THE COLLECTED RTA DAILY CARTOON (PART ELEVEN) SEPTEMBER 2019

PODCAST 40 – SHOESTRING

Somehow I managed to stagger through reading this in the latest “Round The Archives" podcast from Lisa and Andrew (available at https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta040-episode-40) - this is the text for anyone who couldn't understand my burbled nonsense...

PODCAST ARTICLE 22 (FOR EPISODE 40) – SHOESTRING

Sometimes a popular television series is hard to like. Everybody else is going on and on about just how great it is, and you sit there, feeling perplexed because it does nothing whatsoever for you, and you begin to wonder whether there’s something wrong with you because you’re so far off-track with what the rest of the world seems to find quite enjoyable.

GAME OF THRONES did nothing for me, and I’ve never felt the need to watch CALL THE MIDWIFE, LINE OF DUTY, HAPPY VALLEY or STRICTLY COME DANCING, despite the viewers being drawn to all of these like bees to honey. Several of those strike me as looking too bloody miserable, or too bloody family-wamily, for me ever to want to see them, but if they make other people happy, then so be it.

I’ll just slip another DVD into the machine and leave them to get on with it, whilst I wallow around with some telly from a different era, and try to fathom just what it might have been that made these shows the unmissable viewing of their times.

Which brings us to SHOESTRING, a fondly-remembered detective show starring Trevor Eve found lurking at the back end of the 1970s and the dawn of the 1980s, a series which staggered through twenty-one episodes across two years before vanishing forever and being replaced with BERGERAC for the remainder of the 1980s.

It’s a little bit of a Marmite-y series, to be honest. Some people really, really liked SHOESTRING, but some people never really took to it, and it’s easy to see why.

It is, after all, based around local radio and gives it a Beeb-related self-importance that few of us might recognize, and it does also come across as being a tiny bit smug from time-to-time, but, perhaps because it was 1979, and the series launched during the ITV strike so that there were literally no other channels to watch apart from BBC2, and it faced little to no competition, at least at first, SHOESTRING became very popular indeed.

For “reasons” outlined in the first episode, down-on-his-luck Private Investigator Eddie Shoestring ends up becoming the “Private Ear” for Radio West, and this becomes the trigger point for the various stories which result from listeners ringing in and having him look into their crime-related problems.

So far, so snoopy, and – possibly – so bloody irritating.

But then, with a backstory of mental health issues, a bright red (or – if you prefer - orange) Mark Three Cortina estate, and some parts of Bristol that I do have a burning nostalgia for, well, really… what’s not to like?

Well, I suppose that all depends upon how much you like SHOUTING TREVOR or not. To be fair, the SHOUTING TREVOR of WAKING THE DEAD is very much suppressed throughout much of the run of SHOESTRING, although it does surface from time-to-time until everyone remembers that he’s supposed to have put a lid on his anger because of his therapy.

And, because I was very influenced by things on the telly around that era, due to being that sort of age back then, I do think that, perhaps subconsciously, I modelled my look – minus the moustache (I’m not insane!) – on SHOESTRING as I staggered through my college years.

Kicking off on September the thirtieth in nineteen seventy nine, when there was nothing much on ITV due to the strike, the opening episode is called “Private Ear’ and is very much the origin story for a series which would end its original two series just before Christmas the following year, with Eddie slumping down on a sofa having just saved Christmas in a Christmas themed episode a mere fifteen months later.

And because SHOESTRING is based around a radio station, lets go through the first episode as a Top Twenty chart rundown.

In at number twenty are “THE OPENING CREDITS” - Created by name to conjure with Sid Sutton, in which, once the Radio West fanfare has trilled, a somber bluesy number plays as Eddie mooches around a chilly looking Bristol having been transmogrified by the power of radio and split screenery, so we get to see a tiny glimpse of the inner workings of the magical world of radio as he dozes on park benches, blows on his chilly hands, and becomes fascinated by pillar boxes, and has a snack as new “hi-tech” dot matrix signs tell the people of Bristol just how chilly it is.

