AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MARPLE: TOWARD ZERO.   ITV.   Series 3, Episode 3.   First telecast in the UK on 03 August 2008.   Geraldine McEwan, Julian Sands, Paul Nicholls, Greg Wise, Saffron Burrows, Julie Graham, Tom Baker, Eileen Atkins.   Based on the novel by Agatha Christie.  Director: David Grindley (uncredited).

   Agatha Christie’s Marple which is what it was called in the listings, returned with the penultimate outing for Geraldine McEwen in the eponymous role. It was an adaptation of Towards Zero, a Christie novel in which Miss Marple plays no part.

   Here she was interjected into the otherwise fairly faithful plot (if my faltering memory of reading it some twenty odd years ago plus the vague plot descriptions in a couple of reference books can be relied upon), involving a gathering of people at the home of Lady Tressilian — played by Eileen Atkins in a fairly star-studded cast which included Tom Baker (former Dr Who and Sherlock Holmes), Saffron Burrows (of Boston Legal) and Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek).

   I have been critical of previous outings in this series but I enjoyed this one. The post-WWII settings were superb, and I thought McEwen kept the knowing grins down to at least a reasonable proportion. There was an amusing gaffe when a scene showing the protagonist Neville Strange (Greg Wise), a tennis player, at Wimbledon (incidentally his opponent was played by Greg Rusedski), had the scores shown on an electronic scoreboard.

BRENNER. TV series. CBS-TV, 1959-61-64. Ed Binns, James Broderick, with Dick O’Neill, Walter Greaza, Sydney Pollack, Gene Hackman. Executive producer: Herbert Brodkin. Various screenwriters & directors.

   Brenner was one of those overlooked gems of the black-and-white TV era, a half-hour character-driven drama about two New York City cops, Roy Brenner (Edward Binns) a veteran member of The Confidential Squad (aka Internal Affairs), and his son Ernie (James Broderick), a rookie detective.

   The focus was police corruption and the emotional cost of police work, themes explored at greater length and intensity by such later shows as Naked City and Police Story.

   Brenner utilized a low-key approach, though, and it pays off. It doesn’t utilize the city as a character the way Naked City did, but its exteriors capture the time (1959) and place and Manhattan mood just as well.

   A big help is the supporting cast of then mostly unfamiliar New York actors, including Simon Oakland, George Grizzard, Michael Strong, Frank Sutton, Frank Overton and an unbilled Gene Hackman, who pops up several times as a patrolman.

   The recent DVD box set from Timeless Media features 15 of the 25 or 26 episodes produced. (See below.)

   The visual quality on most of the episodes is outstanding. I’d seen a couple of episodes years ago and always hoped I’d get to see more. I was not disappointed.

NOTE: The series was first televised in 1959 (6 June to 19 September) and appeared in re-runs on CBS during the summmers of 1961, 1962, and 1964, with two new episodes appearing in 1961. In the fall of 1964 (17 May to 19 July) a summer season of several new episodes appeared. According to the The Classic TV Archive, the total number of episodes that actually aired is considered to be 25.

MIDNIGHT MAN.   ITV1 (UK), May 2008. James Nesbitt, Reece Dinsdale, Rupert Graves, Catherine McCormack, Ian Puleston-Davies, Alan Dale. Screenwriter: David Kane; director: David Drury.

   This was a conspiracy story set in three one-hour parts, less adverts. The ubiquitous James Nesbitt starred as Max Raban, a journalist whose career took such a tumble when he revealed a source, a female friend who went on to commit suicide, that he is now resorting to raiding the bins of celebrities looking for anything he can turn into a story.

   Worse, he suffers from phengophobia, a psychological fear of daylight, so he only operates at night, hence the title.

   When his former editor sends him on a routine dustbin mission, it leads to a hit squad who are assassinating terror suspects, possibly on behalf of the government. Soon Raban is framed for a murder and he is desperately trying to stay at large long enough to find evidence of the conspiracy, while uncertain as to whom he can trust.

   The news I read of this were negative so I was in two minds as to whether to watch it or not but I’m a sucker for a conspiracy story, and I have to say I quite enjoyed it.

   Sure, at the end, you rack your brain to see if it all makes sense and it doesn’t always, but in general it built up a head of steam, had several of those moments when you gasp in amazement (well, you’re slightly amused by the plot twists) and, despite a rather perfunctory ending, it managed to hold the attention.

