#tony wright

We are in double National Treasure territory here and I'm afraid Syles is a series which has never appeared here before, largely because it's pretty much a sit com, I don't get on very well with sit coms and so don't have that much to say about it.

Eric Sykes (1923 to 2012) was a key figure of comedy for decades, including writing for and performing with other great names of comedy. He began entertaining other people in the RAF in World War 2, and collected food to feed the recently liberated prisoners of Belsen. I know I've already said this but I can't overstate what a much-loved character he was. His career wasn't stopped in its tracks by him gradually losing his hearing and then sight and other illnesses caused by smoking. Hattie Jacques (1922 to 1980) is another national treaure who needs no introduction but may be best known from the Carry On films. Her life was plagued by her fear that her fame would be destroyed if the knowledge became public that she had an affair, surely an indicator of how long ago this is.

Together, they starred as twins in two series of which Sykes is the 1972 to 9 colour remake and expansion of the 1960 to 5 black and white series Sykes and A... The adult twins live together in the series. I have both series, although there is precious little left of Sykes and A... which hasn't been wiped, but I'm going to be completely upfront with some advice. Faced with the two series I would strongly advise that you prioritise watching Sykes and A... (which is in bits all over the internet) over watching Sykes (which is available in toto as a boxed set). This is with the exception of the Sykes Christmas special from 1976, for the reason that one of the guest stars is Sylvia Peters who was one of the first TV announcers in Britain and narrated part of the late queen's coronation. Frankly the Christmas special is worth watching simply for what I can only describe as the 'National Treasure frisson' that happens when she appears on screen.

In skiing the twins are on holiday in a skiing resort in Bavaria, however Eric is bothered that the Germans may not have forgiven him for liberating Europe. Hattie of course approaches being in Bavaria in a much more enlightened way and unlike her brother manages not to get everyone's backs up. His competitiveness culminates in him getting into a bet with the locals about his ability to ski, which of course he loses.

Tony Wright's role is as Captain Smith who lives there all year round and offers to pretend to be Eric in the skiing bet. Probably this is one of the larger roles Wright takes in these TV programmes that I've managed to find. Of course he's acting but the role of an amiable man who isn't a raging gammon suits him perfectly.

I don't have a criticism of the show, these were intended to be a bit thin plot-wise, obviously, because the subject of the comedy is the situation.

Conclusion to Tony Wright Season

I have now blogged about all the shows I found that Tony Wright acted in.

When I started this series of posts I remarked on some comments I found from his contemporaries which said he couldn't really act and was only employed for his body. His first wife also did an interview about him which was pretty damning.

I have gained a somewhat different impression from the available shows of his that I have been able to see. I do wonder whether there was some jealousy in the acting profession about him. Jealousy because he was so handsome (I know how he feels, I get this myself all the time) and probably jealousy because it must have seemed that he was groomed to be a star because of being a Rank contractee. I have not gained the slightest impression that he couldn't act: I have seen him in a variety of roles, in which he doesn't falter once.

That said, I have also gained the impression that his acting career was probably rather limited, despite having started off as the star of three French-language films in which he played a sort of James Bond character. Some of his later roles were distinctly slight, barely even speaking roles. It is also apparent that he was obviously hired for his physique as well as his acting ability, and I wonder whether his physique caused jealousy as well, having partly made his name through his physical appearance and ability. I get the distinct impression that showing his body was no issue at all for him, and, not to put too fine a point on it, his appearance in swimming trunks in The Saint would suggest that the two Mrs Wrights had no cause for complaint in the physical department (I can't believe I've just typed those words lol), and probably that could have been another cause for jealousy.

So all in all my impression is that Tony Wright was a versatile actor who could play a variety of roles as well as having a fit physique which was one of his assets in his acting career. Of course I haven't met him, but I've got the impression that the criticisms of him not being able to act were not justified by the reality.

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This is of course about the US 1954 series of Sherlock Holmes which was actually made in Paris. I think I have seen a couple of episodes before due to my habit of digging around in the Internet Archive, but this series isn't at all well known in Britain. At this time probably Basil Rathbone was best known here for portraying Holmes. So it's been interesting to find out a bit about it for this post. One of the most interesting things is that producer Sheldon Reynolds actually also produced a second adaptation of Holmes at the end of the seventies, which was made in Poland, and which I'm obviously going to have to look up.

