On this tape, from the London Franchise that used to be Thames, Inspector Morse and Twilight of the Gods. Announced as the final episode, it turns out not to be that – there’s several one-off episodes after this one.
Robert Hardy seems to be playing Sir Terence ‘Twiggy’ Rathbone.
Sheila Gish plays a mezzo-soprano, singing some Wagner in the opening.
John Gielgud plays a Lord.
Jean Anderson plays his wife.
No, I got it wrong – Robert Hardy is playing Denholm Reynholm.
Here’s Doug Bradley, Pinhead without the makeup, playing a vicar who ransacks someone’s rooms.
The singer is shot by a sniper during a very posh procession in a college.
It was Rachel Weisz’s room that Doug Bradley was pulling apart.
John Bluthal plays a professor from Lithuania.
Bluthal was the one who shot the singer, but he was aiming for Robert Hardy, who, far from being an inmate in a concentration camp, collaborated with the nazis and tortured fellow prisoners. And Pinhead was the one who killed a journalist, on the orders of Hardy.
Dating note: The News at Ten trail in this programme covers Bill Clinton’s inauguration, which would date this to 20th January 1993. That matches iMDb.
After this, recording switches to an episode of The Prisoner. This one starts with a recap of the episode where Leo McKern and Number 6 were locked in a room together, at the end of which, Number Six asks to see Number One.
The Hotel Portmeirion gets its own credits in the titles.
This is Fall Out, the infamous final episode of the series. They spared no expense – getting All You Need Is Love by the Beatles couldn’t have been cheap.
Of course there’s another bloody Judge.
Alexis Kanner returns, apparently playing the representation of youth.
Leo McKern has got better, and had a wash and scrub up.
The infamous moment when he meets Number One and pulls off his mask. Utter tosh.
Those blokes who are spinning around on what looks like a camera jib in Number Two’s room – it turns out they’re machine gunners, and this episode shows how bad an idea that jib is, because they really have to contort to fire in the right direction. They didn’t think this out.
It kind of feels like it has an ending, without remotely providing one. It is the oddest thing. Just a bit too sixties for me, man.
After this, recording stops.
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- trail: Saturday Zoo