THE CASE OF THE HORSELESS CARRIAGE

Last night at Holmes Towers we arrived at episodes 52 and 53 of our great evening run-through of the 66 stories that make up the television series "Sergeant Cork", although those episode numbers are rather arbitrary and simply refer to their position in the DVD box set, and not the transmission order of the original hour-long episodes.

For those not in the know, because nowadays it seems to have become a rather forgotten show, Sergeant Cork was a black and white Victorian Detective series set around the activities of the burgeoning CID department in Scotland Yard. It was created by Ted Willis, who in the previous decade had brought us "Dixon of Dock Green" and is largely based upon the actual crime files of the late Victorian era, a time of Rippers, and hangings, and hard lives wracked with guilt and poverty.

The series was made mostly on videotape during two long production blocks in the studios of ATV back in the mid-1960s, and broadcast over half a dozen series until the end of that decade. It starred John Barrie as the eponymous Sergeant (before he headed off to "Z-Cars", retirement, and Yorkshire flower shops), and William Gaunt (soon to become one of "The Champions" for ITC) as his sidekick Detective Constable Marriott, and their on-screen relationship is, quite frankly, rather wonderful as they wade their way through the muddy sewers of Victorian crime.

What is unusual - perhaps especially given the fact that it is so little remembered by the general public - is that, unlike so many other, higher profile, series made in that era like "Callan" or "Public Eye" - the entire 66-episode run survives for us to enjoy, albeit with some of the prints in a pretty shoddy state.

And how lucky we are for that, because it is a rather wonderful series.

The first of the two episodes we watched last night was "The Case of the Chelford Changeling" and it was a familiar tale of  kidnapping, inheritances, upstairs/downstairs shenanigans, and births on the wrong side of the blanket, all wrapped up with an unusually ambiguous ending for a series where the hammer of justice is allowed to fall without fear or favour.

The second was "The Case of the Horseless Carriage" which, despite being our episode fifty-three, was actually the 44th one produced (possibly the last broadcast) and included some rather familiar faces in a quite extensive cast list.

The first was Noel Coleman, playing the investor James Longthorne, who was more familiar to me as the sinister General Smythe in the last "Doctor Who" story to feature Patrick Troughton as the lead character, who here plays a similarly stern character, alt hough he does, at least, get a moment to be uncharacteristically avuncular.

Next up was a Doctor Watson, as it was avid Burke, in his more "Gorblimey" days playing the engineer's assistant  Joe Tyler, who meets a sticky end. Later on he would play the original Doctor Watson to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes in the 1980s Granada series, having also been a villain opposite the Douglas Wilmer incarnation in the mid-1960s.

Playing the widow of the victim, a certain Mrs Stevens, was one Noel Dyson, years before playing Nanny in endless episodes of "Father, Dear Father" opposite Patrick Cargill and an endless procession of dotty mothers in various sitcoms. Sadly, despite what I believed when watching this episode,  she was not the mother in "Citizen Smith" who kept referring to Wolfie as "Foxy" - that was Hilda Braid - but you can't be right about everything.

Also popping up as a shifty Belgian named Huss, was the dear old Brigadier from "Doctor Who" himself, one Nicholas Courtney, getting a rare chance to play more of his dark side as he attempts to con a grieving widow out of her rights to her husband's inventions.

For this is a story of a man tinkering in a shed on a Sunday evening in order that many future igenerations of men could tinker in sheds on Sunday evenings, who gets murdered for the designs of his brand new motor vehicle invention.

Because (courtesy of Lisa & Andrew at the "Round the Archives" podcast) I had recently seen the results of a photo shoot featuring the two leads and an ancient petrol-driven motor vehicle, I ought not to have been surprised when the car featured so heavily in the episode, but as I saw long, lingering shots of it sitting in a shed whilst various action was played around it, I did begin to suspect that the photographs were merely publicity shots and that the car itself would remain very much just a prop for Marriott to get all excited and future-thinking about as the virile younger lead could only imagine what the coming of the motor car could achieve in the crime dramas of the coming century.

I kept on thinking "Will they...? It it possible? Do we actually get to see our heroes driving this motorised death-trap?"

So, when there was mention by Sergeant Cork of having "just the thing" to catch a fleeing villain, it was rather refreshing for the episode to suddenly cut to outdoor filming where a car not exactly screaming down some Victorian country roads on its way to a final confrontation at a railway station as the actors presumably relocated themselves in the studio for their next big scene.

"Bullitt" or even "The Sweeney" it certainly was not.

Location filming is a very rare thing in the videotaped studio-bound world of Sergeant Cork, and it always comes as some surprise. For instance, after weeks of mere mentions of Hansom Cabs, in one episode you suddenly see old Corky in a real one - and not just in the opening titles - and the viewer is almost bowled over by like a pedestrian in a Victorian street.

The episode's director Philip Dale was obviously terribly pleased to have this refreshing opportunity to play outside with such a special prop, whilst the two leads obviously both insisted upon having a go at driving the contraption, and the end credits are run over further footage of our heroes travelling the lanes into the distance at enormously high speeds of around 8mph, possibly riding off into the sunset, if IMDB is to be believed.

Cracking stuff...!

All together now...

Sergeant Cork is going to help me
Make them do time
Keep them all in line

Sergeant Cork is going to help me
Make them serve time
Keep on fighting crime