IDENTITY. “Second Life.” 28 April 2010. (Season 1, Episode 1.) ITV [UK]. Aidan Gillen, Keeley Hawes, Holly Aird, Elyes Gabel, Shaun Parkes, John Hopkins, Patrick Baladi. Creator/writer: Ed Whitmore. Director: Brendan Maher.

   This was a six part series (one hour each, less adverts) based in a unit set up to combat identity theft. Detective Superintendent Martha Lawson (played by Keeley Hawes, fresh from Ashes to Ashes) is in charge and her leading detective, newly returned from a 15-year (yes, 15 year) undercover assignment is D.I. John Bloom (played by Aidan Gillen, fresh from The Wire, but here regaining his Irish accent). Bloom is quiet moody and enigmatic, but his contributions are, of course, the most telling.

   The series, though, is clearly going for big time transgressions. This first episode starts with a man who has shot a policeman from his bedroom window when they have been sent to arrest him after the car he had leased is used to kill a woman. He is, he pleads, after being shot by a police marksman, the victim of identity theft.

   Soon the unit has three linked cases, all involving murder, with an innocent man being gaoled. However, Bloom decides, the culprit is deliberately revealing his actions. But why?

   Like a lot of current programmes, this held the interest with a complex and intriguing story. Unfortunately the denouement, which I won’t go into, did little to sort out how it had all been achieved. Of course the perpetrator was a computer geek, but we have to take as read how he could have achieved his nefarious objectives and managed to maintain the lifestyle he had.

   Entertaining but don’t expect it to make sense.

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S POIROT.   ITV [UK]. Season Eleven: 01 through 22 September 2008. Hercule Poirot: David Suchet, Adriadne Oliver: Zoe Wanamaker.

   At least this is how the title of this [four] part series (2 hours each, less adverts) was given in the Radio Times. On screen it appeared to be the less grammatical Agatha Christie Poirot.

   First up was “Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.” This is workaday rather than top class Christie, and I had one or two quibbles about the “red herrings” which relied a little too much on coincidence. But the adaptation was well done, and I enjoyed the production greatly. The part of Adriadne Olliver was played very well by Zoe Wanamaker.

   Second was “Cat Among the Pigeons.” I haven’t read this book, but looking at references, the producers have made a few slight changes, first to have Poirot on hand at the start and secondly to “sanatise” the sub-plot. Rather like the previous episode this was a very enjoyable production which I enjoyed despite what I perceived as flaws in the plot.

   Third was “Third Girl,” in which Zoe Wanamaker returns as Ariadne Oliver. Again not the strongest of stories, and I think it’s fair to say that as this series goes, the best is not still to come. Still I found it quite watchable despite its obvious weaknesses.

Editorial Comments:   Not included in Geoff’s review at the time was Episode 4: “Appointment with Death.” There has been one further season of four additional episodes, making 65 so far with David Suchet as Poirot. The most recent episode to date has been “Murder on the Orient Express,” which aired 11 July 2010. It has been reported that a 13th and final series is scheduled for production in 2011.

      NEW MYSTERY BLOG:

   Few publishers promote their books better than Macmillan’s Tor Books. Tor.com is a must stop for any fan of science fiction or fantasy. Tor has a sister imprint, Forge that is focused on the mystery genre. Finally, Tor.com has a sister.com as well. CriminalElement.com is ready to entertain and inform the mystery fan.

   Posts dating back to Saturday, April 23, 2011 (or a few days ago) already offer mystery fans much to enjoy. Joseph Finder writing about thrillers. Hard Case Crime’s Charles Ardai discussing how he failed to get the rights to republish a few of his pulp favorites. Ho-Ling Wong examining the Japanese detective sub-genre.

   Leslie Gilbert Elman presenting a strong defense for pet cozy books to get some respect. There are reviews, a contest, and even an excerpt from Janice Hamrick’s Death on Tour.

   http://www.criminalelement.com

      HARRY O:

   According to tvshowsondvd.com, Smile Jenny, You’re Dead, aka the second TV-Movie pilot for the TV series Harry O, will be available on DVD in early May.

