The Nightmare Man - DVD review

A murder mystery on a remote and scenic Scottish island. A determined cop with a likeable sidekick, trying to figure out what is happening. Got to be Shetland, right? Well, no. Long before Jimmy Perez, there was The Nightmare Man, a BBC TV four-part serial which aired in 1981, enjoyed considerable success - and yet has never been shown again, for reasons unclear. I didn't have a TV at the time, but I'd heard about the show, and now I've watched the DVD version, and read the remarkably detailed booklet which accompanies it. And I'm glad I did.

The Nightmare Man was based on a novel by a dentist called David Wiltshire. He thought about calling his book The Nightmare Man, but opted - unwisely, I think - for Child of Vodyanoi. The book first appeared in 1978 and made little impression; if you could find a nice copy in a dust jacket today, I'm sure it would cost you a pretty penny - there aren't any for sale on the internet as I write. Wiltshire has continued to write, his most recent novel appearing as recently as 2013, but this is the story he's best known for.

And with good reason. The BBC did him proud, even though I agree with his view that the setting of the final encounter might have been better if they'd kept to his original concept. In a touch I find pleasing, Wiltshire made his protagonist a dentist, and this idea was retained by Robert Holmes in the screenplay, although the character's name was changed. He's played by James Warwick, best known as Tommy Beresford in Partners in Crime. His girlfriend is played by the young Celia Imrie, whose quality as an actor is certainly evident here, especially in the first of the four episodes.

Something strange is happening on the foggy island of Inverdee. A woman is found horribly murdered, and soon there is another victim, a male birdwatcher. There are a few brief, enigmatic moments of action seen from the killer's perspective - almost through a red mist. A mysterious colonel turns up on the island, a sheep is butchered, and it's soon apparent that this is no ordinary murder case. Really, this is a story that straddles genres, but I found it entertaining. The cops are well played by Maurice Roeves and James Cosmo' the latter turned up recently as a hard man in Shetland. It's a small world...

Partners in Crime - The Secret Adversary- BBC TV review

Partners in Crime, a new BBC series featuring Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, kicked off tonight with part one of The Secret Adversary, a thriller that was really quite a departure from her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Christie gave the title Partners in Crime to a collection of short stories written during the Twenties in which the Beresfords ran a detective agency and amused themselves by aping the methods of famous fictional sleuths.

Back in the Eighties, the Partners in Crime series was televised, and although some of the short stories are a little thin, Francesca Annis and James Warwick did a very good job as Tuppence and Tommy. So in theory the first question to ask about the new show is: how well did Jessica Raine and David Walliams do playing the same characters?

I suppose the real answer is that they are barely the same characters. The BBC hired Zinnie Harris, an accomplished mainstream playwright, to write the script, and I get the impression that she set herself the challenge of writing something as different from the original as was possible. Not just updating the story thirty years to the Cold War era, but introducing a touch of raunchiness and a scene in which a bumbling Tommy finds himself visiting a peep-show while on the trail of some bad guys.

Agatha Christie it ain't - the mystery element is pretty thin so far, as well - but it made for light and undemanding Sunday evening viewing. Not bad, and at times quite amusing, but definitely not for the purists. I'm fairly open-minded about this sort of thing, as I remind myself that I was introduced to Christie as a child through my enjoyment of a Miss Marple film based on a book that actually featured Poirot. To this day,I'm a huge Christie fan, but I'll approach future episodes with the intention of trying to forget the source material for the time being. Comparisons are pointless. 

The Unbreakable Alibi

I’ve watched another in the 1982 TV series of Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. This story was The Unbreakable Alibi, and really it is a skit on the work of Freeman Wills Crofts, the alibi king, whose patient cop Inspector French tirelessly unravelled the most complex alibis. You tend to wonder why criminals in the French era bothered with such elaborate plans when the great man had his train timetable ready to consult at every opportunity.

The story was light but agreeable, with a bit more substance in terms of plot than some of the others I’ve seen in this series. As ever, Annis’ vivacious performance keeps it all going pretty well.

It did make me wonder about the emphasis that crime writers place on alibis. The high water mark was surely in the Golden Age, when Crofts was at his peak, in the 20s and 30s. Writers did rather depend on the trains running to time. After J.J. Connington wrote The Two Tickets Puzzle, Dorothy L. Sayers doffed her cap to him and his book when elaborating upon his idea a year or so later in Five Red Herrings.

