THE THIN MAN

I guess that it's time to do some educating...

If you're not familiar with the "Thin Man" series of films, initially based on the book by Dashiell Hammett, then perhaps you should really try and track them down some time, especially if you are in the mood for a bit of a treat.

The first is usually easy enough to spot, as it tends to turn up on some of those old movie channels that I can't get quite a lot, but the rest of the series.

Their perky relationship, which featured in half a dozen Screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s (before evolving into a TV series featuring Peter Lawford and transmogrifying ultimately into the basic premise of "Hart To Hart") is one of the finest and most entertaining double acts ever committed to celuloid and if you haven't met Nick and Nora Charles yet, then you're truly missing a treat...

True, and depending upon how you feel about such bastard offspring, you might feel that the world might be a better place without them because of the Peter Lawford TV series, and you might feel that we might all have been better off if  we'd probably never have had "Hart to Hart" either, and yet so many of the TV and Film series which rely on a bit of banter between the lead couple owe so much to the series of Thin Man movies made in the 1930s and 1940s...

This is quite simply a sublime sexset of movies. The original "Thin Man" tends to get shown rather a lot on television but its sequels are less well known, and that's a great pity because these films are all very enjoyable with witty, sharp dialogue that seems daring and up-to-date nowadays, and must have seemed positively shocking back in the 1930s.

William Powell and Myrna Loy were just perfectly cast as Nick and Nora Charles and the class just pours out of every frame. Perfect chemistry - so charismatic that if they could be making films today they would quite possibly put all other stars in the shade.

These films inspired so many imitators - not least "Hart to Hart" - but they remain the original and, in my opinion, probably the best of the lot.

Some people seem to find old movies a bit of a turn off these days, and that's a great shame, but if you're willing to accept the fact that storytelling styles were just different back then and go along with the fun, you're in for one heck of a treat, and if you were to try and track them down on disc, because a set was once available, it included a nice set of extras, too, which included a selection of comedy shorts and trailers which, if you put them on before the "main feature" might have given you a feeling of how a night at the cinema used to be.

Mind you, the old style of trailers pretty much used to give the whole plot away - simpler times - so you might want to leave them until after Nick's revealed "whodunnit" if you're not a fan of the spoiler.