   Warner Archives Collection will offer it at its site on demand. So it may be exclusive to the WBShop.com in the beginning.

   http://www.tvshowsondvd.com
   
http://www.wbshop.com/Smile-Jenny-Youre-Dead-1974TV/1000205559,default,pd.html?AID=10811526&PID=3821628

   This section might be called The Slicks and The Pulps. It seems that Radio and Cinema have always been at the heart of American entertainment. Well, at least since the late 1920s.

   In the beginning, there were four major US radio networks. Two were owned by NBC (which started broadcasting in 1926), one by CBS (from 1928), and one by MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System; from 1934). Between them, they accounted for an enormous national force.

   When it comes to Old Time Radio (OTR), I am a mere novice. My own copy of John Dunning’s wonderful On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1998) is almost in well-thumbed shreds. But I am still on the nursery-slopes here. I very much enjoy listening to OTR programmes rather than collecting them (whereas my ever-growing DVD collection of Cinema and TV is virtually forcing me out of my home!).

   US radio dramatics were in their turn influenced by the exciting era of the Pulp magazines, roughly from about the mid 1920s to the early 1950s. (I imagine that Steve, a true Pulp magazine aficionado, would probably have more to say on the subject.)

   Hollywood, in its early Sound decades, was influenced (to a small degree) by the Pulps; just witness the glorious output of the serial studios like Universal, Columbia (whose 1938 The Spider’s Web remains surely the best serial ever), and Republic.

   Although the more high-class studios (like MGM and Paramount) acquired pre-publishing rights to produce film versions of contemporary “best sellers,” the published works of genre authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain were also scooped up.

   It is perhaps through filming these genre works that the Hollywood studios and their filmmakers happened upon the 1940s film style of Film Noir (as termed by French film critics after WWII).

   The first stage, the “experimental,” saw NBC transmit the very first Sherlock Holmes on the small-screen, The Three Garridebs, on 27 November 1937 (with Luis Hector as Holmes and William Podmore as Watson).

   On 17 May 1938, NBC (or rather RCA-NBC) showed The Mysterious Mummy Case, written and directed by Thomas Hutchinson. The 25-minute programme, about some mysterious deaths related to an evil-spreading mummy case, served as an experiment in engineering as an ally of dramatic narrative.

   At the end of 1941, NBC produced Blind Alley, featuring a gang of crooks taking over a psychiatry professor’s household. The TV version was based on James Warwick’s 1938 Broadway play, which was filmed by Columbia in 1939 and then remade as The Dark Past in 1948.

   Closing-down the early “experimental” period was The Item of the Scarlet Ace (NBC, 1941), adapted from the Blue Network radio series The Bishop and the Gargoyle. Crimebuster-and-sidekick, Richard Gordon (as the Bishop) and Ken Lynch (the Gargoyle), continued their radio roles.

   The documentary aspect came with, for example, Bureau of Missing Persons (DuMont, 1943), which demonstrated the activities of the NYC Police Department’s Missing Persons unit. A later example may be the intriguingly-titled Rackets Are My Racket (DuMont, 1948), designed to expose real-life frauds and confidence games.

   On the border between the actual and sheer drama was DuMont’s The Woman Who Was Acquitted (June 1944). The story deals with a psychological exploration into the guilt of an acquitted murderess who had confessed her crime while in a cataleptic trance.

   Crime Quiz (DuMont, 1944) was one of the earliest viewer-participation shows in which the studio audience/home viewer had to solve a routine whodunit. Armchair Detective (not to be confused with the British radio and TV series created by Ernest Dudley) was a 1948-49 CBS series which presented two whodunits within its half-hour and invited the audience to guess the solution.

   You Be the Jury (KLAC-TV, 1949) followed a similar path, this time from the viewpoint of a murder trial. Likewise TV Detective (NBC, 1949), with the camera acting as a private detective; much like the police detective drama The Plainclothesman (DuMont, 1949-54). Your Witness (KECA-TV, 1949) was perhaps the last of the audience-participation shows.

   Appearing around the same time as each other, in October 1945, were two similar crime-buster shows. Diary of Death (CBS) was a TV version of the popular radio series Casey, Crime Photographer (CBS Radio), a 30-minute murder mystery written for the small-screen by Lela Swift (from the radio play by Chuck Holden).

