Private Detective Season: The Big M and Some Series Which Didn't Get a Post of Their Own

The Big M brings us to the end of this series of posts about private detectives on TV; it's another of the shows which I had never heard of until reading around for these posts brought it to my attention. It seems that vanishingly few other people have ever heard of it either, at least if the commentary online is anything to by. It is, however on YouTube in full, with the time counter running along the bottom which is the sure sign it's made its way onto the internet by purely unofficial means.

The Big M is about a private detective, Johnny Treherne, who runs a private detective agency which he has inherited from his deceased father in a fictional seaside town. One day Paul Hassett, who owns the local country club cum casino cum strip club, walks into his office but unfortunately dies of a heart attack before he can tell Treherne why he is there. Treherne is then approached by various interests in the town (including the police) who want to know what Hassett told Treherne before he died or else want Treherne to investigate what was happening in Hassett's dubious business interests and the town to lead to his doubtless suspicious death. Much against his better judgement, Treherne ends up investigating a protection racket in the town, and his investigation leads him to question the nature of his own father's death.

If you watch this show I would strongly advise you, if you watch the first episode and decide not to persevere with it, to try it for at least three parts. This is because (this isn't really a criticism) the show introduces a number of different elements in the first two episodes which can make it rather confusing. I suspect that this is deliberate, to make us experience the confusion that Treherne is experiencing, because then it suddenly completely redeems itself by having him summarise exactly what he is thinking, so that we know what is going on. Frankly, I wish more shows would do this! It means that there is a plot arc stretching over the first couple of episodes in which things are introduced which are continued or not in successive episodes so this show really does require an extended viewing, in my opinion.

The show doesn't hold back on the sleaze and corruption in the town which is an absolute den of iniquity of all sorts. The dog track and bowling alley are in nearly as deep as the strip club, there's endless sexy stuff going on, and then actual murder happens. True to the private detective genre a lot of the show is about Treherne's life and personality, and it's interesting how quick he is to pull his deceased prospective client's daughter up the stairs when she approaches him about her father's death! I wonder what the intended impression was at the time, because this would probably be some racy stuff for 1967. Sometimes it does feel a bit as if events, revelations and iniquities are being piled in for effect.

The characters are rather caricatured, which is another thing I think is intentional: this is essentially a fictional depiction of a seaside town absolutely chocker with iniquity, and the only literary parallel I can think of is probably found in Colin Watson's Inspector Purbright series, televised as Murder Most English. As I say, I'm not sure of the intended effect at the time, but all I can say is that this would definitely have been very racy at the time.

As I've commented before, the private eye genre isn't really about the mystery and the investigation, but more about the personalities and situation, so it's not a criticism when I say that it's a bit obvious from the start, given that the entire town is a den of iniquity, who is behind the protection racket, and also that nobody is going to come out of this well.

If I have a criticism it is that the idea that Treherne suffers from 'the bog M', meaning a spirit of manana where he really doesn't do much of anything, and which obviously gives its name to the whole series, is only really mentioned in the first part and then has no presence at all. Given that the ehtire plot hangs on him, it's obviously not true, but it means that the name of the show doesn't really represent what it's like, which is unfortunate.

Some Series Which Didn't Get Their Own Blog Posts

I must give an honourable mention to Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983-6), which is another series I'd never come across but I've been watching with enjoyment. This series is adapted from Raymond Chandler's original stories about Philip Marlowe so, as it were, draw from the source. They also keep the period setting, and for someone who doesn't like period dramas, I'm loving it. The only reason I haven't done a whole post about this series is that the only thing I've really got to say is what I've already said.

I was going to do a post about Charlie's Angels (1976-81), which would definitely fit into private detection because the blurb on the DVD boxes say the angels work in the titular Charlie's private detection agency. I have had a little difficulty with this show, particularly with the way little girls don't go to police academy, grown women do, and was going to do a post to this effect, with much mention of how they could actually be running their own agency. Unfortunately I then became hysterical when I discovered that NBC executive Paul Klein criticised the series as 'jiggle television', and just couldn't write a serious post about it. My hysteria then spread to Magnum PI (1980-8), and I'm afraid we have to be honest and admit that Magnum PI is frankly 'jiggle television' for the boys who don't like the jiggle on Charlie's Angels. Magnum lives in Masters's house for supposedly doing him a favour of some kind (no, really), with Higgins (don't start me on his accent) with whom he has one of those prickly relationships where you know they could kill each other or leap into bed at any moment. Given that Charlie's Angels was obviously made for heterosexual male eyes, I can't see how you can claim that for Magnum PI, when the 'eye candy' is Tom Selleck's hairy chest and little shorts. Anyway, when I stopped laughing, I realised I was in no position to write a sensible detective post about Magnum PI.

I've really liked this series of posts, and particularly that doing it has once again introduced me to a couple of series which I didn't previously know existed.

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