I find it interesting that the intention was to portray a younger, more studenty, Sherlock Holmes who could make mistake rather than the savant so often portrayed, and also that Watson wasn't depicted as the bumbling idiot he usually is. Some of the stories were adapted from original Conan Doyle stories but most of them were originals, as are the two in this post which feature Tony Wright.

The Case of the Greystone Inscription

In The Case of the Greystone Inscription a young woman approaches Holmes for help because her fiance has disappeared after visiting a castle in Scotland. She has followed him to the castle and found evidence he was there but had no luck with the unfriendly family. Holmes discovers that the fiance has discovered that some sort of treasure or belongings of King Richard II of England (1367-1400, crowned 1377) and has been taken prisoner by the family but all ends well.

As a detective story, frankly the investigation which goes on is slight to the point of vanishing. There is also a common criticism made online about this episode that both the young woman and her fiance vanish completely from the story and attention changes completely to the treasure. You can't escape the simple fact that this one is appallingly badly plotted.

Given that it's done in such a slapdash way I am perhaps expecting too much to question whether its history is realistic. At the time of Richard's rule, Scotland was ruled by Robert II the Stewart, then Robert III, England's predominant problem was war with France and internal turmoil and I wonder why the king would have been leaving his clobber in Scotland to be discovered centuries later. There is also the thing that not only do kings tend to have a staff to pack their bags, but also given that Richard was so young the actual ruling was done by a regent. Of course I'm expecting too much, and probably this series is best approached as an American perception of what 'England' is like.

Tony Wright's role is that of the young fiance who has disappeared. We see him talking with his fiancee in a flashback and then he just vanishes completely for the rest of the episode. Once again he is acting, keeps his kit on and has clearly been hired for his acting ability rather than his body.

The Case of the NIght Train Riddle

In this episode Holmes and Watson are going on holiday by train and are approached about a boy who has vanished after an argument with his father about schooling. The solution to what has happened to him is found in a nearby circus.

In my opinion this is a much better episode: Holmes and Watson do some actual investigating and there is a much better description of characters and motives involved. I see that any criticism online describes it as pedestrian, although I frankly don't understand what people expect from a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Tony Wright's character is as a guard on the railways and he's got the most wonderful hammy gor blimey accent you could ever wish for, which is hilarious.

In conclusion it has been interesting to find out about another series which was virtually unknown to me and very little known in Britain. I don't think I will pursue any more episodes: its plotting isn't brilliant and is clearly made for an American rather than British market. I much prefer Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes in the 1984 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles and will however seek out the later seventies series made in Poland.

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This is not an Avengers episode which has ever appeared here before. There isn't a particular reason for this, beyond that it hasn't ever presented itself to me as the subject of a potential blog post so far. I do actually quite like it, but I think I'd better get out of the way the simple fact that this one really isn't a fan favourite at all.

Personally I find it a bit difficult to tell why. The plot is absolutely wild: a computer with a distinct character and identity is attacked and The Avengers set out to find out what is happening. Obviously I'm not in a position to judge how viewers would have perceived the depiction of the computer when this was broadcast in 1968. Possibly most viewers would have taken it far more literally than we do now? Certainly computers were treated as far more important pieces of kit than they are now, and while you can certainly see a parody of the deference given to computers at the time, possibly many viewers would have experienced computers in their work places treated with nearly as much deference as George is. Nobody watching this originally would have had a computer in their home, of course. However the show doesn't really have a scary message about the deference with which computers were treated, it's purely entertaining.

Many of the reviewers comment on the fact that Tara spends much of the episode dressed as a cat, and there is also the comment she makes that she shouldn't enter a flat because the man who owns it only has angles and no curves, and I think we should take these two facts as clear indicators of the register the episode is aimed at.

In fact this is very much Tara's episode, and she does most of the work while Steed really doesn't do very much at all. Again the way she turns up unexpected with her hammy American accent rather highlights that this episode shouldn't be taken that seriously.

Tony Wright's role is to be one of the baddies, the one dressed as a chauffeur who carries Tara out to the summer house to burn her in it, and gets beaten up by Steed. This is a role which it would be a bit difficult to get wrong, because he just has to be an evil baddie and get duffed up, can't go wrong. I'm a bit confused by something on dissolute.com.au and probably have misunderstood it, but the page gives the impression that many of the crew and including Tony Wright were just hired on a sort of casual basis and weren't regulars. I have probably misunderstood this, because while it might make sense to get the crew on a casual basis, I just don't believe you would do that with the cast except for roles such as being in a crowd.