   Photocrime (CBS) started off on local station WCBW in an attempt to dramatize the photo journalism stories appearing in the general-interest Look magazine, before the series was networked by ABC in 1949. For the network series, incidentally, Chuck Webster played police Inspector Hannibal Cobb.

   January 1946 started off with the CBS dramatization of Lucille Fletcher’s Sorry, Wrong Number, directed by John Houseman (assisted by Nick Ray), and starring young Mildred Natwick as the seemingly neurotic one.

   One of the pleasures awaiting the genre fan in 1946 was the full-length TV play (some 100 minutes) of Mr. and Mrs. North (NBC, May), adapted from the Broadway production, which in turn was based on the Frances and Richard Lockridge The New Yorker magazine series. According to contemporary reviews, the TV version was awash with “whodunit qualities.” Maxine Stewart was the zany Pam North and John McQuade was the more shrewd Jerry North.

   US Radio, as a primary source in the early days, served up the NBC Radio suspense anthology Lights Out. In 1946 (June to August), NBC produced four TV Lights Out specials, all under producer Fred Coe.

   They involved (for the first time on TV) the effects, for example, of the camera itself as the murderer and then, later, the full use of the television split-screen process. The regular TV series ran on NBC from 1949 to 1952. Inspired later perhaps by radio’s Inner Sanctum Mysteries was Mr. Black (ABC, 1949), a ghostly mystery series supervised by the satanic title character.

   In November 1946, CBS produced Brief Pause for Murder, about a radio announcer obsessed with a plot to strangle his wife. The story was taken from the long-running 1942-55 CBS Radio series The Whistler.

   Another TV example was Lucky Night (WBKB Chicago, June 1948), featuring some atmospheric shots (stormy night, waves dashing against shore) at times pre-dating 1960-62’s Thriller. The script (by Russell Hughes) was lifted directly from The Whistler radio show. Incidentally, the drama was intended to act as a pilot for a TV suspense series to be called Boomerang (produced by MCA).

   The ongoing series’ format was slowly but surely beginning to creep into the TV production process.

   The industrious DuMont produced the half-hour Trouble, Inc. (July 1949), a whodunit pilot starring Earl Hammond and Carol Hill as an adventurous couple who team up in Trouble, Inc., an outfit that will do “anything, anywhere, anytime.”

   Another pilot project from DuMont came in the form of Hands of Murder (August 1949). Featuring Steve Eliot and Charlotte Keane, the story told of a desperate factory worker who was driven to murder his violent loan shark. It was presented as a part of DuMont’s Program Playhouse (June-September 1949). From the latter Playhouse, a little earlier, had come an early version of a based-on-the-files-of drama called Federal Agent (June 1949).

   From now on it was the series (and in some ways, the anthology) that commanded the genre.

   Frank Wood – Private Detective (WBKB Chicago) was a short-run 1947 series starring Joe Bellucci as the title sleuth. The Public Prosecutor (1947) became Crawford Mystery Theatre (DuMont, 1951) and appeared to be a combination of crime drama and quiz. Syndicated series Mystery Is My Hobby (1949) starred Glenn Langan as a police detective.

   Barney Blake, Police Reporter (NBC, 1948), it seemed, was under the thumb of sponsor Lucky Strike cigarettes (The American Tobacco Company). It was of course a live series in which our hero, a Front Page style newspaperman (played by Gene O’Donnell), solved each week’s whodunit mystery between ad breaks of marching cigarettes.

   Frederic Ziv had acquired the rights to the Boston Blackie property and produced a syndicated version starring an unlikely Robert Middleton in 1948. The more familiar series featuring Kent Taylor as Blackie was syndicated from 1951.

   The intriguing crime, mystery and suspense drama Chicagoland Television Mystery Players first appeared over WGN-TV (Chicago) in September 1948. It continued to feature Gordon Urquhart as the crime-busting hero when it was shown via DuMont in 1949-50, retitled Chicagoland Mystery Players.

   The next instalment here will look at the genre’s Adventurers, their often Foreign Settings, and Cold War Espionage. The turbulent period 1951 to 1956. Series will range from China Smith to The Man Called X.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)

   This section could be called the Golden Age Traditionalists. Early crime and mystery drama on television is, quite simply, divided into two strands. The British one (namely BBC), which had its roots in Radio and in the Theatre, and the American one (namely NBC), which had its roots in Radio and (in a limited capacity) in the Cinema.