Alright?

At nineteen is “FLIPPIN’ STACY DORNING!” - The former child star horse botherer, playing – how could we forget? – Sarah Marshall. She’s picked up by a red Morris Marina taxi at the Bel Aire Sauna, the kind of back street dive frequented by old gentlemen, not ‘arf. Sarah wears dark glasses as she leaves and goes home far too tired to chat to Laurie the taxi driver – played by Patrick Durkin - as, rather surprisingly, he listens to the local radio station, Radio West, as, it seems, does absolutely every other person in the series, despite that bloody jingle and the essential dreariness of DJ David Carn’s radio show.

Hang on. That voice is familiar! It’s only William bloody Russell! With him in the pilot, this thing’s bound to run for fifty years.

Okay?

Sarah Marshall, you won’t have forgotten, runs a bath, whilst listening to David droning on about old soldiers and the like, the crazy young thing that she is. Then, despite being “very tired” – know what I mean? - gets called back to work for a super-important “special” job, which means she heads out in a ghastly pink coat and we get a close up of her amazingly shocked eyes.

Alright?

In at eighteen is “I DON’T WANT TO BE LIKE DAVID CARN” - In the studios of Radio West, David Carn  is broadcasting his late night nonsense to the west country, as Don Satchley - Michael Medwin - arrives to do his “boss of the radio station” schtick, which does, at least, lead to the unexpected sight of that lovely Mr Chesterton from DOCTOR WHO flicking the Vs straight down the camera lens.

At home, Sarah Marshall – remember her? – tries to make an angry phone call, then runs through the streets to Radio West where we meet Liz Crowther’s “lovely but never at home” receptionist Sonia, who takes Sarah’s name – whatever that might be - and tries to get David Carn to come out and talk to her, and when he refuses to do so, she heads outside singing the current gritty drama hit of the day “Bar Stewards!”

At seventeen it’s “SAD SARAH” – This is the last we see of the unforgettable Sarah Marshall – as she nicks a white Rolls Royce from the radio station’s car park, which arch-narcissist David Carn has permanently tuned to his own show apparently, and, as David drones on with marriage guidance advice and sniffs at his signature yellow rose, Sarah Marshall – who’s that? – knocks back the booze and pills and drives to the beach, freeze framing on a close up once she’s screamed the last line of that “Bar Stewards” song “Bar Stewards, all of them…!”

A catchy little ditty, right?

And her body lies on the beach next to the Rolls Royce of David Carn – for it is his - the following morning.

At sixteen, “EDDIE GOES TO WORK (Part One)” - Eddie Shoestring starts his latest working day by coming downstairs and swiping the morning paper from under the very letterbox of his landlady, prosecuting attorney Erica Bayliss, as played with a “Will-they, won’t they?” (SPOILER ALERT: They will!) charm by Doran Godwin. Their domestic arrangements seem very fluid as they discuss his prospects, or lack of them, his lack of petrol, office, and clients.

There’s then a strange little interlude as he goes out, intercepts the postie, and a jump cut from him posting the letters through the door himself and the toast popping up from the toaster in their kitchen, and we see that the sad story of the fate of Sarah Marshall – remember her? – has made the front page.

In at fifteen, it’s a “SAD DAY AT THE MORGUE” as there’s the sad interlude of the sad parents having to make a sad visit to the sad mortuary to identify a sad little body of their sad little girl, and we hear the sad tale of a sad teenage runaway. Kenneth Gilbert and Sally Sanders play the sad Nolans, these sad parents of sad Sarah Marshall who was once, presumably, one of the sad Nolans.

But then we return to sixteen “EDDIE GOES TO WORK (Part Two)” as, in a bizarre edit, having gone out earlier, Eddie is now back in the kitchen, with the radio on, shaving over the sink, and quirkily choosing to wear his pyjama jacket as a shirt whilst discussing Erica’s imminent appearance on Radio West, which establishes a connection which might prove jolly handy in driving the plot along, and bringing disparate worlds together later, alright?

