Saturday 23 March 1963

ITV's gone John Lucarotti potti! All three drama shows on tonight's menu are scripted by the writer now best remembered for his historical Doctor Who adventures.  He hasn't managed to oust Johnny Speight from writing for Arthur Haynes, though if he had the results might have been interesting.

Mr L's first course for us this evening is the final episode of the thrilling aquatic adventure series.  You may remember that last week's show ended with Dr Deraad's tantalising discovery of his fellow conspirator.  Well, look away now if you don't want to know who that conspirator is...

Yes, just as clever old Mark Bannerman suspected all along, it's Dr Ellen Carey - she blew up her own lab to dispose of incriminating evidence, and knocked herself out with an injection in order to divert suspicion, the crafty madam.  Of course, this leaves us the even bigger mystery of why Professor Soobiah has been acting in such a conspicuously sinister manner for the last few weeks, but sadly that's one that must remain unsolved (now he's been exposed as a red herring he starts acting normally - or as normally as a browned-up chap with a dodgy Indian accent ever can).

While Deraad's making his shock discovery, Mark convinces Captain Payne to carry on with drilling down to the X-layer to prove how important the discovery of phoenicium is - before the dastardly International Metals Ltd takes over Aegiria.  It's rather like a corny Hollywood musical, with our heroes deciding to give it their all for one last go before surrendering the old underwater city to the blackhearted villains.  It's a shame they didn't throw in a few songs - but then I suppose it would have been quite difficult to find a rhyme for phoenicium.

Blackhearted villain Dr Carey's taken charge of the baddies' operations in Aegiria, bossing the spineless Dr Deraad into tricking his way down to the mining centre and halting the operation by force.

Meanwhile, Professor Gordon's spectroscopic camera's been fixed and is taken down to the mining centre, though the Prof himself can't go with it as he's still under suspicion.  Robert James is thoroughly endearing as the old fusspot, clucking over his invention like a mother hen and grief-stricken that it's going off without him.  Some of James's mannerisms (and his scruffy attire) are similar to those Patrick Troughton would bring to the lead role in Doctor Who (and, by chance, James guest starred in Troughton's first story).

Anyway, Peter Blake accompanies Dr Deraad down to the drillhead, and we get a lovely shot of a cute little model bathyscape.

Deraad pulls a gun on Peter, threatening to shoot if the drilling isn't stopped (it would be a tough decision to have to make).  Brilliantly, the gruff Northern sailor (Michael Darlow) who's hung about in the background for the last few episodes, gets a brief turn in the limelight as he mouths off to the cowardly Scandinavian.

Heroic Mark manages to sneak behind the Doc and disarm him - but dastardly Dr Carey's blown up the bathyscape controls, meaning they're all trapped far beneath sea level.  Well actually they're not, as it's quickly established there's a button that'll make the bathyscape automatically rise back up to Aegiria.  Phew.

Dr Carey's involved in a life-or-death struggle outside the dome with young Janet Slayton, but Mark comes to the rescue once more and apprehends her (it turns out she's actually the niece of International Metals chief and enemy agent Sir George Smith).  We get some wonderful wonky "underwater" visuals (including much use of bits of transparent plastic waved in front of the camera), and a great Scooby-Doo moment for our villainess.

"If it hadn't been for YOU I might have succeeded!"

The serial ends in gloriously cosy fashion with the goodies all gathered round to watch Peter demonstrating the amazing powers of the phoenicium.  "Mission accomplished!" chortles Captain Payne in his avuncular way.  Everybody laughs.

Next in our Lucarotti line-up, it's tonight's visit to the Ghost Squad.

Tonight, Tony Miller poses as a showbiz agent handling the visiting Bassrai State Dancers.  Here they are in their delightful national costume, and here's Tony getting a wolf-whistle from one if them - this is obviously in the script but still manages to throw Neil Hallett off his stride "Well, that was infra... individualistic, anyway."