HE KILLS COPPERS. ITV (UK), 2008. Mel Raido, Liam Garrigan, Rafe Spall, Frank Taylor, Steven Robertson, Tim Woodward, Kelly Reilly. Based on the book by Jake Arnott. Director: Adrian Shergold.

   This was an adaptation of the book He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott (Sceptre, 2001), and shown in three one-hour (no adverts) parts. It starts in 1966 during the euphoria of England winning the World Cup as two young policeman friends are making their way up the ranks.

   When one routinely stops a car and is fatally shot along with two colleagues, his friend feels morally bound to pursue the killer, but although his accomplices are soon caught, he just escapes at the last minute.

   Meanwhile a reporter takes on the investigation by wheedling his way into the life of the killer’s mother, and we see both his and the policeman’s investigations becoming closer.

   The story moves forward to 1975 and another near thing before the denouement in 1980 as the two investigations finally converge and the killer, journalist and policemen come together.

   This production drew rather favourable reviews from the British press (at least the bits I read) and, although much of it is rather on the bleak side — we see a lot of the sleaze, and most of the characters, including the police, are out for what they can get — I quite enjoyed it.

SHERLOCK: CASE OF EVIL. USA Network, made for TV, 2002. UK title: Sherlock. James D’Arcy (Sherlock Holmes), Roger Morlidge (Dr. Watson), Gabrielle Anwar (Rebecca Doyle), Vincent D’Onofrio (Professor Moriarty), Nicholas Gecks (Inspector Lestrade), Richard E. Grant (Mycroft Holmes). Based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Director: Graham Theakston.

   I’m not sure whether this was originally a British production or not, but from the names of the people involved, actors and otherwise, I suspect that it was. What I am sure of is that a lot of the people who commented on this film on IMDB really hated it — really really hated it — and for the usual and obvious reasons.

   I’m also not sure if this was meant to be the first of the series — and if it was, it hasn’t turned out that way — but it very easily could have, as the movie takes us back to Holmes’ earliest days as a consulting detective, before he had met Dr. Watson (a police autopsy surgeon in this film) but not before Holmes was aware of Professor Moriarty and his dastardly schemes against polite society.

   I read somewhere that Holmes is supposed to be 28 in this movie. Unfortunately James D’Arcy appears to be closer to 18, hardly old enough to handle the liquor, narcotics and the wild Victorian women who flock to his doorstep when they read about his latest exploit in the daily news. (They call them groupies today, or at least they used to in the 1970s. Maybe I’m dating myself.)

   Holmes is also something of a publicity hound, an aspect of his personality that turns Dr. Watson off when first they meet. And if by now you haven’t realized why the howls of protest went up so quickly after this movie was released, you can hardly consider yourself a true believing Sherlock Holmes fan.

   But if I’m evidence of the fact, I think you can be a lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan and still enjoy this movie. I didn’t mind the alterations to Holmes the character, and besides, who knows what he might have been like in his younger days (though the bedroom scene with the two young ladies removing their chemises or whatever was obviously designed to tweak somebody’s noses).

   And by movie’s end, Holmes is definitely chastened and perhaps has “come of age” a bit.

   I rather didn’t care for all of the guns that were used in the raid by the police on Moriarty’s dope-processing warehouse, and while there were several nicely done attempts to show Holmes’ deductive abilities — the scene with Mycroft is a small gem — there is, sad to say, no great attempt by the end of the movie to be little more than just another action flick.

   The atmosphere and general ambiance is nicely done, though. One twist of the plot that came early on is easily spotted, but I shall restrain myself from even beginning to describe it, so as not to keep you from having the same pleasure, otherwise I surprised myself by warming more and more to the characters as the movie went on. Who knows. You may, too.

PostScript: I seem to have ended this review with leaving myself room to show you one more photo. Miss Doyle is a client that both gets herself into trouble and helps to get Sherlock out of some trouble that he gets himself into. She’s an important part of the story, and I really can’t leave her out:

   There are certain posts for which the comments that follow take on a life of their own. Take for example a short piece called “An Early Example of NERO WOLFE on TV?” There are 15 comments following, which is rather high but not unusually so. But if you take into consideration that this piece was a continuation of one of Mike Nevins’ columns, to which 18 comments were added, you will realize that the subject matter — that of which actor played what well-known mystery character, or should have, struck a nerve of one kind or another.