Back at fifteen, “SAD DAY AT THE MORGUE” (Side Two) - the inquest into the death of Sarah Marshall – whoever she was - opens, and is adjourned, and we hear this on the radio news bulletin as Sonia is wrangling her typewriter in the lobby of Radio West and, because Sonia is brilliant, a trait which goes criminally unnoticed throughout, that name seems awfully familiar to her from a certain late night encounter in that very reception not so very long ago.

At fourteen, it’s “DODGY DAVID” - Arriving at the radio station, Erica parks her car next to that oh-so-familiar white Rolls Royce, and is soon on air with "Unnamed Presenter Stuart Bevan" and all of the radio business about producers and so on seems a little bit like one of those “writer’s research” sketches that MITCHELL & WEBB used to do really. So, there’s a phone-in featuring the “suddenly vanishing” Keith, and Erica gets asked questions about Legal Aid. Meanwhile, following up on Sonia’s ”David and Sarah” connection, Don is having a meeting with David in which we find out that the chap who played that lovely Mr Chesterton in DOCTOR WHO is actually playing a bit of a wrong-’un in this, and that Don has received angry letters and has recordings of angry phone calls. We discover that David is a bit of a “one” for the ladies, because, even though he’s just been on the carpet, he’s already eyeing up Erica through the glass as he declares that he had nothing to do with Sarah Marshall’s death, which cuts to a lovely and moving scene between her parents in their anonymous hotel room.

At thirteen, it’s “EDDIE’S THE MAN” - Don Satchley is having a post-interview coffee with Erica where he brings up the matter of ethics surrounding his number one broadcaster (Lord help him), and she suggests (TA-DAH!!!) that he might employ a Private Investigator to look into the situation, and it looks as if our worlds are about to collide and our series is made.

Eddie is lounging around on the knackered old boat which apparently saved his sanity, but which is also rarely seen again. It’s supposed to be his private space, but she barges in anyway with this offer of work, and despite the fact that he claims to be busy, she points out that he’s lying down which leads to a “lateral thinking” zinger, but he does end up meeting Don in a bar built inside an old lightship, where they discuss a back story of four marriages as Eddie Shoestring doodles caricatures on the back of beermats – it’s his Art Therapy, don’t you know, and probably saved his sanity – and admits that his name really is Shoestring and that he’s had to double his fees because of it.

Oh the witty banter and wordplay is really flowing now, isn’t it?

Anyway, he agrees to look into the background of the dead girl for him. So that’s nice.

At twelve it’s “OILY PINSTRIPES” - Two dodgy businessman types in ghastly suits and seedy offices (played by Sean Arnold as Mr Tony Hendry, and Brian Miller as the nervous Mr Willis), discussing the story in the newspaper, those dark secrets, and, to nobody’s real surprise, that the Bel Aire Sauna is really a front for a Call Girl service.

At number eleven, it’s “DODGY GEEZERS” - in another bar, which may or may not be more of a party boat, or the same bar redressed, Eddie meets the jazz-loving dodgy geezer Len Tilley, played wearing a fedora and overcoat by a not-yet-KINVIG Tony Haygarth, who used to employ Sarah Marshall when she first moved to the city. He tries to be amiable as he explains his investigations, but the conversation takes a dark turn as he does another of his doodles and is threatened, but he does manage to fob off the proposition made by two of Len’s girls by the deft repositioning of a handbag.

Eddie then meets one of the sinister businessmen in the lobby of a classy but seedy hotel. and we get to hear the back story of how Eddie used to be an executive zombie, and his subsequent breakdown, smashing up a computer, being carted off to a lunatic asylum, his analysis, and how drawing helps to keep him sane. The businessman, Mr Willis, then counters all of this backstory by trying to bribe Eddie, which doesn’t work.

