A highly enjoyable episode, not least for the early 60s Oxbridge setting (or Oxbridge as TV viewers imagined it in the early 60s.) It's made me want to read The Masters again.
Oxbridge scientist Richard Davis has warned Steed that he's being blackmailed into giving away research secrets - Steed sends Venus Smith along for Rag Week to keep an eye on him, but he's found dead. So Steed also makes his way to the town in the guise of a Johnsonian scholar.
The blackmailers have a good system going: one of them employs a clever ruse to trick the victim into forging a cheque, then presenting it to their accomplice, who threatens to turn them in for forgery unless they give away secrets/follow instructions. The realisations that it's a scam, and that it's one they do regularly, are nicely spaced out.
We see the scam employed on two different students - sorry, undergraduates. The second of these, the strangely Ian Hislop-like Ted East, has already met Steed while conducting his own amateur investigation into Davis' death, and they join forces to defeat the blackmailers and their traitorous academic boss.
Reginald 'Sir Dennis' Marsh as pub landlord Higby; Melissa Stribling as the wicked artist Claire, who either keeps reptiles in a tank in her studio or collects plastic models of reptiles, I wasn't quite sure what they were getting at there. Either way she's evil, and wears fishnets to prove it.
I thought John Standing as East was excellent, he can even carry off a scene where he's required to drawl 'Dig this, honey' to Venus before playing her Yellow Bird on his guitar; cue impromptu singalong in the cloisters.
One of my favourites so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment