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Six dynamic businessmen of
major city companies have died suddenly and mysteriously; the
last, Todhunter, collapsed clutching his chest whilst giving an
address to his company's board. At first, all that Mrs Peel and
John Steed have to go on is that all six shared the same merchant
banker — Henry Boardman. Following up this lead, Steed goes along
to Boardman's, posing as an investor, and gets on so well that
Boardman invites him to a private dinner party, as well as
recommending a broker for the investment, Frederick Yuill.
Meanwhile, Mrs Peel gets the less glamorous task of visiting
Macombie's Funeral Parlour, the undertakers that handled
Todhunter's funeral. She discovers that something has gone missing
from the body — a pen-sized electronic pager, designed to work
over short distances. Todhunter wore this in his left-hand jacket
pocket, which Emma finds suspicious especially as Macombie recalls
that the only mark on the body was a small bruise above the heart.
At Boardman's suggestion, Steed
meets with the broker, Yuill, a fishing enthusiast whose office is
awash with angling paraphernalia, stuffed fish lining the walls.
Steed questions Yuill about "put options" and learns that this is
a type of share dealing where the shareholder calculates when
shares are about to fall in price, sells them, but retains an
option to buy them back at the new lower price whilst pocketing
the difference. Anyone owning shares in Todhunter's, for example,
could have benefitted in this way as, in common with the other
cases, Todhunter's stocks fell dramatically when the chairman
died. When Yuill has to attend to unexpected business, he asks his
secretary, Susanne, to show Steed some investment prospects. While
she is doing this, Steed asks her about Ben Jago, a financial
high-flier with a remarkable reputation in the field of put
options. It transpires that Jago is a client of Yuill's and Steed
decides that Jago is definitely a suspect. Steed engineers a
chance meeting with Jago in "The Bull and Bear", a city bar
frequented by those in high finance. Steed makes himself known to
Jago, seeks his advice and makes it abundantly clear that if there
are any fiddles on the go, he wants to be part of them. Meanwhile,
Mrs Peel visits Warner's Answering Service, who supply the
bleepers to people in the city. While there, a technician, Fitch,
is working on a fuse box, and Emma asks after him as she feels she
has seen him before. According to Mr Warner, Fitch is the
company's resident mechanic, something of a genius, in fact.
However, her main focus is on the bleepers... and why the company
hadn't had Todhunter's bleeper returned to them, following the
man's death.
Steed attends a dinner party
thrown by the Boardmans, where he meets the merchant banker's
partner, John Harvey, and is introduced to Boardman's wife, Ruth.
She enquires as to the nature of Steed's business with her
husband, and, linking his arms in hers, drags him off to meet
another client of the company — Emma Peel, who has spun a yarn
just having arrived from Barbados. Toying with her, Steed wonders
why she has no tan — "it's the rainy season", she quickly retorts.
One guest is late for the get-together — Yuill has been working
late at the office, and rather than return home, he has brought a
tuxedo along so he can change for the party. However, after
putting the jacket on, he is horrified to find a bleeper in the
pocket. Before he can remove it, it is activated and he cries out
in pain, dying sprawled out across his office desk. Back at the
party, the guests lament Yuill's non-appearance, and Steed
prepares to leave, suggesting he can give Mrs Peel a lift home.
The Boardmans insist that Emma stays for a while, so Steed leaves
alone. On his way to collect his car from the basement car park,
Steed comes under attack from two men on motorcycles who try to
run him down. He is lucky to survive, which is more than can be
said for one of the bikers, who crashes into a packing crate and
breaks his neck. The other man drives off into the night after
Steed starts shooting at him. Having heard the fracas, Emma
arrives, and they take a closer look at the dead man — Steed
recognises him as a waiter employed by Yuill. Investigating, they
go to Yuill's office, where they find Yuill's body. It is clear
that he has died in the same manner as Todhunter — they must be on
the right track.