In with a bullet at ten, “INVESTIGATIONS” - Eddie then breaks in to Sarah Marshall’s apartment, and mooshes through a photo album which includes several other familiar faces including Len Tilley, and, in another poignant scene, he is interrupted by her mother, who has come to sort out Sarah’s things and Eddie has to pretend to be a policeman to explain why he’s there.

Eddie then meets up with Laurie the taxi driver who drove her home “once or twice” and has no axe to grind, seeing her profession as just one of the ways of the world, no questions asked. Anyway, for a tenner, and a swift portrait for the wife (“It looks nothing like her!” Ho-ho!) Eddie is finally pointed in the direction of…

Straight in at number nine, it’s “THE BEL AIRE SAUNA” - Where the dodgy businessmen are nonplussed to discover that this thorn in their sides has just booked in and is asking questions. And so, whilst rather lovely and helpful Barry (Richard Domfe) arranges to meet with some information in fifteen minutes, bad things then naturally happen to Barry as he is overheard by Len in his two-tone shoes and also by his burly henchman, and Barry, the one-hit wonder - is never seen again.

At eight, “ONLY EDDIE COULD GO TO THE CHINESE” – Eddie heads out to buy a Chinese meal, and is intercepted as he waits for his Sweet & Sour by the sweetly sour Len and his henchman, and whilst nothing at all happens in the Chinese Takeaway apart from some sinister threats, Eddie ends up being driven, bag of takeaway still in hand, in a car, late at night, to a meeting in an abandoned, much-vandalised railway carriage.

There he meets up with the sinister Mr Tony Hendry, who explains that “This city is owned by businessmen and run by businessmen” in a tedious interlude which somehow proves that nothing really ever changes. To stave off the boredom, Eddie draws Hendry’s face in the muck on the windows, and makes some remarks about big fleas and little fleas, as he is being told in no uncertain terms to back off.

Naturally, he is beaten up – but not killed – by Len’s Bouncer mate, and the next we see of Eddie is him arriving home, looking slightly the worse for wear, but still bearing his now very cold takeaway which needs reheating, and hoping that Erica can bend her ethics enough to give him the address for the car number plate he’s noticed and memorised.

At seven, it’s “THE FILTHY POTTER” in which Eddie meets an everso flirty young pottery student who seems to be rather enjoying her other life as a call girl.

At six, it’s “AT HOME WITH DAVID CARN” - Eddie visits David Carn in the garden of his house, and we know that winter is coming as he turns up his jacket collar as David tells him all about his relationship with Sarah Marshall, and how she knew where he kept the spare key to his Rolls Royce.

At five, “IN AT THE DEEP END” - Eddie meets Mr Tony Hendry at the swimming pool of the private sports club all of this is happening from, and he threatens him with Sarah’s “Little Black Book” that he retrieved from her flat, and, with a rather subdued prototype of the “Angry Trevor” acting we would see later in several episodes of WAKING THE DEAD, he chucks him into the pool, noticing a list of companies on the wall as he departs.

At four, “IT’S SNOWING IN LONDON” - as Eddie finally meets Sarah Marshall’s father, who, it turns out, in one of those tragic twists of fate that can only happen in these sorts of drama, was the urgent appointment that Sarah Marshall was sent out to service on that fateful night. It all gets rather poignant in a way as we learn about their history and his remorse over the whole terrible incident.

