Midsomer Murders: They Seek Him Here
The Pimpernel lives on! I was so amused by the fact that TSP has been borrowed as a murder mystery plot that I wasted a LoveFilm rental on the episode, just to chop it to pieces and share the fun!
Midsomer Murders, for those of you in the US who avoid PBS, or whichever channel exported programmes like this wash up on, is a detective series aimed at middle-aged ladies, starring John ‘Ventriloquist’s Dummy’ Nettles. Each week, his character, DCI Barnaby, and Sidekick investigate a suspicious amount of gruesome deaths in various quaint hamlets populated with wealthy eccentrics and repressed upper class types; he’s basically the male Jessica Fletcher of the Home Counties. I don’t watch it ... now ... but I caught the trailer for this episode earlier this year, and was tickled by the dubious honour bestowed on Orczy’s story.
Bloodthirsty mob? Check!
Gill-o-teen? Pride of place!
‘Crones and hags’(as the director terms them)? Suitably am-dram!
Prosthetic head in basket? Plop!
For a minute or two there, I thought I was watching the introduction to the 1982 Andrews-Seymour film! The ‘how’ is obvious (‘But there’s a safety catch!’), and the ‘who’ a delightful nod to the original - the director of this homicidal ‘remake of a remake of a remake’ is Jay Villiers, brother of Lord Tony (Christopher Villiers)!
Jay Villiers, brother of Lord Tony
It took me a while to twig, what with one brother’s penchant for blonde wigs and the passing of the years, but I loved the family connection when I saw his name in the credits (there, above ‘Lady Blakeney’)
And then, after suffering through more of Nettles’ tight-lipped delivery and his sidekick’s frightfully stiff accent, I was rewarded with the line ‘You wish once more to see me a lovesick suppliant at your feet ...’ The Richmond chapter! With the actual words, and everything! Played by an extra reading ‘Percy’s lines and an aging if correctly shaded ‘Marguerite’, granted, but it’s still my favourite scene. The producer-turned-director-as-director-lost-his-head prompts the actress that Lady Blakeney is ‘ferociously proud’ in this scene, and ‘determined to get [Percy] to express his feelings for you’; actress falls rigidly short of such passion, but no worse than Elizabeth McGovern in the 1998 ‘remake of a remake’.
Lady Blakeney?
Merle does Technicolor?
All in all, a fair acknowledgement, with the guillotine in a starring role. Perhaps more gore is the way to go for the next adaptation? And if a detective series can cram a quote from ‘Richmond’ into a subplot, there is now no excuse for reciting the whole thing, verbatim, in a film! (‘Is it possible that love can die?’)
Gill-o-teen
Poor Jay!