Notwithstanding the breathless comments about Miss King's whiskers, the internet reviews are chock full of criticism for this episode. The script, the treatment of George, the fact Steed doesn't do much, the pace, basically everything is criticised about this. It really isn't popular at all.

I'm finding that I don't really have that much to say about this one, but I really don't think it's terribly objectionable, despite its poor internet reviews.

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The Persuaders! possibly doesn't feature on this blog as much as it could: as so often these series of themed posts bring something to my attention, even if it's only something I've been missing. Certainly this episode is a very meaty one for me to get my teeth into.

The Persuaders! (1971 to 2) does have the disadvantage for me personally of having one of those titles ending in -er that so many series of this date have, and which confuse me hugeley. There are two series called The Protectors, for example. And then we have The Avengers, obviously, The Adventurer and The Persuaders, all setting out to get me confused. The later ones all have the same sophisticated 'continental' globe-trotting setting that The Persuaders! does which makes them even more confusing. The Persuaders! is of course about two millionaire playboys initially commissioned by a judge to investigate mysteries or crimes that are otherwise unsolvable.

Someone Like Me is a bit different because Lord Sinclair stops in a wood before being clunked on the head and finding himself waking up in a hospital which turns out to be a fake in a derelict building, before going back to sleep and waking up in his own car. He sees some surgeon's reference photographs which make him think that a double of him has been created, and he thinks that the double is going to be used to kill yet another millionaire, a businessman called Sam Milford this time, since Lord Sinclair is one of the few people he will allow near him. It turns out that he has actually been programmed by hypnosis to murder his friend on the use of certain words and Danny Wilde stops him doing it. It turns out it was a plot by the millionaire businessman's much younger wife and business associate.

There is much made on the internet of the similarity of this plot to The Manchurian Candidate and Roger Moore's recent film The Man Who Haunted Himself, in that they both feature doubles. There are also possible inspirations closer to home in British television: for example The Avengers episode Split! involves putting one person's thoughts into another person; Who's Who features swapping people's personalities; and (of most relevance) in Stay Tuned, Steed is planted with the idea of killing Mother upon hearing certain words. It is perhaps of relevance that this episode was written by Terry Nation, creator of The Daleks, and the science fiction interest shows.

It's interesting, this episode really brings out the capitalist and power slant of this show. Two millionaire playboys (representing capital) are commissioned by a judge (presumably not poor, and representing the state power of the law) to do various jobs and in this case it means preserving the riches of yet another millionaire. The wealth and power imbalance of the world remains intact as a result of their intervention, the law is proven to defend the wealthy and powerful and we can all go home.

Tony Wright's role is limited to apparently being a guinea pig at the start of the episode: he enters the millionaire's office saying that he has been in hospital (presumably the fake one where has has been hypnotised) before apparently shooting him, although it seems the bullets must be blanks because he gets up again. His character is then seen making a call related to the set up where Lord Sinclair gets clunked on the head and taken to the pretend hospital, and then we don't see the character again.

The reviews online of this episode are almost unanimously wildly positive, except for one which shares one of my two criticisms, so I'm going to feel free to do a hatchet job on this one. The episode is a really good experiment in science fiction, in a vein clearly very popular at the time. However there is a plot hole you could drive an Aston Martin through. This is that the idea of a double is completely unnecessary and creates a complication which doesn't develop the plot in any way. You could say that the whole idea of this episode is that we're not supposed to know what is going on, or that Brett and Sinclar would have likely suspected the rather unlikely possibility of a double. However the reason they suspect it is Sinclair finds photographs of himself in the fake hospital which look like they would have been used for plastic surgery and concludes there's a double. The reality is that he was hypnotised so there was absolutely no need for the photographs to exist at all. Sinclair could have been introduced to the idea that all is not well by the scene where he turns up to the garage and the mechanic tells him he has already been there: the natural interpretation would be that you're not well after your bump on the head and have forgotten; concluding that a double exists is definitely not an obvious conclusion!