As Bassrai's a Soviet state there's obviously some skullduggery connected with the dancers, and the skullduggerers-in-chief are Olaf Pooley as impresario Kobelik (looking as much like a Soviet impresario as it's humanly possible to) and Harry Towb with a ridiculous toupee (and even more ridiculous "baddie" facial expressions) as Bassrai embassy official Feyer.

They have a plan to lure errant Colonel Radiv (George Pravda), who now lives in London and is a friend of Ghost Squad's Geoffrey Stock, back to Bassrai to stand trial by convincing him the daughter he's believed dead for years is actually still alive.  They do this by putting the dancers' interpreter, Ilse Virany (Anneke Wills lookalike Jacqueline Ellis) up to reading out certain key phrases to him over the phone.

The Menacing Mazurka's great fun, and Lucarotti supplies plenty of twists and turns to keep it interesting, the most dramatic being the revelation (spoiler, sorry) that Virany actually is the Colonel's daughter, while the dancer who's been begging Miller to help her escape from Kobelik's clutches is in fact a Bassraian government agent.

Stuntman Ray Austin turns up again, this time as a karate chopping henchman of Feyer, and this means Neil Hallett gets into another terribly exciting fight with him.

My favourite guest character this week is the all-too-briefly-seen society matron Mrs Marquand-Forster (Ruth Lodge), a scatterbrained patron of the arts who takes rather a shine to Superintendent Stock (though she regularly refers to him as "Mr Spock").

We take a break now from the writings of Mr Lucarotti as Mr Johnny Speight provides more chortlesome adventures for Messrs Haynes and Parsons.

Since the bizarre, brilliant train sketch a couple of weeks ago the standard format for the show's opening sketch has Arthur as a strange man terrorising Parsons.  The setting for this week's variation on the theme is a hotel room, where a newly arrived guest...

The watching eye is, of course, Weirdo Arthur's.  He bursts in and demands to know if the hotel staff have been talking about him.  He insists they should have, as he has a compulsion to borrow money from other guests and not pay it back, read their mail, and flirt with their wives (Nicholas doesn't have a wife but "if you must know, I have a lady that I write to").  Arthur shows off how flexible his nose has become from years of being punched by angry husbands.

He also has the keys to every room.  And what's worse, he's found a photo of Parsons' lady friend:  "Blimey! Ain't she ugly? Her nose is spread all over her face, look!".

The pattern on those curtains is Calyx, by Lucienne Day

The sketch ends with Arthur luring Parsons into looking through a keyhole, at which point he reveals he's actually the hotel detective and hauls his befuddled straight man off.  It's enjoyable enough  but really just a replay of the train sketch - only missing the genuine menace that made it so brilliant.

The closing sketch is even more bizarre.  Arthur and Dermot have headed to the beach for a spot of busking.  The conversation, naturally, turns to their brains.  A psychiatrist once told Arthur he had a very big one, but he's doubtful Dermot's got one at all.  Dermot insists that he simply doesn't use his brains, as he might need them for an emergency.

The tramps get thruppence from an old lady they then scare off, but it's quickly taken by the deckchair attendant.

"What am I gonna do with this bit of paper?" asks Dermot, waving his deckchair ticket about - Arthur responds with a deeply meaningful glance.

For some reason there's a great big unexploded mine on the beach - Arthur suggests they should try and earn a bob or two by selling it to a country that wants to start a war.  Dermot suggests selling it to the IRA.  Initially Arthur's patriotism won't allow this, but Dermot manages to convince him it would be more patriotic than selling it to China: "My sister went out with an Irish bloke once, so I suppose I do have a bit of Irish blood in me," he muses.  It's not to be, however, as the sketch unexpectedly ends with Arthur and Dermot managing to blow it, and themselves, up.

I'm hoping that next week's show will continue the tramps' adventures in heaven, with them winding up various stuffy, Nicholas Parsons-shaped celestial authority figures.  It doesn't seem very likely though.

Tonight's musical spot is occupied by Kathy Kirby and her famously glossy lips.  She certainly gives her lungs a good old workout.