Steed realises where he has
seen Ruth Boardman before — in the bar of "The Bull and Bear",
enjoying what was plainly a secret tryst with Ben Jago. Steed
makes a mental note of this, and decides that he and Mrs Peel
should attend the wine-tasting event that they have been invited
to by the Boardmans. He is sure that they are up to their necks
not only in the deaths, but also the bikers' attack in the garage
beneath the Boardman's penthouse flat. At the wine-tasting party
in the basement of Boardman's Bank, Steed and Henry Boardman
engage in a touch of gentlemanly competition, as Boardman
challenges Steed to guess the vintage of a particular wine. Steed
impresses, and even jokingly refers to his gold hunter watch as he
ruminates on both the wine and its year. Unbeknownst to Steed, he
is being watched by Fitch of Warner's Answering Service, via a
closed circuit television system. Fitch is fascinated by Steed's
gold watch, and reaches inside a drawer, removing a hunter watch
identical to Steed's. Shortly afterwards, John Harvey receives a
delivery of bleepers from Warner. He tips them out on the desk and
shows them to Mrs Peel, explaining that his business partner
Henry plans to encourage their use in the City. After Emma and
Harvey have left the room to join Boardman for a cup of tea, Ruth
enters and removes something hidden in the packaging — Fitch's
gold hunter watch, wrapped in tissue paper... Later that night, in
his flat, Steed is visited by Ruth Boardman, ostensibly to thank
him for his discretion in not mentioning her meeting with Jago to
her husband. However, the real reason for her visit is revealed
when she tricks Steed into pouring her a drink, and prepares to
switch Steed's gold hunter watch for the one supplied by Fitch...
Ruth Boardman switches the
watches. When Steed returns, she is composed and assumes an
innocent air. After she has left, Steed readies himself for a
rendezvous at "The Bull and Bear" with Emma Peel. However, Emma
has taken investigations into her own hands, and breaks into
Warner's Answering Service under the cover of darkness. She finds
herself in Fitch's workshop, the walls of which are covered in
clocks of all shapes and sizes — all stopped. She finds some blown
up photographs of Steed, and particularly, of his gold hunter
watch. Fitch enters and surprises Mrs Peel. He holds a gun to her
head, and explains that he has rigged a replica of the watch with
explosives, and the copy has now been planted on Steed. The clocks
around the room each represent a person, and the time that they
died at Fitch's hands. There is one for each of the company
directors and another has been reserved for Steed. Mrs Peel's
intrusion has presented Fitch with a problem, however — he has
never killed a woman before. It soon becomes clear that he
relishes the opportunity. Mrs Peel's absence has not gone
unnoticed by John Steed, who keeps toying with his watch. One
wrong move and he's history... Before long, he too has done a bit
of breaking and entering — and sits in the darkened lounge in the
Boardmans' penthouse, and surprises the returning Ruth Boardman.
Apprehensively, she notices Steed is swinging the watch on its
chain. He pretends to open it, and elicits the response he
expected of Ruth — she desperately tries to stop him. He has
outmanoeuvred her and learns from her that Fitch is at the heart
of the plot. He arrives at Warner's and bursts in on Fitch. Steed
suggests Fitch repair his watch, which he simply can't get to
open. Fitch nervously backs away and hides behind a bench, fearing
an explosion. Steed finds Emma tied up in a cupboard, but before
he can untie her, Fitch comes at Steed brandishing a bicycle-pump
gun. Momentarily distracted by a clock chiming, Fitch is flung
into the wall by Steed, the pump gun exploding, killing the
mechanic outright. In the aftermath, Steed leaves to follow up a
hunch... and in a most ungentlemanly fashion, leaves Mrs Peel
tied up, demanding he release her at once!
Steed ungallantly departs,
leaving Emma to look for something sharp with which to cut herself
free. Steed takes a taxi and considers the suspects. Clearly,
Fitch had invented the bleepers, but his was obviously not the
mind behind the scheme as a whole. Who could it be? Boardman?
Jago? Harvey? Warner? Or all of them? He spent the next few hours
planting bleepers on each man, and waited for their reactions.
Warner was puzzled — no more — to find the pager, Boardman
likewise. Harvey, however, is furious, and Jago is equally
implicated by his actions — feeling that he has been betrayed by
his co-conspirators. Steed has indeed set one against another, as
Jago storms out of "The Bull and Bear" and heads towards
Boardmans, hoping to find Harvey there. However, when he arrives,
Harvey is absent. Instead he finds Boardman going through Harvey's
papers. Ruth Boardman has broken down after her visit from Steed,
and has told her husband that Harvey is involved in an underhand
plot. Jago reveals that he too is in on the plot, and that Ruth
had been most helpful. Between them they had hatched a plan to
make a financial killing, utilising the ruthless Fitch's
mechanical genius. They disposed of the various company directors
with bleepers adapted to inject a lethal drug into their hearts,
then used the put-options to make their fortunes. They are
interrupted by the arrival of Ruth Boardman. An argument ensues,
and in the aftermath, Ruth and Boardman are shot dead by Jago.
