Paul Temple: The Guilty Must Die

You can tell that this is a late episode of this series, because it only survives as a black and white telerecording, which is obviously how it has been released. It is slightyly disorientating that through the vicissitudes of programme survival the later episodes as we have them are in black and white and the earlier in colour. This episode was broadcast on August 4th 1971, and there's a reason I'm uncharacteristically inserting that little detail here, which will become apparent later.

The plot is that Paul's wife Steve meets Ann Molyneux, an old friend and discovers that she is gettting remarried. The problem is that her fiance is a very obvious crook, Peter Blane (played by Patrick Mower), who runs a second hand car sales business with his henchman Alex Trimmer. After Blane also starts getting flirty with her, Steve looks into what is actually happening here, and discovers that both men are literal crooks so on one level this is the classic tale of a friend who knows a friend is dating a wrong 'un and is faced with the difficult task of communicating this to them. However it's played very much as a straightforward case of detection. From the point of view of the series it is an unusual episode because Temple is away on his own completing a novel so Steve teams up with their friend Sammy Carson (played by George Sewell) to solve the mystery of why Ann wants to marry someone as obviously completely crooked as Peter Blane.

As well as the quandary for Steve who is concerned for her friend's well being, the episode also presents another interesting quandary. Ann basically offers to bankroll a substantial improvement in Blane's business and living standard so that he is essentially dependent on her, and then gives him an ultimatum to get rid of his business partner Trimmer, indicating that he will lose her funds if he doesn't. Apart from the mystery element this is a show which has a genuinely quality, layered plot plot. It also has a lot twist at the end which could give you whip lash. On this occasion I'm not going to give the plot twist away because I would love readers to see this show without knowing.

Patrick Mower is best known to me personally as a detective character in both Special Branch and Target, and this episode is actually the perfect vehicle for the slightly narcissistic personality he often depicts in his roles. He could just as well have been an estate agent or builder, but he fits this role perfectly.

Something I particularly like is the culmination of the show in the breakers' yard. If you're interested in that sort of thing the car used to conclude the matter was badged in the UK as a Hillman Avenger and was one of the very first cars designed using a computer. It was also sold internationally, so you may recognise it under various other names elsewhere. They haven't survived the British weather and road salt very well and now are vanishingly rare, however.

And yet...this episode is the perfect example of the problem of familiar faces in TV shows at this time, which I keep banging on about. Both Mower and Sewell are instantly recognisable characters in themselves and it's a bit disorientating seeing them cast on opposite sides in this episode when a few years later they were cast as partners in the later series of Special Branch (1973-4). I'm perhaps being slightly unreasonable in implying that they shouldn't have been cast opposite each other in one show because of the other. However I see that the shows in which both men appeared separately or together include, as well as the two I've already listed: The Adventurer, The Sweeney, UFO, Tales of the Unexpected, Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, and Minder. Mower and Sewell were all over the telly for about three decades continuously and really could have given someone else a go!

I wonder whether there is a possible criticism which isn't so personal, which is that it feels rather as if Paul suddenly appears and produces the solution out of a hat to the amazement of Steve and Carson, who have actually been involved from the beginning. However I'm not even really sure this criticism has any validity at all, because I wasn't watching it with a notebook getting all the clues.

All in all, this is an unusual episode of this show, involving a number of different dilemnas for the characters, and is solved as a fairly straightforward detective show.

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