Now back to Lucarottiland for the final programme of the evening and the last in the present series of The Avengers.  As well as its writer, this episode shares Secret Beneath the Sea's director, Kim Mills - ABC's clearly getting good value out of the pair of them.

Uniquely, this episode has its own title card

As with The Menacing Mazurka, John Lucarotti has plotted Killer Whale superbly, piquing our interest straight away but taking a while to fully explain what it's all about.  We start off by finding out that Steed's invested in a boxing gym run by Sam "Pancho" Driver, who we can tell straight away is a dodgy character because he's played by the great Patrick Magee.

Pats Magee & Macnee

Magee gives quite a low-key performance by his standards, though as usual even when he's silent his incredible eyebrows do the talking for him.

Next, Steed encourages Cathy to become manager to aspiring boxer Joey Frazer, one of the  nice young men she's been teaching judo to down at the local youth club  (the idea of Cathy surrounding herself with athletic young men is a startling but strangely attractive one).    She and Joey (Kenneth Farrington, Coronation Street's Billy Walker) seem to have quite a close relationship - a series of adventures with these two akin to Steed's with Venus Smith might have been fun.

I've been documenting TV toplessness quite assiduously up to this point but with all the boxers in this episode there's far too much for me to keep up.  There's a young man on the right here who especially caught my eye, though.

Anyway, so far it's an enjoyable sporting drama, but why on Earth are the Avengers involved? Pancho's anger at Joey using a very strange-smelling bar of soap adds to the intrigue, as does Steed's visit to couturier/perfumier Monsieur Fernand (John Bailey).  Steed hastily insists that the ladies' outfits he's interested in purchasing are for his niece.

The connection between Fernand and Pancho turns out to be that Pancho's an ambergris smuggler (for anyone not in the know, ambergris is a substance pooed or occasionally puked out by whales that's used in perfume-making), and Fernand - who has an illegal perfume-making business - is his client.  Well, it makes a change from secrets being smuggled out of the country again, at any rate.

One of my favourite things about Killer Whale is Cathy's amazing new flat, complete with sliding front door that she can open with the touch of a button.

Another is Monsieur Fernand's assistant/girlfriend Angela (Julie Paulle) with her very dramatic hair and makeup and underwritten illicit romance with perfume lab technician Christopher Coll.

I'll leave this series of The Avengers with an image of Cathy Gale doing what she does best: tossing a bloke around.

The Avengers will return in the Autumn.  Next week sees the start of an exciting new series from ABC, The Human Jungle.

Saturday 16 March 1963

Secret Beneath the Sea takes a turn for the Whodunnit this week, with Mark Bannerman nearly killed by a mysterious assailant when he follows Dr Deraad out on to the guyot (the underwater garden outside Aegiria), where the nefarious geologist has buried his stolen disc of phoenicium.  Who could this second treacherous character be? Even Deraad's surprised to find he has an accomplice.  Incidentally, the effect when anyone goes outside the city is charming - a tank in front of the camera fills up with water while the actor, in scuba gear, wobbles about to make it look like they're being submerged.

An aqualung is discovered in Professor Gordon's equipment cupboard.  The exasperated Scotsman denies all knowledge, and as Captain Payne's key to the cupboard's been stolen he may well be speaking the truth. Everyone's a suspect, even Janet.  The fact that Professor Soobiah is looking more and more suspicious, and is now accompanied by sinister music, inclines me to think he may be a red herring.

Dr Ellen Carey is Mark's prime suspect, though an explosion that destroys her lab shakes that theory a bit.  Fortunately she's only knocked unconscious, and very little damage is done to her hairdo.

We get another exciting glimpse of the Aegiria canteen this week, with different tea drinking extras for good measure.

The most enjoyable part of the episode comes when Captain Payne gathers everybody together (including the two old men from the canteen who we've never seen before) in Poirot fashion.

Payne informs them there's a would-be murderer in their midst, but sadly doesn't announce who it is.  Instead he informs them that due to the various dodgy events that have taken place, the UN are pulling out of Aegiria and their place will be taken by International Metals Ltd.  As this company's headed by Deraad's wicked employer Sir George Smith the reasons behind the sabotage suddenly become clear.