The other problem with the plot is that Sinclair's old friend Sam Milford is so security conscious that Sinclair is one of the few people ever allowed to get through his security, but we're supposed to believe that he married a much younger woman who is plotting on his life in a very science fiction way. Yes, you will rightly tell me that even millionaires get married, although the ultra-rich don't tend to live marriages like anyone else, but I think it more plausible in this case that the pursuit of indecent wealth and (almost, although it turns out to be a true worry) paranoia about someone being after him, would tend to militate against Milford actually getting married at all.

Otherwise, it's a very interetsing, atmospheric episode, with a small role for Tony Wright which you could miss if you blinked.

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Content warning: blackface

A blog is, of course, supposed to be a sort of diary of your thoughts or actions, and even when doing a structured series of posts about something that surely can still be the case. Regular readers will have noticed that The Saint has only ever appeared on this blog a handful of times, which is not to say that I don't like it, it is to say that I don't watch it. I'm not completely sure why this is - I enthusiastically watched the series when I was a small child - and probably can give as some reasons that I really don't like Templar's treatment of women, while he does have his own moral code he still works for people who really should be obliged to experience the consequences of their actions, and that this is one of those shows that I actually find difficult to write about. I usually only have just a couple of things to say on each episode, which more or less ensures a show will never become a blog post.

For this reason I will use this single post to touch on all three episodes of The Saint in which Tony Wright appeared, and probably not say very much about any of them.

The Arrow of God

Probably there was some wiggle room in establishing what the series was about in Series 1 and so you will read all over the place that this episode is much more of an Agatha Christie than a typical Saint. Despite being less out of the James Bond stable, nonetheless three members of the cast subsequently appeared in Bond, including our beloved Honor Blackman.

The episode takes place in Nassau, where a weekend house party is filled with people who have various secrets and an absolutely odious journalist who is getting the dirt on all of them. The journalist ends up dead and Simon Templar solves who did it, as well as revealing all the guests' little secrets in one go.

There is a certain impressionistic element to this episode, which I love, because there is an economy of action and plot which means it flows like the clappers. What I mean by this is best illustrated in a poolside scene, where Tony Wright dives into the pool on the short side, swims at a right angle so that he's probably swum about 10 feet at most, gets out of the pool, his wife asks him if his swim has made him feel better, and suddenly he is dry.

In fact I commented in my introduction to this series of posts that I have read that he tended to be cast for his body rather than his acting ability, and so far I have seen no problem with his acting ability. However it is fairly clear here that he was very obviously cast for his body. Templar appears at the pool also in trunks and sucking his gut in, but they're big trunks and not like Wright's. His are small for the time and can only be described as figure hugging. The camera also sees Wright much differently and zooms in on him in a way it doesn't with anyone else in the cast, not even the female cast. He is actually miscast in this, because his character says that he is 30, and he has to be youngish to play at Wimbledon. Unfortunately having been born in 1925 Wright was actually 40 when this was made, and while he's still very fit can't pass for 30 and this aspect is rather ludicrous.

There is a further element of unreality in that another guest in the house party is an Indian fakir played by John Carson, a white British actor, in blackface. Honestly the effect is utterly bizarre and there is absolutely no reason to have the character. Nonetheless the slightly odd aspect of this episode and the way it is produced as if it is a sketch, really doesn't play wrong because it's an absolute belter.

The Crooked Ring

The Crooked Ring rather embodies the difficulty I have writing about this show. The Saint is asked to investigate possible match fixing in boxing, which he does in the only way you can, but having watched it three times I have the feeling that I just don't understand what was going on. For example I just cannot tell you what Tony Wright's character does at all. I get the impression he was just there and then was out for a run with Templar.

There's a lot of justified criticism online that it isn't realistic for Templar just to get in the ring with professional boxers and beat them, but that didn't give me that much trouble. I understood it to mean that Templar, professional adventurer, is also a master of all sorts of physical prowess.

On the other hand this episode is watching just for the boxing match, because beyond the first few rows of real people the audience are very obviously cardboard cutouts and no effort to hide this has been made at all. I think this is the same sort of approach to production that had Tony Wright swimming 10 feet in The Arrow of God: comparatively little effort is put into the effect or the action, and it's there as a sort of statement while not really having much substance. They obviously even used the same template for the cutouts because they are all a uniform height and build, and it's absolutely hysterical. Probably if I knew film terms better I would know what to call this approach.

