So did you get the clue from last time? You did? Oh well done you. But it’ll have to wait. You see, I was having this discussion on Twitter and suddenly I thought of another possible British Columbo. One that might – just – shoot straight to the top of the charts. For those of […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (11): The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes
My favourite Doctor Who has always been Patrick Troughton. I don’t really know why, but he feels more Doctor-ish to me than any of them, past or present. So when “The Enemy Of The World” and “The Web Of Fear” were recovered (or, mainly recovered), last year, I was downloading them at quarter past midnight. […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (10): Prime Suspect
Of course, you all got the clue in the last one, right? You know, “Deep Thought”? The computer from “The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. Played, in the 2005 film, of course, by Helen Mirren. Her other big roles have included Queen Elizabeth II… and Detective Chief Inspector (later Detective Superintendent) Jane Tennison in the […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (9): The Avengers
In October, 11 missing episodes of “Doctor Who” were found in Nigeria. I mention this not in passing, but because it’s directly relevant to the subject in hand today: “The Avengers”. No, not the Marvel ones. This is the 1960s series starring Patrick MacNee, and heavily influenced by Sydney Newman, creator (not entirely coincidentally) of […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (8): A Touch Of Frost
That was a tough clue, wasn’t it? “Alice Where Are Thou” – about President Roosevelt’s daughter. Could that be a clue? A detective named Alice? “A clue so large…” was a quote from Poirot – could it be Poirot? Sung by Ernest Pike? Any detective series named Pike? Or a detective who’s also a fisherman? […]
In Search Of The British Columbo: Intermission
The search is starting to get difficult. Not because I’m running out of British detective series, quite the reverse: there’s too many of them and I don’t have a mountain of available time. So far, I’ve only had to research one or two – Dixon Of Dock Green I watched some online, whereas The Sweeney […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (7): Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) [aka My Partner, The Ghost]
Have you ever seen the old noir film DOA? It’s from 1950, and opens with probably one of the cleverest openings in cinema. The protagonist would like to report a murder: his own. But what if he had died in the murder? What if he was solving his own murder from beyond the grave? That […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (6): The Racing Game
After leaving the RAF following World War 2, Dick Francis became a leading jockey. Winner of over 350 races, and champion jockey in the 1953-4 season, he was riding Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s horse, Devon Loch, to victory in the 1956 Grand National when the horse inexplicably stumbled with 40 yards to the finish. […]
In Search Of The British Columbo: (5) Lovejoy
Lovejoy. Has it really come to this? Lovejoy. Have I sunk so low as to include a crime drama where the protagonist is not a policeman? And after such a lame clue as that (I know, I know, some of you thought “ranking” was a clue for Ian Rankin, the writer of Rebus, but the […]
In Search Of The British Columbo (4): Inspector Morse
Crossword addicts will have noticed that I embedded “MORSE” into the last paragraph of the previous post. That’s appropriate for today’s candidate, as the series itself played the same trick, embedding clues and red herrings into the soundtrack, appropriately in Morse code. Indeed, Morse’s name was embedded in the opening theme (although some CW pedants […]