The episode ends with a great (if hackneyed) cliffhanger as Deraad enters his cabin to find the other spy.  But who is it? We'll find out in next week's final instalment.

"So... so, it is YOU!"

The last two weeks' episodes of Ghost Squad have been a bit out of the ordinary, and all the better for it.  This week we're back in rather more bog-standard territory.

"I have a feeling British science is about to lose one of its most respected figures," says one of Britain's most respected scientists, shortly before crashing his car, killing his wife and critically injuring himself.  His name is Sir David Andrews.

Sir David is the world's most distinguished intelligence scientist, and has been working on "the magic bullet" - a rifle bullet with a nuclear warhead.  However, some of the project's secrets seem to have leaked out - is it possible he could be a traitor? And was the car crash really an accident?

The Ghost Squad enlist the help of Sir David's brother-in-law Professor Baker, the president of the International Scientific Association.  He's enjoyably played by David Markham as the archetypal absent-minded professor - his reaction to the squad's plan for Nick Craig to go undercover at the association's convention as a Canadian scientist in order to find who could have got the information from Sir David is "Extraordinary minds you chaps have... is it really necessary to be so dramatic?"

The star of this scene, however, is Anthony Marlowe's spectacularly unruly hair.

Michael Quinn is again best in the episode's comic moments, doodling away during the long speeches at the conference and desperately trying to avoid any conversations relating to science in any way.

Craig discovers a shady trio of Central American scientists who seem likely suspects, led by Consuela Ibanez, played by the great Mary Morris as a dodgy, vaguely Hispanic version of her character from A for Andromeda (Morris's Andromeda co-star Maurice Hedley's also in this episode, as Sir William of the MOD).  We're told that Dr Ibanez is 38 - hopefully it's not too uncharitable to point out that Morris was 10 years older than this at the time, and certainly looks it.  Perhaps the implication is supposed to be that life as a Mexican scientist is a particularly gruelling one.  It's also implied that Craig is rather attracted to the distinctly butch Ibanez, which comes as a bit of a surprise.

It turns out (sorry for the spoiler) that Professor Baker is himself the traitor in league with Ibanez and chums, driven by insane jealousy of his to sabotage his brother-in-law's work.  David Markham's terrified facial expressions on realising he's about to be exposed are especially brilliant.

A nice thing about The Magic Bullet is that Jean Carter gets a lot more to do than usual.  She's also undercover, as a telephone operator at the hotel where the conference is taking place.  I love the extra who plays her colleague - looking exactly as you'd expect a 1960s telephone operator to - and the mysterious expression of disgust with which she greets the headset Jean hands over to her.

Rather wonderfully, Jean even gets to show her mettle as a Ghost Squad operative by coolly facing down the treacherous prof.

Last week's Arthur Haynes Show took an unexpectedly macabre turn, and I'm happy to say that the sketches this week carry on in much the same vein.

The show starts off with Nicholas Parsons visiting genial barber Arthur.  Nicholas is on his way to the big match between Rovers and Wanderers, and makes the terrible error of saying that he supports Rovers.

Arthur-as-psycho is both hilarious and genuinely menacing.  The tension in the sketch is slightly dissipated though when, as they so often do, Haynes and Parsons manage to crack each other up.

Next, Arthur's attempt to make a crepe Suzette goes a little bit wrong.

At this stage, the rest of the show's usually got over pretty quickly, to allow for an extended sketch with tramps Arthur and Dermot - these sketches have by now become a mini-sitcom in their own right.  This week they've made their home in a belfry, where Arthur shows off to Dermot the new nutcrackers he managed to get off the National Health.

There follows a typically surreal conversation about their acquaintance Hairy Willy and his even hairier daughter, former circus performers.  Dermot finds the life of a sideshow performer an attractive one.