   British television (BBC), in the beginning, experienced something of a race in technology. Inventor John Logie Baird’s mechanical system versus EMI-Marconi’s electronic system. In February 1937, the EMI-Marconi system was formally adopted by BBC Television.

   The BBC’s Royal Charter made it their duty to “inform, educate and entertain.” The first two were served with TV news broadcasts and with various instructional documentaries. The third element started off as little more than “photographed stage plays.”

   It was the lofty, upper-middle-class BBC view of the time that either scenes from West End theatre productions or studio-produced adaptations of artistically intellectual novels made up almost the only “entertainment” programmes.

   However, television Crime & Mystery genre history was made in 1937 — when George More O’Ferrall produced the medium’s first (hitherto unperformed) Agatha Christie play, The Wasp’s Nest, on 28 June 1937. The 25-minute TV presentation, broadcast live, starred the portly Francis L. Sullivan, a popular actor of the time who had earlier achieved a great success as Hercule Poirot in Christie’s 1931 West End stage hit Black Coffee.

   The other great television genre “first” was the NBC experimental broadcast of Conan Doyle’s 1924 “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” transmitted from the stage of the Radio City Music Hall on 27 November 1937 as The Three Garridebs. Luis Hector played Sherlock Holmes and William Podmore was Dr. Watson.

   Arriving in the latter part of the literary genre’s Golden Age, BBC presentations included television adaptations of plays by Emlyn Williams (Night Must Fall, 1937), Edgar Wallace (The Case of the Frightened Lady, On the Spot, Smoky Cell and The Ringer, all 1938), Christie (Love from a Stranger, 1938), Patrick Hamilton (Gaslight, 1939) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart, 1939).

   Of related interest was a black comedy about 19th century body snatchers Burke and Hare, and their mentor Dr. Knox, in The Anatomist (1939; presented again in 1949). The first actual UK made-for-television genre series was Telecrime (1938-39), a programme consisting of 10 and 20-minute whodunits set to test the viewer on their powers of observation and deductive reasoning.

   The BBC hurriedly closed down their Television Service in September 1939 due to the outbreak of war in Europe.

   Telecrimes (now plural) returned in post-World War Two 1946, written again by Miles Horton and now with James Raglan as Inspector Cameron. A similar viewer-participation series, Consider Your Verdict, was shown in 1947.

   Starting in July 1946, the works of Edgar Wallace continued to be popular with The Ringer, The Green Pack (1947), On the Spot and The Case of the Frightened Lady (both 1948), and The Squeaker (1949) adapted for television.

   Joining the Wallace adaptations, among others in the TV Crime & Mystery genre, were G.K. Chesterton’s play Magic (1946), the Anthony Armstrong thrillers Ten-Minute Alibi (1946), and later, in 1948, The Case of Mr. Pelham. In Gilbert Thomas’ Scotland Yard detective play Murder Rap (1946), Desmond Llewelyn played the intrepid Inspector Fearon.

   Patrick Hamilton also saw plenty of small-screen time, with Rope (January 1947), featuring young Dirk Bogarde as murderer Charles Granillo, Gaslight (1947 and 1948), The Duke in Darkness (1948) and The Governess (1949).

   Fans greeted Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1947) and Martin Vale’s The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) with glee. Agatha Christie was represented with Love From a Stranger (1947), adapted by Frank Vosper, and Three Blind Mice (1947), the latter written especially by her for BBC Television to mark Queen Mary’s birthday.

   There was also a version of Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn (1947), with William Fox in the villainous Tod Slaughter role. Dorothy L. Sayers (and Miss St. Clare Byrne) had Busman’s Honeymoon (October 1947) adapted for television, with Harold Warrender as Lord Peter Wimsey and Ruth Lodge as Harriet. Toward the end of 1947, a dramatization of George du Maurier’s Trilby (October) was shown, with Abraham Sofaer as the spooky Svengali.