Where The Money Is

I really enjoyed Where the Money Is. Templar is approached by an absolutely odious film producer whose daughter has been kidnapped. He shows Templar the filmed ransom note they have sent and asks for his aid to get his daughter back. Tony Wright's role is as one of the kidnappers. He actually excels at this role, quite a contrast to his usual urbane roles.

Unfortunately there is a drawback with this episode, which is that in my opinion, as soon as you see the ransom film, it is plainly obvious that there is more to the kidnapping than is apparent, so the viewer spends the entire episode waiting for the twist. Of course you may think I'm being rather unreasonable: so much of ITC television requires the suspension of the viewer's disbelief and that is certainly the case here.

Three very different episodes of The Saint which gave roles to Tony Wright and showed different aspects of his acting. I maintain that the criticism that he couldn't act is not justified, but I can now see that he could be cast for his body rather than his acting ability.

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The second Play for Today to appear here in a little over two months, this one is the third of series 1, broadcast in 1970, and is an adaptation into English of a play by Ingmar Bergman. I think we should probably have a minute's silence or something at this point to mark that I am therefore punching well above my weight and am about to criticise a play by one of the great playwrights and directors. I have made the effort to at least have a glance around online for some academic writing on characteristics of his cinematic style, which I'm not sure has probably gone down that well with viewers.

In fact the play is historic because while the original was obviously written in Swedish and set in Sweden, adaptations were made into various European languages, apparently with the location moved into the relevant European country, and broadcast simultaneously. There is vanishingly little about it online, certainly in the TV blogosphere, and I think this play may have got itself a reputation for being difficult, because it is certainly a very uncomfortable view. But then it's by Ingmar Bergman whose cinema was all about a stark portrayal of the human condition, often in brutal and intimate detail, so you get what you pay for.

The play is about Andrew and Anna Firth, and their loveless marriage, which through the action of the play falls apart. They become aware that they have both been deceiving the other, both been unfaithful to the other, and their marriage can't take the truth.

There is strangely only one review of this play on IMDb and it makes the criticism that in the 90-minute long play very little happens for the first hour and then suddenly it really speeds up in the final part. I think this is probably deliberate, as one of the things I have learned is that Bergman liked to give an indepth psychological insight into his subjects and also tended to use very long scenes which gives an impression of nothing happening. And while the first hour is rather low-key there isn't nothing going on; it's giving the background to all the characters and the truths and falsehoods which go on in their lives.

One very strange thing is that several times Anna refers to 'living' with her lover, and talks in his flat as if she genuinely does live there. However her own husband at home thinks she is living with him and their children, and in fact we see her waking up in the house, so she is apparently not really living with her lover. This has been the cause of some criticism online, but I think I have found an explanation for it in Bergman's style, which makes much use of doubles or duality. These are couples, or couples of characters, who overlap visually or metaphorically. In the case of The Lie I think this is the reason Anna keeps saying that she is living with her lover despite living with her husband and her children: the truth is that she is living with her lover while the lie is her marriage with her husband. The title of the play is all-encompassing.

Similarly Anna goes in to the college where she lectures, to do some work in the holidays when nobody is there. She has an encounter with another member of staff who is ruthlessly honest to her and tells her how much she hates her in very frank terms. Strangely, Anna doesn't tell her to shut up or slap her, and this is another encounter of truth with falsehood. The other person actually tells Anna that she is telling lies. As a rule the other characters in the play are all lying to each other all the time (Anna is convinced even her lover isn't telling her the truth and is holding something back from her), but she stands out as one of the few people telling the truth. Anna actually tells her father that she has been with her lover, as an excuse for her latenss for their meeting, and he just ignores the information, ironically on one of the few occasions in the earlier part of the play where she is telling the truth.

The other truth teller is Anna's brother, who she goes to visit in the psychiatric hospital where he is an inpatient. He is wearing make-up and bangles, and of course the depiction of him is left unexplained because this is Bergman and we're not supposed to come out of this with a nice simple explanation. Anna's encounter with her brother is heavily symbolic because he literally begs her to tell him the truth as to how he actually got into hospital, because he can't remember.

Anna encounters a series of truth-telling or truth-witholding doubles, but her husband Andrew, a much less sympathetic character, models a slightly different series of relationships, ones in which there is much less intimacy and nobody seems to meet each other on Martin Buber's I and Thou level. He is simply horrible to his secretary. He has spent months working on some project which the government then rejects completely, and there is rather an uncertainty over him. While Anna's relationships are marked by truth/falseness or artifice, Andrew's relationships are marked by being cast aside, being wrong, blaming other people for your wrongness, things like that.

