Criticism, journalism, rhetoric and advertising of an imaginative dramatic art
by Tim Crook
Monday 21st August 2006
BBC Radio 4 FM only 11.30 a.m.
Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery
Third episode of Eight - Introducing Colonel Marquand. At the Villa Negara, events take a mysterious and dangerous turn. Written by Francis Durbridge
Cast
Paul: Crawford Logan
Steve: Gerda Stevenson
Miss Fraser: Eliza Langland
Harold: Richard Greenwood
Col Marquand: Angus Macinnes
Olaf: Nick Underwood
Victor: Michael Mackenzie
Producer/Director: Patrick Rayner
This was repro radio drama taking us back to an institution in British radio detective serials.
'Send for Paul Temple' started in 1938 and continued to be on the air until 1968. The contemporary production retains the famous signature tune - Vivian Ellis's 'Coronation Scot', although the Sunday Times critic Paul Donovan informs me that the original tune in the late 30s was Ravel's 'Scheherezade'. I was not around to hear it.
This was the BBC's way of sustaining the 20th century middle class fantasy of mystery and danger, travel and glamour through a central character who had been to Rugby School, Magdalen College, Oxford and in his spare time offered his smooth genius to Scotland Yard to solve crime mysteries. Paul Temple was a mid century Sherlock Holmes of the radio, more emotionally adjusted than Conan Doyle's hero and married to Louise Harvey; aka journalist Steve Trent. A slightly more heterosexual detective pairing than the bachelor combination of Holmes and Watson. The Director/Producer Patrick Rayner and cast preserve the style, nostalgia and atmosphere and make no attempt to transplant the central detective into 21st century English cultural ambience. As a result you feel as if you are experiencing a British black and white film of a John Buchan novel. The direction and acting avoids sending up the characterisation, dialogue and immediate postwar mise en scène.
One of Britain's finest radio actors, Crawford Logan, has to follow a legacy of six previous Paul Temples: Hugh Morton, Carl Bernard, Barry Morse, Howard Marion Crawford, Kim Peacock and Peter Coke. Gerda Stevenson purrs in the legacy of playing the role of Steve Trent that once belonged to Bernadette Hodgson and Marjorie Westbury. Logan and Stevenson are more than up to the task. Stevenson actually deserves an award for delivering the line: ‘Are you really a Count? Well I’m a Duchess. Drive us to El Pesaro!’ without any hint of postmodern irony.
The test of effective detective serial listening is whether the audience can be orientated into the plot without the experience of hearing the earlier episodes. The skill of the original writing from 1947 achieves this. Present day production values offer a stereo sound design conjuring the atmosphere of Italian coastline. The language of the script crackles with all the conventions of the classical radio detective genre: ‘Paul Temple staring down the wrong end of the revolver because of something unusual about the spectacles in his pocket!’
Thankfully the BBC has not censored the period attitudes, prejudices and language through the ludicrous political correctness that drove Ofcom recently to insist that Tom and Jerry cartoons shown to children should have smoking scenes censored. Paul Temple’s enthusiasm for the ignoble weed survives. Perhaps it is all right that when he first accepted the offer of a cigarette it was not in a public place. But Temple and company are later allowed to light up in a restaurant. And Colonel Marquand was free to demonise Italians with a reference to ‘damned impetuous wops’. This preserved the integrity of the original script and characterisation. A present day audience can deal with this in the same way that the worldly cast could work the script without mocking the drama out of the line from the dying Thompson ‘Get those glasses to Cairo’.
Angus Macinnes heroically gave Marquand an American accent, and an incidental Italian servant, performed ensemble, sounded like the mimicking of Manuel in Fawlty Towers. Classic radio fight scenes were sound-blocked and performed with Dick Barton gusto. This is a charming and professional production retrieving radio drama history with all its delightful clichés. There was a very good reason why Timothy West wrote the satirical anti-radio drama play ‘This gun that I have in my right hand is loaded’. But the style of writing from 1947 did not want to hedge any bets on the manipulation of the imagination. Lines such as ‘Be careful here darling, there’s a turning’, ‘There’s somebody waving to us. That man over there. Look!’ and ‘There’s somebody down at the bottom of the path. Look, Steve,’ even while the semi-conscious victim's groans off-mic anticipated the distractions and barriers that continue to exist for radio listening.
Everything about episode three of 'Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery' gives the impression that everyone involved in the production had tremendous fun, and this resonance means much entertainment is promised in episodes four to eight.
