD. I was sad to notice on IMDb that three of the actors (those who played the mother, father and son of the host family) have passed on. The other four are happily still with us.

I remember well this adaptation of a romance of Exmoor although I was only seven/eight years old at the time. I agree with the previous reviewer that Jane Merrow's lovestruck but helpless (in the power of the brutal Doone clan) Lorna was the character's definitive portrayal but Bill Travers's strong but sensitive gentle giant John Ridd ran it close. There were other very fine and memorable characterisations from the likes of Jean Anderson, John Bennett and Andrew Faulds (as Carver Doone) and these were indicative of the serial in that each member of the Doone and Ridd families stood out as an individual, as did such supporting characters as Jeremy Stickles, John Fry, Gwenny Carfax and Betty Muxworthy. My favourite episode depicted the Doone raid on the Ridd farm (the aims of the raid being abduction, arson and murder) and during which Carver Doone and his grisly gang (including Charleworth Doone, Phelps and Marwood de Whichehalse) met the unexpected resistance of Captain Stickles and his four troopers as well as the Ridds themselves! The Doones were quite unused to this sort of resistance from the country folk whom they periodically terrorised and I still remember Counsellor Doone demanding of a chastened Carver the reasons why the raid had failed to the extent of two members of the clan losing their lives and two more being hauled off to Taunton Jail. 'We knew nothing about the troopers!' was Carver's exasperated reply. My only regret at the time of transmission was missing the whole of Episode 9 as we were on holiday in a hotel at Littlestone that Sunday and (this being 1963) did not have access to a television set! From its title, this was the episode which tied in the action of the novel to its historical background: the unsuccessful Monmouth rebellion of 1685. It is very regrettable that all eleven episodes of this serial are believed lost as it would have made a first-rate DVD release fifty years after its transmission.

The user's summary gives a good précis of this particular episode and my purpose in adding this review is to emphasise the well-constructed plot line in which the Saint and Diane are instrumental in enabling the revolutionaries to succeed in their objective of overthrowing a corrupt regime without recourse to further bloodshed. There are some strong characterisations on BOTH sides of the political fence in this episode. The main drawback of it (common to virtually ALL episodes of 'The Saint' set partly or entirely overseas) is that everyone, from the president of the country downwards, speaks perfect if accented English in what in this case one would imagine to be a Spanish-speaking country. I first watched this as a boy of eleven in the early summer of 1967 and was quite smitten by the delectable Jennie Linden as the Saint's leading lady. Nearly half a century later she looks as stunning as ever and I couldn't understand why she originally received not a SINGLE mention on the now-defunct IMDb message board which discussed the Saint's favourite leading ladies! My own 'top ten' (in no particular order and containing some names not mentioned by other users of the said message board) would be as follows: Eunice Gayson, Dawn Addams, Patricia Haines, Barbara Shelley, Suzanne Lloyd, Jacqueline Ellis, Wanda Ventham, Sue Lloyd, Jennie Linden and Jane Merrow.

I watched the first episode of this six-parter the day after the Foinavon Grand National and Sandie Shaw's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest. Based on an R L Stevenson novel, the story opens with a group of seven French prisoners (including the eponymous hero) in the process of attempting to escape from Edinburgh Castle towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars. With my love of well-defined casts of characters, I immediately took to the group's leader, Laclas, a veteran sergeant of dragoons, Gautier, a sailor, Sombref, a peasant, the 'baddies' Goguelat and the treacherous Clausel and the educated, cultured hero, St. Ives himself. This last has won the heart of a prison visitor, Flora Gilchrist, and when the uncouth Goguelat speaks disparagingly of her, he and St. Ives fight a midnight duel in the communal cell (each armed with a makeshift sword with a blade of one half of a separated pair of scissors) in which the former is mortally wounded. After the escape, St. Ives is separated from the others and it was a grief to me that Laclas, Gautier and Saladin (who does not appear in the novel) drown off screen in their escape attempt. Sombref, although rescued, dies later from injuries sustained in the escape and the only survivor, the treacherous Clausel, attempts to perjure St. Ives as a murderer for Goguelat's death before St. Ives and Flora are united in a happy ending as the hero comes into his substantial inheritance.

I am someone who enjoys a series with a well-knit, well-defined, varied cast of characters and, at the end of its first series in 1975 and after some comings, goings and tragic deaths, 'Survivors' had fulfilled this (for me) requirement. A group of eleven had established themselves at what I believe was a derelict castle and had acquired a tankerful of petrol - the chief currency of their shattered world. The females were in the majority with Abby, Jenny, Ruth, Emma, Charmian and Lizzie, a child. The males comprised Greg, Paul, Arthur, Vic and John, the male counterpart to Lizzie. I looked forward to the second series beginning in the spring of the following year but...the first revelation was that Abby had long since disappeared in search of her son and then... FIRE! Three others of the above (thankfully neither of the children) were wiped off the cast list virtually off screen! Cue diminishing interest on my part through the second series and an almost total non-viewing of the third...Each to his own...