   J. B. Priestley’s intriguing drama An Inspector Calls was dramatized in May 1948, with George Hayes as Inspector Goole (the Alastair Sim role in the famous 1954 film version). From May 1948, saturnine storyteller Algernon Blackwood told a chilling Saturday Night Story straight to camera. Anthony Holles was Inspector Hanaud in A.E.W. Mason’s At the Villa Rose (1948). On Christmas Eve 1948, the BBC presented He That Should Come, a Nativity play written by Dorothy L. Sayers.

   Under the TV programme banner of Triple Bill (June 1949), Sidney Budd adapted Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution (presented alongside Denis Johnston’s Irish Rebellion play The Call to Arms and Peter Brook’s one-man [Marius Goring] show Box for One). Christie’s body-count play, then called Ten Little Niggers, was produced in August 1949.

   At the end of the year, as a part of BBC’s Edgar Allan Poe Centenary (in October 1949), the TV play versions of The Cask of Amontillado, Some Words With a Mummy and The Fall of the House of Usher (all adapted by Joan Maude and Michael Warre) were presented.

   Towards the end of the decade, television began adopting regular programming schedules. Emulating the long-standing BBC Radio form, strands like Children’s Television, Sport, Theatre, and Variety began producing their own series and soon established their weekly slots.

   Outside of radio (where other genre authors composed works especially for BBC Radio, such as Sax Rohmer with the eight-part serial Shadow of Sumuru, December 1945-January 1946), the TV genre consisted mainly of documentaries — for example, It’s Your Money They’re After (1948), with Scotland Yard explaining some of the then-new and ingenious frauds, and The Man On the Beat (1949), showing how a policeman becomes our protector.

   There was also the occasional, early drama series: The Inch Man (1951-52), concerning the adventures of a hotel house detective, and the now-legendary Sherlock Holmes (October-December 1951) series of stories starring Alan Wheatley as Holmes and Raymond Francis as Watson; the stories were adapted for television by Observer film critic C.A. Lejeune. (But more on the TV Sherlock Holmes later.)

   1952 saw the beginning of the Francis Durbridge suspense thrillers, bringing UK television’s early Crime & Mystery period to a close.

   In the second section of this two-part Evolution of the TV Genre, I will be looking at the same 1930s/1940s period in US television.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)

DECOY. Syndicated TV. First aired October 14,1957; 39 30min episodes aired at various times around the country. Cast: Casey Jones: Beverly Garland. Executive producer: Everett Rosenthal; technical advisor: Margaret Leonard, Detective 1st Grade (Ret.).

   Decoy is best remembered as the first American TV series to feature, as its main character, a policewoman.

   The series’ episodes were “based upon true and actual cases.” Decoy was dedicated to the Bureau of Policewomen of the city of New York. The stories had little humor and were thick with melodrama. Decoy was much like Dragnet, but with a more feminine point of view. As Joe Friday did, Casey Jones narrated the episodes.

   Decoy featured crime stories dealing with the social issues of the times. Often the villains were portrayed as victims themselves. It was common for at least one bad guy to find redemption in the end.

   In “High Swing,” Casey goes undercover replacing a murdered ‘Come On’ girl, a woman who picks up guys in a bar and leads them to a place to be mugged. The killers were a nice old couple trapped by a tragic past that left the wife hooked on morphine.

   Casey did not have a regular partner, instead she was assigned to a different department every week. She might be in uniform, undercover, or the officer in charge. She worked on any type of crime and in any area of the city. Her fellow male officers accepted a policewoman as routine and treated her with respect.

   While little is revealed of Casey’s life beyond being a policewoman, we do see the effects each case has on her. At the end of every episode, Casey would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, often sharing how the case had affected her.

   The series was filmed, some of it outdoors in the New York area. The productions values were on par with network television of that time. Most of the episodes remain entertaining, yet dated, crime melodrama.

   The writing was weakened by the melodrama. It is hard today not to laugh at lines such as in “The Sound Of Tears”: “There were no kisses in the park that night (pause) unless you want to count the kiss of death.”

   The direction was adequate for its time except for the episode “Across the World.” Casey goes undercover to find a killer, but she is found out, beaten badly, and ends up in the hospital (and out of most of the episode!). Director Teddy Sims apparently had only one camera and limited time. Characters were reacting to things the camera did not show, characters off camera had conversations with others on camera, and it had the worse chase scene ever filmed.