   All of which means little, in the more practical side of things, except the final (or most recent) comment on the second post was from Mike Doran, who mentioned something I’d never known about before. Which is certainly not news in that regard, but perhaps if you missed it, you’d like to know about it, too.

   Mike said, and I quote:

    And not too long ago, Mike emailed me to say, after I pleaded him unmercifully for some follow-up information:

   All I can say is that I wish I lived in the Chicago area. There’s no station around here that plays anything nearly as interesting as reruns of Kraft Mystery/Suspense Theater.

   I was nine years old in 1952 when my parents bought their first TV set. Being a little young at the time, I never watched what was perhaps the leading crime-drama anthology series of the early Fifties, CBS-TV’s Suspense, which had been heard on radio for almost a dozen years and debuted on the small screen early in 1949.

   Just recently, however, I’ve begun to catch up, thanks to the release of three DVD sets containing several dozen episodes, including some of the earliest.

   One of these, “Help Wanted” (June 14, 1949), was based on “The Cat’s-Paw,” the second published short story of the soon to be legendary Stanley Ellin (1916-1986),which had just appeared in the June 1949 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

   A few evenings ago I ran this episode and then re-read the story. Both deal with a middle-aged unemployed loner named Crabtree to whom an anonymous party offers $50 a week (a generous salary in those days) to sit in a tiny office on the top floor of a skyscraper, eight hours a day six days a week, and compile useless financial reports.

   Later Crabtree’s benefactor pays him a visit and offers him life tenure, as it were, if he’ll push his next visitor out the office window. Here is where Ellin and the writers of the TV version (Mary Orr and Reginald Denham) part company. In the story Crabtree follows through, although offstage (because Ellin almost never shows an act of violence), and gets away with it because his employer has made the death look like suicide.

   On the air, whose censors looked askance at unpunished crimes, the visitor falls out of the window accidentally because of his paranoid fear of the office cat, and the intended murder is impliedly brought home to Crabtree’s Iago because the victim was the wrong man, not a blackmailer but a harmless crackpot soliciting money for a campaign to bring back Prohibition.

   Otto Kruger played Crabtree, and Douglas Clark-Smith, who gives the impression of having been drunk on camera, was “Mr. X”.

   This live drama, directed by Robert Stevens, was the first of at least fifteen live or filmed TV adaptations of Ellin stories. The same tale, translated to film with the same title and a script based on this one, later became the basis of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (April 1, 1956), with John Qualen and Lorne Greene in the roles of Crabtree and his employer and James Neilson directing.

   Also on Disc One of Collection One from Suspense is “The Murderer” (October 25, 1949), based on Joel Townsley Rogers’ often anthologized short story of the same name (Saturday Evening Post, November 23, 1946).

   The story begins just after dawn on a lonely meadow, probably in the same general area where so much of Rogers’ powerful suspense novel The Red Right Hand (1945) was set. Farmer John Bantreagh discovers the dead body of his sluttish wife, knocked unconscious and then deliberately run over by a car.

   Then deputy Roy Clade drives up, and the dialogue between the men heightens our suspicion that Bantreagh himself is the murderer. These two are the only onstage characters in Rogers’ story.

   In the Suspense version, directed by Robert Stevens from a Joseph Hayes teleplay, Jeffrey Lynn and John McQuade played Bantreagh and Clade but there are also several other characters who in Rogers’ story were only referred to in the dialogue.

   This tale was never adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents but did become the basis of a later live version on ABC’s Star Tonight (March 17, 1955), with Bantreagh and Clade played by Charles Aidman and Buster Crabbe.

   During my three years at NYU Law School I watched very little TV, but in the fall of 1967, when I was still living in Greenwich Village and waiting for the results of the bar exam (yes, I passed), a new series debuted on ABC which, with its tension and its reflection of the turbulence of the Vietnam and Black Power years and its abundant action scenes shot on the streets of New York, captivated me instantly.

   N.Y.P.D., starring Jack Warden as tough detective lieutenant Mike Haines, Robert Hooks as black plainclothesman Jeff Ward and Frank Converse as newbie Johnny Corso, was directed and scripted for the most part by veterans of the golden age of live teledrama and lasted two full seasons.

