Sun 1 Nov 2009
A BBC-TV Mini-Series Review: MELISSA (1974).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[2] Comments
MELISSA. BBC-TV 3-part miniseries: December 4 through 18, 1974. Peter Barkworth, Guy Foster, Moira Redmond, Ronald Fraser, Joan Benham, Philip Voss, Ray Lonnen, Lyndon Brook, Elizabeth Bell. Story: Francis Durbridge; novelized as My Wife Melissa (Hodder, 1967). Director: Peter Moffatt.
I have mystery writer Martin Edwards to thank for letting me know about this relatively ancient but remarkably well-preserved TV detective drama, first shown in the UK some 35 years ago and (believe it or not) available now in this country on DVD.
Martin reviewed it on his blog back in June, and after his positive appraisal, I snapped it up from Amazon almost immediately. With the stacks of DVDs and shows on video tape all clamoring for my attention, though, I didn’t get around to watching it until the middle of last month.
A piece of advice, if I may? If you’re a fan of complicated detective stories full of clues, false trails, mysterious happenings and twist after twist in the plot, don’t wait around as long as I did. Get this and watch it now. And do I mean that? Indeed I do. You won’t regret it. It’s fusty, it’s old-fashioned, and it’s absolutely terrific.
Note that if you’re more of a fan of PI stories or hardboiled crime fiction, the recommendation I extend to you isn’t quite so urgent, but within its limitations, I think you might very well enjoy it too.
I don’t know if a quickie, non-detailed recap will suffice, but here goes. A writer who’s been going through some tough times without a steady income allows his wife (Melissa) to go to a party with friends without him; when she calls him later to meet her somewhere, he goes, only to find her dead and all of the evidence pointing directly to him – and he has no alibi.
Worse, a doctor specializing in neurological cases swears to the police that he was a recent patient, and so does his nurse, while Guy Foster, that’s name (played by a suitably rumpled and increasingly haggard Peter Barkworth) knows he has never seen either one before in his life.
More funny business continues. By the time a second murder occurs, Foster is so wrapped up in elaborately phony (and highly unlikely) stories (although from his perspective, they are all perfectly true) he has nowhere to turn — until a chance comment he happens to make tells Detective Chief Inspector Carter (perfectly played by a suavely genteel Philip Voss) that the fantastic stories he’s been telling are the real truth.
The story’s the thing in this case, and the only thing, with each of the first episodes ending in a beautifully constructed cliffhanger. I don’t imagine – no, make that I simply can’t imagine any killer going to such lengths to shift the blame to someone else, but it certainly creates a lot of fun for readers really, really fond of detective puzzles in their everyday brand of mystery fiction. In Melissa they’ll find something just as good, for a change, on the TV screen. Guaranteed.
(On the other hand, I have to admit that Raymond Chandler might have found the overly elaborately and wholly invented affair utterly stagy and ludicrous, and therefore by extension, Raymond Chandler fans may very well follow suit. If you fall in the latter category, I can’t make you like it – but on the other hand, you might.)
Other notes: Melissa was televised once before, as a 6-part mini-series beginning in 1964 with essentially the same characters (though not the actors) so I assume the story was the same.
Another version appeared on TV in 1997, but the synopsis sounds makes it sound rather different in a number of ways. (The new guys who come along always seem to want to do that, for some reason.)
Francis Durbridge, who wrote the story, is all but unknown in this country, but in the UK he was quite famous as a writer of detective stories and radio plays (e.g., Paul Temple), movie scripts and TV. The quickest way to check out his credits may be his Wikipedia page.
November 1st, 2009 at 2:52 am
Postmark for Danger (based on Portrait of Allison) and at least one of the Paul Temple films are both available on the gray market on DVD from Durbridge’s considerable body of work, and if you will check him out at Fantastic Fiction you will find CD’s of many of his Paul Temple radio serials available as well, and a few of the Temple novels. I warn you the Temple CD’s are expensive though.
I don’t know if his World of Tim Frazer is available on DVD but the book isn’t that hard to find.
In addition to the radio, television, and novels Paul Temple and his wife Steve (Stephanie) also featured in a long running comic strip in the UK, collected extensively in the old Menomonee Falls Gazette which collected classic comic strips if you can find back issues (which also runs the complete Peter Scratch pi strip among many others).
Durbridge is the Levinson and Link of British crime drama, his radio and television serials both hugely popular and successful.
John Bentley played Temple in three pretty good B films plus there were several Temple television adaptations — and perhaps a series. His other series character Tim Frazer also had a television and I think a film career. Some of the Temple books are listed as by Paul Temple ala Ellery Queen.
November 1st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
[…] Prompting the immediate posting of this review which David just sent me was, of course, my preceding review of Melissa, one of Durbridge’s many story productions for BBC-TV. The availability of the […]