At one point he goes to see his doctor by just turning up at the office to find he isn't there, so he has a talk with the nurse. Everyone in the play is ill in one way or another: nobody can sleep, the children are ill, Anna's father visits and is suffering hugely from the transition to retired life and not being as young as he was. At the doctor's office Andrew points out that there is a dead fish in the fish tank and the nurse tells him that all of the fish are dying, which may be one of the most Bergman moments imaginable. He reflects that nobody around him touches each other and there is no intimacy, in his moment of revelation.

I think if you wanted you could interpret this play in a very feminist way. Anna had clearly been brought up in a patriarchal way and initiated into society's expected structures, most of which are lies. At the same time the artifice makes her completely dependant on the patriarchal structure and the men who surround her, even though she has a job as a lecturer and could presumably support herself. When her husband decides to confess that he has been unfaithful to her, and in a moment of honesty, she tells him that she has been living with a friend of his for the whole of their marriage, he is violently angry with her. Obviously what is good for the gander is definitely not good for the goose in this situation. While I think this interpretation is certainly possible it is not the one at the surface of the play, which is about lies and truth and the effect that lying has on you.

Tony Wright is in the play but his role is limited to being a 'man from the ministry' in a meeting in Andrew's office, where he is second from the left. It even took me a couple of goes to spot him, it is such a small part. He does his role perfectly, in a meeting where (you guessed it) they all talk at once and don't listen to each other, making no progress in the matter of the meeting at all.

While this is clearly an excellent play with layers of meaning, I do have one criticism. It's taken me a few goes to get into it, and so I'm not sure it would be the obvious choice for an experiment in having multiple European countries broadcast the same play simultaneously, it's far too difficult and too much hard work. The only other consciously 'European' work of cinema I can think of is far more likely: it's that series starring Diana Rigg and a set of killer dolls called Mini Killers. It has no dialogue of any sort, doesn't require any interpretation and was intended to be broadcast to the queues in petrol stations throughout Europe. I think that would be a much better idea than get involved in Ingmar Bergman.

My only other criticism (I'm criticising Ingmar Bergman here and am probably going to dissolve in a puddle) is the dinner party scene. It's a device to bring Anna, her husband, and her lover together, but I think introduces too many other social elements than the simple convergence of the double couples, or perhaps the duplicity, which marks this play. There is also the slight problem that it is blatantly obvious which of the men at the dinner party Anna has been having sex with, and it isn't her husband, but of course this may be intended to underscore that literally nobody is up for the truth in their circle. Andrew, of course, spends the party telling the woman next to him (who is Anna's lover's wife) how wonderful his wife and marriage are, before taking her home and beating her up because she is having an affair.

This is of course an excellent play, and while Play for Today's plays are usually excellent, it is still head and shoulder above the others. It is quite hard work and requires attention, but the work required to watch it will pay off.

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I am absolutely certain that I have seen Unlucky for Some before because I have definitely watched Public Eye all the way through at least a couple of times, but unfortunately I obviously didn't watch it attentively enough and had no recollection of it. That is a pity, because this, the last ever episode of Public Eye, is an absolute delight.

It is largely set in a family-run hotel, where the mother doesn't like her daughter-in-law, her son has married her quite abruptly without telling his mother, knows nothing about her past, and so approaches Frank Marker to fill in the blanks. She believes that the daughter in law is deceiving her son, because another man is staying in the hotel and she believes there is an intimacy between him and the daughter in law.

Perhaps I haven't mentioned it here before, but I have a bit of a thing about hotels. I think they are absolutely fascinating and really wish that if my life had been different I had gone into hotel management. I love the way they are full of a continually-changing collection of travellers so are ultimately liminal. Yet at the same time there is an artifice about hotels, they are rather like a theatre, with all sorts of messy things and drama going on behind the scenes. It isn't the case with this play, but they are also perfect for theatre because you can make them a closed environment and there's always potential for drama.