   Looking over the cast lists recently, I was amazed at the number of actors then based in New York who appeared in one or more episodes and went on to household-name recognition and in some cases superstardom.

   In alphabetical order and limiting myself to males: John Cazale, James Coco, William Devane, Charles Durning, Robert Forster, Vincent Gardenia, Charles Grodin, Moses Gunn, James Earl Jones, Harvey Keitel, Tony LoBianco, Laurence Luckinbill, Al Pacino, Andy Robinson, Mitchell Ryan, Roy Scheider, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Sam Waterston, Fritz Weaver.

   Fewer female cast members made it big, but among those that did were Jill Clayburgh, Blythe Danner and Nancy Marchand.

   None of these names were familiar to me 40-odd years ago except James Earl Jones, whom I’d seen in an off-off-Broadway production of Othello, but today they’re instantly recognizable by millions. Why this superb series hasn’t been revived on DVD is a mystery; the fact that it hasn’t is a shame.

   Speaking of vintage TV cop shows, M Squad, starring Lee Marvin, is now available on DVD, the complete 115-episode series for around $120. That’s pretty steep even if you buy the set with a 40% Borders Rewards discount coupon, but many who were teens during its first run as I was will be sorely tempted.

   Previously on this blog:

      Part 1:  How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967).

      Part 2:    Run a Crooked Mile (1969).

PROBE. Warner Brothers/NBC-TV; 13 September 1972. Hugh O’Brien, Elke Summer, John Gielgud, Lilia Skala, Burgess Meredith, Angle Tompkins, Kent Smith. Alfred Ryder, Ben Wright. Teleplay: Leslie Stevens; director: Russell Mayberry.

   This was the clever pilot film for the TV series Search (1971-1973), a sort of updated cross between The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the first season of Mannix.

   O’Brien was Hugh Lockwood, a suave headstrong operative of World Securities, a high tech firm that implants sophisticated audio and physical monitoring devices in its agents and supplies them with a miniature camera worn either as a ring or on a gold chain around the neck (it was the seventies after all).

   Monitoring Lockwood is B. C. Cameron (Meredith) an armchair genius who envies his agents the good life they lead between dangers; Dr. Laurent, the companies founder (Kent Smith); and technician Gloria Hardy (Angel Tompkins), who provide Lockwood with intel and expertise for his missions.

   In this pilot film, Lockwood is teamed with famed diamond expert Harold Streeter (Gielgud) to find a cache of diamonds stolen at the end of WWII by a Nazi war criminal. Their only lead is the war criminal’s ex wife (Lilia Skalla) and daughter (Sommer). The mission takes them across Europe into the high life and face to face with an underground of Nazis wanting the diamonds for the new Reich, while they are stalked by the shadow of the war criminal Ullman.

   Lockwood proves a smart capable agent with a penchant for following his own head and turning off both his lifeline and camera, to the annoyance of Cameron who sees the agents as little more than his eyes and ears.

   The plot works up to a nice twist that you will probably see coming, but is done so smoothly by the superior cast that it hardly interferes with the entertainment.

   Alas, the series added two other agents: Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure, and it never reclaimed the style or the charm of the pilot film. But then it would be hard to have guests like Gielgud, Sommer, and Skala every week. It ran one season and was gone.

   But the pilot film stands on its own and is as good as many theatrical features. O’Brien is charming as a cross between James Bond and Milo March and the supporting cast is excellent. Meredith is a delight as the acerbic gourmand and polymath Cameron, and his war of affectionate disdain with O’Brien’s Lockwood is a delight.

   A novelization of the pilot film by Robert Wervka was published by Bantam as Search.

      In conclusion:

   All three of these superior made-for-television movies this series of columns has covered deserve to be available on DVD.

   While much of what came out of the made-for-television movie craze was either dreck, bad remakes of theatrical features, or over praised soap opera designed to squeeze tears and social issues, there were some entertaining films that deserve to be seen and remembered for doing what the small screen does best — produce light entertainment that lingers on when we have forgotten more important fare.

   This is the second in a series of three reviews covering movies that were made for TV in the 1960s and 70s, the heyday of such film-making. Most of them were no more than ordinary, to be sure, but a few were well above average — small gems in terms of casts, plotting and production.

   Previously on this blog: How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967).