Steed and Emma — who has finally released herself from Fitch's
bonds — arrive at the Boardmans' office, to find the bodies.
Shortly afterwards, in the Boardmans' wine cellar, Jago confronts
Harvey, but both soon realise that they have been duped, each made
to think the other was planning their death. All the clues point
to John Steed... and he duly arrives with Mrs Peel, intent on
wrapping things up. Harvey and Jago are defeated following a
shoot-out in the wine cellar, with each being rendered
unconscious. Steed and Mrs Peel leave in a taxi, drinking vintage
bordeaux. Mrs Peel takes great pleasure in guessing its type, the
vineyard and the year. Steed is very impressed until Emma lets on
that she read the label! |
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It is somewhat unfortunate that
I chose Dial A Deadly Number to review, for it is one of my
favourites in film form, and so I was perhaps harder on it than I
might have been on one of the Tara-to-Emma conversions such as
Not To Be Sneezed At (a.k.a. You'll Catch Your Death).
And while I did find much to criticise, to my pleasant surprise I
found much more to commend.
Let's get the bad news out of
the way first, shall we? While I fully realise that creating
all-new stories would have been impractical for multiple reasons,
I still found it disappointing that the radio series only rehashed
pre-existing material rather than build on the legacy in some
unique way. Of course, I say this as a twenty-first-century
listener with the unfair advantage of having had the entire series
at my fingertips since its premiere (initially as audio
recordings, then off-air videos from the 80s through to the recent
A&E releases), not to mention having many episodes virtually
committed to memory. Contrast this with the period audience (in 1970s
South Africa) for whom no such archive was available; indeed, most
listeners would not have even known of the TV series. Thus my
argument is likely moot.
The same "unnatural" listening
conditions of this present-day, AV-equipped fan gave rise to two
peculiarities. Listening to an entire episode's worth of
installments in one sitting makes for an overly-long program (an
admittedly feeble complaint, as I surely could have stopped the
playback at any time!). Also, hearing the last scene of one
installment back-to-back with the teaser of the next emphasised
how the same scene was rendered in two often wildly different
versions, which was rather disconcerting. While a twenty-three and
three quarter hour separation might lessen the effect, some of the
differences were so acute that I suspect it would still be
noticeable.
To be honest, I was not
especially fond of Diane Appleby's Emma — her excessive
inflections quickly grew annoying, and the only blessing was that
she didn't have that much dialogue. It took a while to get used to
Steed, not because it wasn't Patrick Macnee, but because Donald
Monat's soft, round, veddy British voice was often lost amidst a
sea of other soft, round, veddy British voices. Some of the
characterisations were quite odd — Ruth Boardman, for instance,
was reminiscent of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. And
some of the music cues were downright baffling — to wit: someone
has just been murdered; cue the happy, trippy guitar music!
End of carping. Time to praise.
Hearing it for the first time I was initially struck by a warm
rush of nostalgia. It seemed as if I was listening to a troupe of
pilgrims reading a form of scripture to the people of an alien
world; I found myself mentally reciting along with the actors
those lines that survived the radio adaptation intact. I might
have been tempted to remark that the sound effects were laughably
lame, but even if this wasn't deliberate, it instead added to the
charm. In all, it was a genuine treat slipping back to the days of
good radio entertainment — something of a lost art in both the
performing and the appreciating.
Although some radio serial
aficionados might rate the show as average, if it is true that
there were no rehearsals and that everything was read "cold," then
this program stands as a testament to the startlingly fine talent
of the performers involved. With precious few exceptions, the
delivery and timing were spot on — I dare say it seemed generally
more polished than some of the Cathy Gale TV episodes. While my
overall attitude is almost certainly skewed to some degree by my
being a fan of The Avengers, and further skewed by the
delightful privilege of just being able to hear such incredibly
rare material, I do believe that lesser programs have been granted
more respect.
I cannot close this critique
without giving thanks. Alan and Alys Hayes have, through an act of
pure love, rescued and restored a true treasure. The world is
indebted to them, and I am grateful for having the opportunity to
share their adventure in some small way.
David K. Smith |