That said, the investigation in this episode is a very straightforward piece of detective work, with Marker going to stay in the hotel and following leads to find out what is actually going on with the daughter in law. I really like that the series ended on this note: it really does show Marker at his best. There is also a hint of his down-at-heel persona: he can't get the staff or guests in the hotel to address him by his right name, and the simple fact is the radiators in the hotel bang like nobody's business, they can't get staff and are all at each other's necks.

I also wouldn't quite say the entire cast spend the entire episode hammered out of their minds, but there is also quite a lot of heavy drinking going on in this episode. The daughter in law decides one day she is going to settle in the bar and simply doesn't move. There is another marvellous scene where Marker goes to see a local artist at the shop she runs. She is out when he arrives and is plainly a raging alcoholic because she has had to go out and get some gin to get over the night before. I love that she takes Marker into the back room of the shop, which is half kitchen and half studio, and gives him a gin as well as having one herself, first thing in the morning. Even Marker downs more gin rather than the beer he normally does, largely as part of his role as a guest in the hotel, chatting to the family in the bar.

If you were to say that there is a slight, but absolutely serious and not humorous at all, hint of Fawlty Towers about this, I think you would be right.

I'm not going to give away his role because I don't want to spoil this episode for anyone who hasn't watched it, but Tony Wright's role is essentially small but absolutely crucial to the plot. Of course, around fifteen years later than the last two of his roles I wrote about, he looks older and has put some weight on. However he is straight into the role and I can't criticise him.

If you want a criticism of the play, it would have to be that once Marker finds out one essential fact about the daughter in law about half way through, it's rather obvious what is going on. So I would recommend just enjoying the cast of alcoholics, pushy mothers and criminals in this one.

I wouldn't go to the stake for this criticism, because of course it's possible I haven't understood it properly, but I'm not entirely sure why the daughter in law felt obliged to marry her husband. Widowed, and presumably footloose and fancy free, she could have just got a job. I feel that what she is hiding is complicated enough on its own that it would be better not being complicated by marriage, but as I say, I may well have missed the point here.

All together an excellent final episode of Public Eye which has touched on one of my funny little interests and provides a crucial small role for Tony Wright.

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Right back to the 1950s for this first post of Tony Wright Season.

Colonel March of Scotland Yard is actually a show that has appeared on this blog's predecessor nearly a decade ago, but isn't a show with which I'm very familiar. It is a series of mysteries based on a fictional detective created by writer John Dickson Carr, which often featured locked room or other impossible mysteries, although I see that some episodes were written by others. Colonel March is of course played by Boris Karloff, and he takes the role as an opportunity to be utterly urbane and charming: there isn't the slightest hint of the horror film here! March runs a special department of Scotland Yard (which was called in the original story The Department of Queer Complaints) dealing with anything out of the ordinary run of police work.

In this episode Colonel March is invited by an acquaintance who is a fake medium to investigate the reappearance in her fake seances of a deceased man. It is very much in the vein of the classic story where a fake medium suddenly finds that the dead really are contacting her and gets freaked out. i see from the reviews online that one of the most popular things about this episode is the depiction of the tricks used by fake mediums and all the technical details. It's also interesting that Colonel March is obviously good friends with a fake medium and apparently does nothing about this fraud! It's not a criticism because this is the way the writer decided to take it, but it's very strange watching a Scotland Yard detective at an obviously fraudulent event investigating the apparently dead person rather than the person committing the fraud!

The dead man who has suddenly resurfaced in the seance has a brother and Tony Wright plays both brothers (one with a moustache). I'm a bit disorientated by this fact because of having recently posted about the episode of Thriller where Ian Hendry played twins. Other characters helpfully comment that both brothers are indeed very alike, which is of course because they're played by the same man. Once again I would question the criticism that you often find about Tony Wright, that he couldn't act, because he makes a perfectly competent job of it here. Frankly, given the very colourful nature of the plot, him simply getting on with the role is exactly what is needed because there's enough drama elsewhere to be getting on with. Of course Boris Karloff is always a larger than life character and there isn't that much room for anyone else. He in't a sexy piece at all, doesn't get his kit off, and does a perfectly serviceable job of his role, so I'm less convinced than ever by the claims that he couldn't act.

I do have one criticism of the plot, which is that my opinion is that a fraudulent medium, faced with a dead person apparently appearing at her seance, would naturally assume that someone else was being fraudulent as well rather than going to the police about it!

I'm not going to give away what happens in case you want to watch this, which I definitely think you should.

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