Shoestring: Find the Lady
Absolutely delighted to be writing about this episode of Shoestring, because in many ways it's going to result in a blog post different from any I've ever done before. The reason for that is (and you will see this given as a criticism of the episode, although not really by me) is that Eddie Shoestring (Trevor Eve), the private ear, is essentially crowded out of the show by a guest cast of so many big names that even I'm obliged not to criticise. This is of course a reversal of my usual policy, where I'm annoyed by familiar faces appearing, because these are all great characters or actors, and so the plot rather tends to fade into the background next to them.
The plot is essentially about a man who has been kicked out of a band by the manager. Both he and the manager were sleeping with the same woman, and he's now convinced that the manager has killed their mutual girlfriend. The lead singer of the band asks Eddie Shoestring to get involved and find out what has actually happened to stop this rumbling on, but Eddie finds out that something else completely has been going on. Since this is a show involving a band this post has a soundtrack, which is going to have to come early so here it is:
The singer in the band, called Toola, is played by our first star, Toyah Willcox. As it happens she was born in Birmingham, so is of course going to be gifted and one of the nicest and kindest people you could ever wish to meet, and I'm not even biased. As well as her music she's also done loads of film and TV, although the work the classic TV audience may be most familiar with is appearances in Tales of the Unexpected, Second City Firsts, the 1979 Quatermass series, Minder, and an appearance with Kenny Everett. As I say, this episode isn't quite the problem I have with wondering who familiar faces are, these are big stars who are definitely themselves fully present, and to my surprise I love it. Toyah has a presence which is undeniable and there's no point pretending.
But the actor whose presence everyone comments on in this episode is Christopher Biggins as the dodgy band manager. He is perhaps best known to the cult TV community for his early roles in Porridge, Upstairs Downstairs, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lands, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, and I Claudius. However it is apparent from his Wikipedia page that by the 1980s he was being asked in interviews whether he regretted being type cast as a bubbly character on children's television, and since Shoestring his career has ended up in the utter dead end of pantomime; here he is (with John Inman) in the sort of role in which he is best known in Britain:
Yes, I know, they've cast an actor now best known as a pantomime dame as a sort of gangster manager who is supposed to have killed a woman he was sleeping with. Now, I do realise that when he was in Shoestring he probably hadn't been a pantomime dame yet, but the association since then means that his casting in the role now makes this association hilarious. I'm not going to lie, it's worth watching this episode to watch Christopher Biggins, who is only ever really Widow Twankey, acting butch and threatening people. I honestly don't think he ever had the weight necessary for the role, and was certainly miscast, but he is so badly miscast that it's entertaining.
To be fair, I always think it's a sign an actor's career is on the skids if they do pantomime (and in fact since then he's been reduced to Big Brother), but in his early days he did some fantastically varied work. He was in a couple of sex comedies, The Sex Thief and Eskimo Nell. I have seen Eskimo Nell and have no recollection of him in it, so will have to rewatch it. In even more varied work he was in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Derek Jarman's The Tempest, so had a wild and varied career at one time. His most recent work has tended to revolve around being a 'celebrity', although I would strongly recommend seeing him in Psychoville, where he is absolutely perfect.
'Mole', the man who got kicked out of the band and is convinced Christopher Biggins has committed murder, is played to perfection by the tragic Gary Holton. He was a musician and actor, probably best known for his role in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, and sadly died at the age of 33 in 1985 after his own struggles with addiction. I see that his work on Auf Wuedersehem Pet was incomplete and the producers kept him in the show by editing dialogue already recorded and using body doubles so that he continued to appear in the second series after his death. Unfortunately the Mole character dies of an overdose in this episode, in his flat about the tattooist.
As if this wasn't enough, we have Mick Jagger's brother Chris, and national treasure, mother to the Oxo family, Linda Bellingham, in an uncharacteristic slight role in a bathing suit. Again, in yet another sad story for the cast of this episode, while she was on ads as the mother of the happiest family in the country, she was in an abusive marriage and felt she couldn't do anything about it because of the effect this might have on her reputation as the Oxo mum.
You will readily understand that the array of talent rather overshadows everything else, but honestly in this case I don't dislike it. The episode is also unusual in that rather than its usual Bristol setting it takes place in nearby Weston-super-Mare. There's another Birmingham connection because it is the seaside place in England which is closest to Birmingham and so we call it Birmingham-on-Sea. In fact there was a time when shopkeepers used to keep in sterilised milk (which they called 'Birmingham milk') just for visiting Brummies because the locals didn't drink it and you have to wonder what's wrong with them.
Anyway, the slightly seedy seaside setting of pier, tattooist and the seasonal workers, is a wonderful setting for a Shoestring. I really like this as a setting for Shoestring, it's subtly different to the sort of city cases he normally gets around Bristol and you honestly can't beat the seaside as a setting for quiet desperation.
As I said at the top of this lengthy post there are two common criticisms of this episode made on the internet, one is that Shoestring himself is rather crowded out of the episode by the talent in the cast, and the other is that the ending can feel a bit rushed. I'm not sure I agree with them. My own real criticism would be that Christopher Biggins is wildly miscast as baddie, although as you know by now, this act of miscasting is so bad that it's brillian and honestly it's worth watching this show to watch Biggins being big and bad.
And that's it. A different episode of Shoestring which has uncharacteristically made me focus on the guest cast and not mind! It is striking that so many of them have had some sort of tragedy in their life (in fact Biggins appearing on Celebrity Come Dine with Me is a relative high)
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