"I often wish I was a bit freakish looking"

The pair's conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Parsons, who intends to commit suicide by jumping from the belfry.  The tramps' initial reaction is horror that the ensuing investigation might mean they get turfed out of their new home ("He's selfish, that's his what's wrong with him, he's selfish"), but then Arthur realises he could get something out of this.  His eye on a new set of clothes, he manages to convince Parsons that he could show his scorn for an uncaring world even more successfully by jumping from the bell tower in just his underwear.

Once on the ledge, Parsons suddenly gets cold feet.  Arthur, bored with Parsons' hysteria by now, pulls the bell-rope and makes the decision for him.

It's a hilarious, pitch-black sketch, and I can only hope we see our hero committing similar ingenious murders in the forthcoming weeks.  This week's musical guest is Shani Wallis (later of Oliver! fame), whose set includes an especially emphatic rendering of Variety Show favourite "Let There Be Love" (written at a time when chilli con carne was considered an extravagant dish).  Never have the words "Let there be you, let there be me" sounded so much like a threat.

And now it's time for tonight's Avengers, the penultimate episode in the present series.

The six hands of the title belong to shipbuilding magnates Sir Charles Renniston (John Wentworth), Oliver Waldner (Guy Doleman) and George Stanley (Campbell Singer), a trio of patriots determined to make Britain a great industrial power once more, and driven to the murder of a rival in order to stop his deal with a French company.

The first act of Six Hands Across a Table feels very out of the ordinary for an Avengers episode.  Steed only appears briefly, and Cathy's involvement is a bit unusual: she's staying at Waldner's country mansion as his daughter's an old schoolfriend of hers (though she seems far closer to Waldner's age).  There seems to be a romance kindling between Mrs Gale and the shipbuilder, though it's a bit alarming when he calls her by his daughter's name ("I need you, Ros") in an intimate moment.  Cathy sports an interesting new hairdo and wears an astonishing dress, so it's not surprising Waldner's had his head turned.

It's not until the second act that we learn that Cathy's presence in the Waldner household and, by implication, her romance with Oliver, have been engineered by Steed, who's on to the shipbuilders' more nefarious activities.  He cheerily climbs in through her window, but she's no time for his hi-jinks this week: "Go back outside and come through the front door like a normal, civilised person", she snaps.  Steed quite callously mocks the genuine feelings Cathy's obviously developing for Waldner, referring to him as "your handsome Harry".

"It'll all come out in the wash, Mrs Gale"

There are some excellent performances in this week's episode, with Honor Blackman particularly fine as a Cathy in torment.  Cream of the guest stars is Philip Madoc (the most prolific Avengers guest, popping up for the second time this series) as the ruthless Julian Seabrook, the real brains of Waldner and co's operation, who coolly ruins everything for them by switching his allegiances to the rival firm they've been trying to destroy.  Here's Madoc in this week's inevitable microphone-in-shot shot.

Edward De Souza plays the son of the rival who's been offed, and is surely one of The Avengers' most abused characters, acts one and two both ending with him being discovered unconscious.

There's a particularly enjoyable "Ooh, look who it is!" bit part this week, with Stephen Hancock (the future Mr Emily Bishop) as a draughtsman, delivering his lines in an impenetrable Geordie accent.

With its boardroom shenanigans manipulated by a ruthless but increasingly likeable character who ends the episode smelling of roses, Six Hands Across a Table is reminiscent of the earlier Avengers episode Bullseye, although what makes it unique is its use of Cathy as a reluctant Mata Hari who ends up falling for her victim.  Cathy's deeply upset when justice catches up with Waldner at the end of the episode, though it doesn't take long for Steed to cheer her up.

Six Hands Across a Table is also interesting for its historical value.  Shown at a time when Britain had just been refused entry to the Common Market and the country was slowly coming to terms with the loss of its empire, Reed De Rouen's forceful script is unequivocal in its judgement that those who think Britain can continue as a great power by going it alone in the world are fatally misguided.

And, if nothing else, Cathy gets a decent fight for the first time in weeks.

Be sure to tune in next week for the last episode in the current series.