   A talented underrated actress, Beverly Garland was the best part of Decoy. Watching her share the screen with a guest cast that included such talent as Peter Falk, Martin Balsam, and Suzanne Pleshette remains the best reason to watch Decoy.

SOURCES: Internet Archives offers episodes to watch for free. Classic TV Archives has a good episode guide. And the series is available on DVD.

“The Cost of a Vacation.” An episode of Mannix CBS-TV; Season 1, Episode 6 (27 October 1967). Created: Richard Levinson and William Link. Developed: Bruce Geller. Written: Chester Krumholz. Directed: John Meredyth Lucas. Cast: Joe Mannix: Mike Conners, Lew Wickersham: Joseph Campanella. Guest Cast: Joyce: Marlyn Mason, Ramon: Donnelly Rhodes, Leonard: Henry Beckman

    “The Cost of a Vacation” was an entertaining episode despite the flawed premise of the first season of Mannix. The original idea behind the series was to have hardboiled PI Joe Mannix work for a modern computerized investigation agency named Intertect.

    In this episode, Joe had to ask his boss’s permission to help an ex-girlfriend. Would any hardboiled PI ask permission for anything? It weakened the lone hero PI character, and for little reason, as boss Lew Wickersham gives in quickly. You are left wondering why someone like Joe Mannix would work for Intertect.

    In “The Cost of a Vacation”, Mannix’s ex-girlfriend of the week, Joyce Loman asks Joe to find the man she fell for during a vacation romance. Long thought gone, she had spotted him on the street and gave chase. The beautiful but not too bright model failed to realize he was trying to get away from her.

    The script is fast paced with few scenes without a twist or two. The episode overflows with classic elements from hardboiled mysteries. The lying client. Mystery man. His deadly reason to remain hidden from Joyce. A dead man in a dark alley that leads Mannix to an office where he gets knocked out from behind.

    But not before finding a clue. Joe’s legman, the computer, discovers the meaning of the clue as Joe works “the streets.” Joe and disbelieving Joyce are shot at by a killer.

    Later, the killer’s reason for missing them leads to a harrowing scene worthy of the darkest noir. Dark city streets. Camera angles, cuts and movement used to increase the tension of the final chase. What more could a hardboiled PI fan want?

    Mike Conners was the main strength of the series. He portrayed tough guy Joe Mannix straight, as an old fashioned hero, without a hint of the modern day PI’s cynicism or sarcasm. The rest of the cast performed well, but you had to feel sorry for the talented Joe Campanella reduced to little more than telling Mannix, “No. I really mean no. Oh, go ahead, Joe.”

    “The Cost of a Vacation” is an episode any TV mystery fan will enjoy, even those of us who never liked Mannix. You might even find yourself humming Lalo Schifrin’s theme music for days later.

SOURCE:   The source DVD I used is listed at online at the usual outlets with the title Best of TV Detectives: 150 Episodes.

“Bed of Roses.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 2, Episode 29). First air date: 22 May 1964. Patrick O’Neal, Kathie Browne, Torin Thatcher, George Lindsey, Alice Backes, Alice Frost, Bill Walker, Paulene Myers, Robert Reiner, Ethel Griffies.

   George Maxwell (Patrick O’Neal) has it all: a comfortable, undemanding, high-paying position in his father-in-law’s business (Torin Thatcher), a nice home, and a beautiful airhead trophy wife, Mavis (Kathie Browne).

   But that still isn’t enough for George. He also has a mistress — or rather, HAD a mistress. George wakes up one hungover evening to find her dead — and he’s not sure if he’s responsible.

   Let’s face it: George is ill-equipped to handle this situation. Not only does he accidentally open himself to blackmail from a snoopy cab driver and a personal secretary, but he also shows how inattentive he is as a husband.

   George, you see, is about to have an epiphany regarding his wife, one that will leave him slack-jawed with surprise and swollen with admiration. Among other revelations, he will learn that when his wife offers somebody one of her delicious sugar-molasses cookies, they would be well-advised to turn it down….

   Patrick O’Neal (1927-1994) specialized in shifty, unlikable, yet somehow elegant characters, such as the killer in the Columbo episode “Blueprint for Murder” (1972).

