#robert lazard

The Hidden Truth: 1.13 One of the Hampshire Pargeters (8th October 1964).  Written by Ludovic Kennedy; dir. John Frankau.  Featuring regulars Alexander Knox, James Maxwell, Zia Mohyeddin, Elizabeth Weaver, George Moon & Ruth Meyers.  Guest starring Nora Swinburne, William Sylvester, James Bree, William Devlin & Kevin Stoney.

How was Barry Pargeter killed? That's the question facing Professor Lazard (Alexander Knox) when called to give evidence at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Caldwell (Anthony Marlowe). But he must sift some gruesome evidence before he can provide the answer. 

The police investigating the death are Chief Inspector Greaves (Anthony Sagar) and Sergeant Johnson (Desmond Jordan), who worked with Lazard’s team previously in “Cross Examination.”

[Desmond Jordan and Anthony Sagar as Chief Insp. Greaves & Sgt Johnson in 1.3 “Cross Examination.”]

William Sylvester appeared as Quayle, James Bree as Mr Tripp, William Devlin as Platt-Evans, Kevin Stoney as Nick and Frank Tregear as Usher.  Anthony Marlowe, Anthony Sagar and Desmond Johnson, all reprised their roles from 1.3 “Cross Examination.”  Nora Swinburne, known for her ‘drawing room’ roles played Mrs Pargeter, which suggests along with the title that this case involved an upper class family.  (Nora Swinburne must have been already known to regular James Maxwell - she was closely related to two core people in his theatre group through her marriage to actor Esmond Knight.)

The papers didn’t provide any info on this episode’s plot, so most of the above summary comes via IMBd - but the Mirror did print a brief interview with the writer:

LUDOVIC Kennedy is the author of “One of the Hampshire Pargeters,” tonight’s final episode in “The Hidden Truth” (ITV 8.0).

 But this does not mean Mr. Kennedy is turning telly-playwright.  “It was just something I did in a rush,” he told me.  “I am much too busy working on TV films and documentaries. My only other play was ‘Murder Story,’ which was written for the theatre a few years ago.” (Daily Mirror, Oct 8th)

 Again, some clips/sequences have reportedly survived. 

This and the previous episode were (along with the first two episodes of Blackmail), were nominated for a BAFTA for Best Drama Series, for producer Stella Richman in 1966.  (It’s very possible some previous episodes were nominated in 1965, but the nominees list isn’t available pre-1966.)

(IMBd has 13th Oct as date of broadcast, but their two week break between episodes 11 and 12 is not reflected in any of the contemporary TV schedules in the newspapers I’ve been able to look at: the final episode appears to have gone out on the 8th October 1964.)

The Hidden Truth 1.1 Cause of Death (16th July 1964); written by Martin Woodhouse; dir. Lionel Harris.  Featuring regulars Alexander Knox, James Maxwell, Elizabeth Weaver & George Moon, with guests Derrick Sherwin & Ellen McIntosh, Dyson Lovell, Hamilton Dyce, Brian Badcoe & Stanley Lloyd.

“Well, I’d really like to know what you think - were those wounds caused by glass or weren’t they?”

A tramp stumbles on the body of a lonely old man, found, with a lacerated neck, close to his crashed car.  Inspector Hollin (Hamilton Dyce) investigates and suspicion falls on the man’s son-in-law Roger Maitland (Derrick Sherwin), an ambitious, career-minded young man, putting strain on his marriage to wife Jean (Ellen McIntosh). The pair are beneficiaries of the victim’s £27,000 life insurance policy - money they’re badly in need of.  Dr Mossford (Brian Badcoe), concerned by the nature of the lacerations, asks Professor Lazard and Dr Fox for help in establishing the cause of death.  It looks like a straightforward car crash, so Lazard sends Dr Fox to take a look - but there are several different possible explanations and it turns out to be “more of a whatdunnit than a whodunnit” with “no simple solution”. 

Initially scheduled for Thursday 9th of July at 8pm, The Hidden Truth was one of many ITV shows hit by a technicians’ strike.  It was especially unfortunate as the original publicity & schedule details confused critics (and no doubt viewers), robbing the show of its allotted space in some papers.  (The Guardian‘s TV critic, duly tuning in on the 9th, found themselves watching Our Man at St Mark’s & shrugged and left it at that.) 

It was re-scheduled for the 13th, (three days before the second episode “The Shape”), but wound up going out instead of “The Shape” on the 16th July & causing further confusion.  (IMDB, even now, gives its broadcast date as the 9th & its episode summary as that of The Shape!)

In the Daily Herald (July 17th), Dennis Potter found it better than he had anticipated, although thought that might only be because he’d just had to sit through HMS Paradise “the worst comedy show I have ever seen,” but “Even so, this drama about pathologists did not begin to live up to its billing as “the most unusual series ever shown on T.V”.  It was as “usual” as a wet bank holiday...

A close-up of blood cells under the microscope gave us a reassuring flash of authenticity... But a drama series has to drag in irritating little irrelevancies to get us interested in characters likely to pop up again in the next episode.

