Saturday, April 21, 2012

Naive Avengersthon - 63. The Gravediggers

The radar sabotage theme returns from Traitor in Zebra and Dressed to Kill, but, in keeping with the less serious style of this series, it's based on equipment hidden in graves (and interred with all due ceremony). Mrs Peel is undercover as a nurse, and Steed visits Sir Horace Winslip (Ronald 'Joseph C' Fraser), a rich eccentric railway fanatic. The link is pretty tenuous (Sir Horace is funding the hospital because he thinks it's being used to treat railwaymen) but somehow the two 'this will look great' concepts don't jar at all.

The scenes at 'Winslip Junction' are delightful, with Sir Horace's butler rolling scenery past the static carriage windows and playing locomotive sound effects discs. It's a lot more convincing than some of the back projections we've seen in this series.

But even better is the chase on Sir Horace's railway, with Mrs Peel tied to the tracks, villains looking as grim as anyone can when perched on a 1/6 scale train, all set to plinky-plonky silent movie piano. I even wondered if the film had been speeded up a bit for real authenticity. Now this is the kind of 'not taking it seriously' that I can enjoy. It made me quite forget the way that the maintenance of the jamming electronics is performed with all the trappings of a surgical operation, for no-one's benefit but the viewer.

An extra pleasure to find that Malcolm Hulke was at the typewriter.

Previously seen: Aubrey 'Professor Parry' Richards, Wanda 'Thea Ransome' Ventham as the lovely Nurse Spray, Steven 'yes apparently it is him' Berkoff. Victor Platt, who I think is the radar expert in Checkmate. And blink and you'll miss him, but Bryan 'Alf Roberts' Mosley.