   Beautiful Kathie Browne (1930-2003) had “range” as an actor. She could be good with doe-eyed innocence; she could also be bad with those same doe-eyes. Watch her in the Star Trek episode “Wink of an Eye” to see what I mean.

   Torin Thatcher (1905-1981) often played screen villains; he rarely had a chance to be a good guy like his character in the Star Trek episode “The Return of the Archons.”

   George Lindsey (born 1935) is most often remembered as Goober on The Andy Griffith Show. Before he got that gig, though, he had a chance to play more complex and sinister characters in two other Hitchcock shows: “The Jar” and “The Return of Verge Likens.”

    Watch “Bed of Roses” online at Hulu.com here.

MR. & MRS. SMITH. CBS. September 20, 1996 through November 8, 1996. Cast: Mr. Smith: Scott Bakula, Mrs. Smith: Maria Bello, Mr. Big: Roy Dotrice, Rox: Aida Turturro (two episodes). Created by Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar.

   Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a better than average mindless TV romantic comedy mystery.

   Mr. and Mrs. Smith worked for The Factory, a worldwide private intelligence firm with the latest gadgets and unlimited resources. The company was run by a man known as Mr. Big. The Factory had a rule that no agent could know anything about another agent’s past. So, while off saving the world and solving crimes, the Smiths spent their free time trying to uncover the other’s secret past. Why they don’t even know the other’s name!

   If this secret past bit sounds like Remington Steele doubled, it was not by accident. Creators Lenhart and Sakmar were on the writing staff of Remington Steele during the third and fourth seasons. Michael Gleason, co-creator and showrunner of Remington Steele, wrote the final episode of Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

   The series had an interesting twist to the overdone “will they or won’t they” cliche. At times, she was willing to hop into bed with him, and he was tempted, but there was something in his past stopping him.

   Mr. and Mrs. Smith were complete opposites, and on TV that makes them the perfect team. She was talkative and impulsive while he was quiet and deliberate. If one did not know something, the other was an expert on the subject.

   The sexual attraction each had for the other was understandable. However, the two leads’ chemistry did not heat up the screen. Scott Bakula gave his usual performance, ranging from wooden to over the top. Maria Bello was a wonderful surprise, with an emotionally expressive face able to reveal Mrs. Smith’s damaged past without a word.

   The writing was typical television, ranging from great fun to embarrassingly bad. The mysteries relied more on twists, but did feature an occasional obvious clue. The stories’ pace were fast enough, so if you turned off your brain, you did not care about the, at times, unbelievably stupid behavior of the characters.

   The best clues were not for the mystery of the week, but for the arc story of the mystery of Mr. and Mrs. Smiths’ pasts. The characters and their relationship evolved each week as they learned more about each other.

   Sadly, CBS aired only nine of the thirteen episodes, and at least two were noticeably out of order. In “The Grape Escape”, Mr. Smith goes through Mrs. Smith’s hidden trunk of past mementos. But it is a trunk the viewer and Mr. Smith did not know existed until “The Publishing Episode” that aired the week after.

   Without the last four episodes, the viewers missed out on the satisfying ending to the central mystery of the characters’ pasts.

   The final four episodes were aired sometime overseas. All thirteen episodes are available at You Tube. No DVD is currently legally available.

      EPISODE INDEX

Pilot (9/20/96)   Written: Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar. Directed: David S. Jackson.   Mr. Smith meets the future Mrs. Smith while each, on opposite sides, attempt to find a missing scientist who had invented a new energy source.

The Suburban Episode (9/27/96)   Written: Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green. Directed: Oz Scott.   The Smiths move to the suburbs of St. Louis and pose as new neighbors to a man suspected of selling top-secret government codes.

The Second Episode (10/4/96)   Written: Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar. Directed: Ralph Hemecker.   Mr. and Mrs. Smith help a bumbling assistant stop his boss from selling arms to a terrorist.

The Poor Pitiful Put-Upon Singer Episode (10/11/96)   Written: Del Shores. Directed: Nick Marck.   The Smiths try to find out whom wants to kill the head of a small record label.

The Grape Escape (10/18/96)   Written: Susan Cridland Wick.   Directed: Daniel Attias. The Factory sends the Smiths on a mission to save the vineyards of Europe from a scientist’s bug bombs.