Today, alibis still play a part in a good many books - although the same tends not to be true of train timetables! Alibis crop up occasionally in my own work, but I haven’t tended to devote a lot of space to them, preferring to concentrate on other ‘techniques of misdirection’ when putting together a whodunit-style plot. But one of these days, perhaps, I’ll try to create an ‘unbreakable’ alibi for one of my own culprits....

Francesca Annis, then and now

The Little House concluded on Monday evening, with a stand-out performance from Francesca Annis as the mother-in-law from hell. I thought this was quite a good suspense story, made all the more watchable by Annis. But the action fizzled out somewhat, and I was left at the end asking myself: 'Is that it?'

I’ve also just seen Annis in an episode from Partners in Crime, playing Tuppence Beresford in Agatha Christie’s story The Crackler. This programme dates back to 1982, but again she is the outstanding performer, lifting relatively mundane material to a higher level by the sheer exuberance of her acting.

In The Crackler, Christie parodied the work of Edgar Wallace. The Beresfords are asked by Scotland Yard to help to uncover the truth behind a forgery scam, and they infiltrate the high class, yet murky, Python Club to do so. Tommy is vamped by a Frenchwoman, played by Carolle Rousseau. Rousseau, like Annis, is extremely attractive, but an internet search suggests she did not do much acting after this show.

Whereas Annis has gone from strength to strength, not least in The Little House. I hope that excellent roles for characters of her age continue to be written – they should be. Incidentally, many years ago, my own mother-in-law (who died very young and whom, sadly, I never met) taught Annis for a while. Apparently, her brilliance was evident even at a tender age. As The Little House shows, she continues to be brilliant.

The Man in the Mist

I’ve watched another in the Partners in Crime series from the 80s, featuring Francesca Annis and James Warwick as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. This episode was 'The Man in the Mist', and involved the murder of an actress who is about to marry and is seeking a divorce from a reluctant husband.

The idea of the original stories which formed Partners in Crime was that Agatha Christie would conceive a mystery in the style of a popular whodunit writer of the 1920s, and Tommy and/or Tuppence would, in effect, detect in the manner of the writer’s sleuthing hero. It was a clever idea, and as far as I know has never been done in quite the same way before or since (if I’m mistaken on this, please don’t hesitate to point it out – I’m aware of plenty of mystery parodies, such as Gory Knight, but not an extensive series of linked stories forming a single book in the manner of Partners n Crime.)

In this particular story, Tommy takes on the role of G.K.Chesterton’s legendary Father Brown, and spends the episode dressed improbably as the little priest. He also leads a re-enactment of the circumstances surrounding the crime which help to reveal how it was done.

This was an enjoyable episode. It’s very light entertainment indeed, comfort viewing if you like, but done very well. Of course, the plot has limitations, but I enjoyed it. And the verve with which Annis and Warwick play their parts is central to the pleasure.

The Ambassador's Boots

A while back, in posting about The Secret Adversary featuring Francesca Annis and James Warwick as Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence, I enquired about the TV series Partners in Crime, in which the duo starred. Happily, ITV 3 has been screening some episodes from that series, and (once I realised) I managed to record some of them.

The first that I’ve seen is ‘The Ambassador’s Boots’. This is a story with a nice central idea, somehow typical of Christie. An ambassador’s boots are taken, but then returned. What can this signify?

The mystery is put to Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, who are running a detective agency, and they investigate with their customary enthusiasm. Annis and Warwick really did work very well together, splendid piece of casting. The ambassador has a mysterious valet, who commits suicide, and an advert placed by the Beresfords in a newspaper attracts a prompt response from a helpful young woman – whose story is interrupted by an unlikely foreign villain armed with a gun. When I say that the Beresfords’ young assistant Albert rescues them by capturing the foreign chap with a lasso, you will gather that the mood is insistently light-hearted, but the programme is none the worse for that.

The supporting cast in this hour-long episode was excellent. T.P. McKenna played the ambassador, Clive Merrison (known in recent times for his radio portrayal of Sherlock Holmes) was the valet, and Jennie Linden (best known as Ursula in the film of Women in Love) the helpful young woman.