Shadow Squad: The Missing Cheese
It's not very often I stray into 1950s TV on this blog, not really for any conscious reason except that I tend to prefer the weird and wonderful offerings of the sixties and after.
This is another show that I've had on my hard drive for ages and on my list of things to get round to watching properly, and I'm delighted and also very sorry that I haven't done so so far. Shadow Squad was a series about a private detective which lasted from 1957 to 1959 (this summary is taken from televisionheaven.co.uk). The premise is that Detective Vic Steele (played by Rex Garner), fed up with red tape in the police, leaves to set up his own private detective agency, assisted by Cockney Ginger Smart (played by George Moon) and informally by his charlady Mrs Moggs (Kathleen Bouttall). Part way though Garner left and was replaced by Peter Williams, playing a former Scotland Yard DI.
This flat description places us immediately in a different world, and frankly it feels much more Dick Barton than any of the other television I've posted about here. The professional lead with the working class assistant and the char butting in now and then is so of its time.
I said that I had been made rather sad by finding out about this show and my sadness is that I am made even sadder that there are only four episodes remaining by discovering the names of the all the episodes which sound marvellous. I have always been one to judge a book by its cover and I would absolutely watch Needle in a Haystack, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, Vital Statistics, The Doll Merchant, and Solo for Ginger. I'm also sad that the final adventure no longer exists because apparently it ended with Williams and Moon investigating a murder at a TV studio only to find it is the real TV studio in which they are playing fictional characters before both breaking character and the fourth wall, introducing themselves to the viewers by their real names and walking off. This is some wild go-ahead stuff for 1959.
After the series ended George Moon starred in a show called Skyport, still as Ginger Smart, where he was in charge of security in an airport. The remaining four episodes of Shadow Squad and the single remaining one of Skyport were released by Network DVD of blessed memory. If you don't want to splash out on physical media the episodes of Shadow Squad are on YouTube - several times in variable quality and don't be deceived by the hour-long episodes, which are just the single ones repeating themselves over and over and not in good quality.
The Missing Cheese is a later adventure starring Peter Williams and following the show's characteristic format of one adventure being divided across several (two in this case) half-hour episodes, which would originally have been broadcast on separate days split over a week. I'm not going to beat about the bush here: I love this one. It's all about a theft of cheese off the bar of a country pub called the Cheddar Cheese and the way this theft leads to a broader web of crime. Plot-wise it's a classic detective story, and if you're an Anglophile who likes Agatha Christie you will love it. It's also set in a village full of great characters. I love this show and am genuinely sorry that there isn't more of it.
It's not a criticism as such because I think it's great, but I think the format of one adventure split across two episodes could be confusing. Otherwise this is intelligent, quirky television. Exactly the sort of thing this blog exists for.
For overseas readers, have a taste of life in the UK:
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