About the same standard as No Hiding Place, this new venture fills an hour of screen time without making it seem like two hours. And that, by current ITV standards, must pass as a sort of praise.“

The Stage, on the 23rd, was still confused: “THE first of this new series last Friday [sic] was, for some reason, not the advertised episode, but with the same principal characters.  The Hidden Truth is there to be uncovered, I imagine, by the Department of Forensic Medicine which forms the background of the series.

 This was, on the surface, a fairly run-of-the-mill whodunnit by Martin Woodhouse, but it turned out that it was really more of a whatdunnit ...  Alexander Knox was authentic and efficient in the part of Professor Lazard and James Maxwell looked splendidly scientific and full of authority as the forensic expert, Dr. Fox.  As the young man suspected of murder, Derrick Sherwin gave a strong, well-defined performance, but Ellen Macintosh as his wife seemed constricted and stilted almost until her last scene.

 Elizabeth Weaver was given little scope as Dr. Coliton, but perhaps she will have more consideration in later scripts.

 Generally well directed by Lionel Harris, it was quite a promising production.  When shall we see The Shape I wonder.”

 Meanwhile, the Crewe Chronicle (July 25th) felt “the first of Rediffusion’s dabbles in forensic science… looked fairly promising, although” [the recent switch to 50 minute episodes for drama series evidently being a bugbear] “stretching it out for sixty minutes is rather like putting lead weights round the feet of the cast and then expecting them to rumba.  But view on regardless, bearing in mind that all thirteen stories are pure fiction though they are presented with the documentary-maker’s eye for minute detail.”

The Hidden Truth 1.10 “One for the Road” (17th September 1964).  Written by John Hawkesworth; dir. Lionel Harris.  Featuring Alexander Knox, James Maxwell, Zia Mohyeddin, Ruth Meyers & Jacqui Chan.  Guest starring Bryan Pringle, Megs Jenkins, Richard Vernon, Basil Henson, & Alister Williamson.

"Would you say this was an interesting and instructive case?  Oh, it’s maddening, it’s infuriating.  Oh, it’s just damned frustrating!”

Discovered in 2015 & shown at the BFI’s lost TV event, this was the only existing episode of the entire series for five years until Talking Pictures’s findings in autumn 2021.  This was shown alongside the other three, and is the only absolutely complete episode, as even “Cross-Examination” is minus the end credits.

The Hidden Truth 1.9 Sweets to the Sweet (10th September 1964).  Written by Hugh Leonard; dir. Peter Moffatt.  Featuring Alexander Knox, James Maxwell & Ruth Meyers.  Guest starring Bernard Archard, Joyce Heron, James Hunter, Kate Coleridge, William Buck & Ian Ogilvy.

“The people concerned are friends of mine, and I’m inclined to distrust my own conclusions.”

This episode was rediscovered and shown by Talking Pictures in autumn 2021, although only partially.  With about 10-15 minutes missing, this is the most incomplete of the four surviving episodes (although, ironically, it feels a lot more complete than “A Question of Involvement.”)

The topical subject of this episode (”purple heart” pills) generated more press interest than any other, even to the point of describing the still-missing ending.  (As to what else is lost - from the first half of the episode, a conversation between Lazard and Gerry in the car cuts out mid sentence, and there presumably must have been a scene that explained why Lazard was so amused at Dr Fox’s choice of reading matter later.)

Drinamyl (Dexamyl in the US) was an amphetamine/barbiturate addictive drug (blue triangle pills, nicknamed “purple hearts”), often prescribed to women with anxiety, that became a big part of the early 1960s Mod scene.  (The Guardian had reported the previous year that it was being “eaten like sweets” in cafes in Islington.)  It was everywhere in the media that year (when it was made illegal in the UK), including a series of Panorama Mod interviews.  (The drug had a long history of abuse and was discontinued in 1982 in favour of safer alternatives.) 

The critics (as ever) weren’t necessarily impressed.  Ben Hewitt in the Daily Herald was fairly scathing about its “tourist trap... slumming” and predictability, its moral of “don’t trust your children, lecture them, search their rooms” and its failure to portray the “strange, sweaty Soho of reality.”  The one scene Hewitt praised is currently missing from the recovered episode: “Its down-beat ending, with the pep-pill supply drying up and a baby-faced Canadian offering heroin all round, was the only surprise in a plodding script.”

The Mirror felt it was a subject better left to the “straight approach” of documentaries - but that this was the best episode of the series so far.

Playwright Hugh Leonard told the The Stage he had deliberately chosen to centre the episode around Lazard:  “I am afraid that Alexander Knox has a busy time in my story,” says Hugh Leonard.  “Although I don’t know him personally, I have always been a great admirer of his acting ability, so when I was asked for a script for this series, I made up my mind to use him practically throughout.”

The opening sequence was “filmed in the underground car park at Marble Arch, where, it is rumoured, Alfred Hitchcock is planning to make a thriller in the echoing corridors and vast concrete parking area.”