The Publishing Episode (10/25/96)   Written: Douglas Steinberg. Directed: James Quinn.   The Smiths have to stop the sale of a tell-all spy book written by a missing British spy named Steed. Each Smith wants to find the book first, so to read about the other’s past.

The Coma Episode (10/28/96)   Written: Douglas Steinberg. Directed: Michael Zinberg.   Mr. Smith plays doctor with Mrs. Smith taking the role as coma patient so they can get closed the a guarded coma victim that knows the plans of terrorists to attack a peace conference.

The Kidnapping Episode (11/1/96)   Written: Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green. Directed: Sharron Miller.   Before the Smiths can discover who is causing problems at a drug company, their client is kidnapped.

The Space Flight Episode (11/8/96)   Written: Michael Cassutt. Directed: Lou Antonio.   When an ex-astronaut hires The Factory to find a space prototype and his son, the trail leads the Smiths to Area 51.

The Big Easy Episode (never aired on CBS)   Written: Del Shores. Directed: James Whitmore Jr.   The Smiths visit New Orleans when The Factory is hired to clear a Senator’s mistress of a conviction for selling government secrets.

The Impossible Mission Episode (never aired on CBS)   Teleplay: Kerry Lenhart and John J. Sakmar.   Story: Douglas Steinberg. Directed: Artie Mandelberg.   The Smiths help fellow Factory agents, the Jones, trap some counterfeiters.

The Bob Episode (never aired on CBS)   Written: Sanford Golden. Directed: Jonathan Sanger.   Bob, a friend from Mr. Smith’s pre-spy days, gets caught in the middle between the Smiths and a terrorist with enough plutonium to make an atomic bomb.

The Sins of the Father (never aired on CBS)   Written: Michael Gleason. Directed: Rob Thompson.   Mr. Smith disappears while in mid-assignment when he is blackmailed with his past. While The Factory writes him off, Mrs. Smith rushes to his rescue, whether he wants her to or not.

MAIGRET. Granada TV, UK. Second series: six 60-min episodes. 14 March through 18 April 1993. Michael Gambon (Chief Inspector Jules Maigret), Geoffrey Hutchings (Sgt. Lucas), Jack Galloway (Inspector Janvier), James Larkin (Inspector LaPointe).

   A second six part series of Maigret has recently been and gone. I watched with extra vigilance after the adverse comments about the first series in Mystery & Detective Monthly. I enjoyed this series. It’s steady and reliable without being flashy or exciting and adapts the stories well into a 50-minute format.

   The difficulty of adapting stories from a long series of books to screen is to achieve a uniformity of time and character. The decision to shoot exterior scenes in Budapest, since it was easier to recreate 1950’s (the time period chosen for the series) Paris there rather than in the Paris of 1993 seemed reasonable, although exterior scenes were kept to a minimum anyway.

   I do not subscribe to the theory that English actors speaking English portraying Frenchman speaking French should adopt the accent of a Frenchman speaking English badly (as, say, Poirot — although, of course, he’s Belgian). The producers, correctly in my opinion, used the appropriate English accent to portray the rank or position of the speaker, so a doctor would speak with a polished accent where a labourer would adopt a rougher less educated one. A foreign sounding accent was only used for characters who were not French and could be assumed to be speaking French with a foreign accent.

   I thought an article in the current issue of Armchair Detective rather silly. It seems we should have had a French actor playing the part, although it isn’t made it clear if the actor should be speaking in French or English.

   If English, I suppose we’d be looking for a French actor who speaks English but not well. If they ever make a series of Lindsey Davis’s books I wonder how they’re going to cast Falco? Perhaps they’ll be able to dig up an ancient Roman from somewhere.

   The author of the article also says: “If we wanted an Englishman playing the part, we’d watch a repeat of the dreadful American TV movie starring Richard Harris.”

   I’m quite at a loss as how to evaluate this statement. Apart from the fact that Harris is not English anyway, is he saying that once an actor has portrayed a character, even if badly, he would watch it repeatedly rather that watch an actor from the same country play the same role?

   Anyway for the record the six stories were: “Maigret And The Night Club Bouncer,” “Maigret And The Hotel Majestic,” “Maigret On The Defensive,” “Maigret’s Boyhood Friend,” “Maigret And The Minister,” and “Maigret And The Maid.”