RUN A CROOKED MILE. Universal/NBC-TV, 18 November 1969. Louis Jourdan, Mary Tyler Moore, Alexander Knox, Wilfred Hyde Whyte, Stanley Holloway, Alexander Knox, Laurence Naismith, Ronald Howard. Teleplay: Trevor Wallace; director: Gene Leavett.

   Richard Stuart (Jourdan) is a tutor who stumbles onto a murder in a remote English mansion. When he comes back with the law, the body is gone and he is ridiculed.

   Certain he isn’t mad, he returns to London and hires a private detective, Stanley Holloway. Shortly after that he discovers a key to a room in the mansion, and is knocked unconscious.

   When he wakes up, he finds he is on the Cote d’Azur, and his name is Tony Sutton, a wealthy playboy who took a blow to the head while playing polo. He’s married to the beautiful American heiress Elizabeth Sutton (Mary Tyler Moore) and he has lost five years of his life.

   Who can he trust? Is his wife part of the conspiracy? Just what nest of snakes did he stumble into five years earlier?

   Obsessed with finding out he returns to London to find Holloway now quite well to do and the Yard’s Inspector Huntington (Howard), not interested. Nevertheless he perseveres follows the clues back to the mansion owned by Sir Howard Nettington (Knox) and with Elizabeth’s help solves the mystery, uncovers a conspiracy, and brings down the high placed villains.

   I suppose you do have to wonder why he would be so anxious to solve the murder of a stranger and risk a very good life with a rich and beautiful wife who loves him despite the fact he hasn’t been any prize as Tony Sutton, but if people behaved normally in these things, nothing would ever happen.

   Run a Crooked Mile is a clever sub-Hitchcock exercise in the Buchan vein with handsome sets, and a fine cast. It moves quickly and relies on the considerable charms of Jourdan and Moore to get through whatever lags in logic that might plague you.

   It’s one of those films where almost no one is quite who they seem to be, but it is done with such style and competence that it plays more like a feature than a made-for-TV film. Of the three films that will be reviewed herem it probably most deserves release on DVD.

   It’s smart, funny, and suspenseful, attractive to look at, and much more literate and intelligent than it has to be. Howard, Knox, Whyte, Holloway, and Naismith all contribute nicely to the fun. In many ways it plays like a good episode of The Avengers, droll. literate, and full of twists.

Coming soon:

   Probe (1969), with Hugh O’Brien and Elke Summer.

   The sixties and early seventies were the heyday of the made for television movie, and while most were tired and unimaginative, a few gems did emerge. The three films I’ll be covering in a series of upcoming posts featured excellent casts, intriguing plots, and above average production values.

   As far as I know none of them have been on VHS or DVD, but that should be changed. They were all superior entertainment. All three aired originally on NBC.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION. Made for TV. Universal/NBC-TV; telecast 07 Jan 1967. Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright, Walter Pidgeon, Michael Ansara. Teleplay: Gene R. Kearney; director: William Hale.

   Aging hip graduate student Jack Washington (Wagner) is in Europe living on the fringes of the Jet Set when he meets Nikki Pine (St. John) and begins to pursue her. At first her charming father billionaire Ned Pine (Lawdord) and mother (Albright) seem like nice people, but when Jack gets serious he finds himself out on his ear, framed for a crime he didn’t commit and roughed up.

   Out of revenge he begins compiling a dossier on Pine, and soon finds himself up to his ears in trouble with a army of killers out to get him led by Pine’s top man Pucci (Ansara). Lewis Gannett (Pidgeon) the Pine’s lawyer knows where the bodies are buried — literally — and is fed up with Pine’s murderous ways, Jack hopes to use him it get the secrets of who Pine is.

   Vacation is a slight but entertaining little fable that plays heavily on the charm and skill of its cast and is rewarded by being a fast paced film much slicker and better than many that found their way to the big screen. As Wagner’s Jack changes from aging hipster to amateur James Bond, the film grows darker and ends in a nice slam bang finale that leaves Jack in the catbird seat.

   This sort of fluff can go wrong quickly, but thanks to the cast and script doesn’t. Lawford does a nice sinister turn and Albright is darker than she is painted. Even St. John shines in what could have been a throwaway role.

Coming soon:

   Run a Crooked Mile (1969), with Louis Jourdan and Mary Tyler Moore.