At three, it’s “PRIVATE EAR” as Eddie sketches his own silhouette around the Radio West 324 logo and announces to a frazzled Don Satchley that David is indeed in the clear, and he’s not going to tell him why he knows this, even though Don’s still planning on packing David off on holiday, never to be seen again. Meanwhile none of the Radio West executives have managed to come up with any decent ideas for programmes to fill in for him. Sonia, of course, connects the dots, looks at the modified logo, and suggests a new programme idea of her own… Which means…

Bubbling under the top spot, at number two, it’s “THAT PROGRAMME IDEA IN FULL” as David Carn hands over to “Unnamed Presenter Played By Stuart Bevan” who basically reads out the programme pitch - or Radio Times listing - for the entire series with Eddie Shoestring about to join Radio West as their very own Private Eye, so, if you’ve got a problem, just call 27232 right now…

So that’s episode… Number One… Of the series SHOESTRING… That’s “Private Ear”… By Robert Banks Stewart, rewritten from a rejected script by Richard Harris which caused him to leave the series, and directed by Dougie Camfield…

The main problem for me in this particular introductory episode is that it seems to try rather too hard to be self-consciously quirky, several of these quirks seem to be set up precisely to make Eddie seem far more interesting than he actually is, and many of which seem to get forgotten about as the series progresses, unless one of the writers happens to pick that particular trait as a hook to hang a story on.

And, boy! Does Eddie Shoestring have some quirks…!

There’s the rumpled suits, and the ratty ties; the pyjama jackets worn as shirts; that rather lovely but knackered red car; the fact he had a breakdown after working as a computer programmer; the fact that he’s a part-time cartoonist; the fact that he owns – and sometimes sleeps upon – a boat; oh, and if that wasn’t enough, he also sometimes wrangles a yo-yo.

You see…?

QUIRKY!

Do you get it?

QUIRKY!!!

And writ large his quirkiness is, too.

That, and the on-again, off-again relationship he has with his landlady Erica adds to the general air of quirkiness, too, as he doesn’t have the sort of proper home life that the rest of us do, but one of those “TV Detective” home lives that’s quirkily abnormal enough to make him interesting and lovable and makes enough of the viewing demographic want to take care of him.

The theme tune, starting with that RADIO WEST fanfare, before segueing into something far more jazzy and moody is nice enough, and has that film noir mean streets sleaze vibe to it which seems to be the kind of feel the series seems to be aiming for from time-to-time, with Eddie channeling the kind of down-at-heel gumshoe popularised by Raymond Chandler and his pals back in the day…

Although similar “pastiche-noir” ground had been trodden by Nicholas Ball as HAZELL the year before, so there’s nothing too innovative about that really, other than it’s been given a bit of a BBC polish and pushed out as something new and quirky and innovative.

An astonishing array of guest stars turn up in this, too, alongside that rather impressive – if much underused - main cast, including the likes of Harry H Corbett, Shirley Anne Field, Christopher Biggins, Philip Bond, Diana Dors, Michael Craig, Toyah Willcox, Burt Kwouk, Roy North, Lynda Bellingham, Gorden Kaye, Sylvia Coleridge, and a whole load of people who would end up as EastEnders one day.

Some of the supporting cast of sidekicks really are terribly under-used, though, which is something of a shame, but, perhaps if they were planning to make further series, those characters had more interesting storylines lined up for them which were not to be.

So, here I find myself pondering upon SHOESTRING, broadcast on the BBC over those two series in 1979 and 1980, and I do have to remind myself that it was very popular indeed. So much so, in fact, that when its star Trevor Eve refused to make any more and go off and pursue his stage career instead, the BBC had to sit down with its producers and come up with something similar but different, and because, as I mentioned earlier, that “something” turned out to be the phenomenally successful BERGERAC, it all turned out rather well in the end really, given that Jim Bergerac did have his own set of quirks, but fewer of them, so lessons had obviously been learned.

And, of course, “Shouting Trevor” would get back on the BBC eventually with the long-running WAKING THE DEAD series - in which he got to shout a heck of a lot – so all is ultimately forgiven in telly-land.

But SHOESTRING is something of a curate’s egg of a series; good in parts, and sometimes very good indeed, and, even when it does fall towards the risible, it’s still a terrifically “watchable” series, one which I found myself devouring all twenty-one episodes of in slightly over a fortnight earlier on in the year, so it can’t be all that bad, can it?

Martin A W Holmes, August 2019