Agatha Christie's Partners In Crime - Case Of The Missing Lady / The Crackler [1983]

Agatha Christie's "The Case of the Missing Lady" adapted by Jonathan Hale.

The Scene opens with a moaning lady; hovering over her is a brute assistant Muldoon to what looks like a mad doctor and his Brunhilda looking assistant. To make matters worse there is the biggest hypodermic syringe ever conserved by man. It is half full of green glop.

Gabriel Stovington just returned from a two year stint in the artic and is getting the runaround while trying to find his fiancé. He is in need of a detective agency.

After the Great War Tommy Beresford (James Warwick) and wife/ assistant Tuppence (Francesca Annis) buy the Blunt International Detective agency. And with out any background become detectives. By the time you get to this episode they are getting good at it (maybe).

The acting at first make you thing that you are sitting in the front row of a Bernard Shaw play.

Of course it is an obvious secret message. However being clever they figure that the message is some sort of rendezvous. It is to take part at the Three Arts Ball (costume ball) where one of the sleuths gets to dress up as Sherlock Homes and the other as Dr. Watson. One guess as to who gets to be homes.

After the ball is over, like most of the revelers, they go to xxx to have a drink an early breakfast. There they notice a man costumed as the local paper entering a private booth with a woman and coming out alone. We are way ahead of them on the plot

As with most of the "Partners in Crime" series we are fare ahead of them on the whom. The fun is to watch them figure out not only the whom but the other details. This story is a period piece of just after The Great War.

Made for TV and fairly transparent, this film still has all the ambiance of a BBC Agatha Christy production. It is a period piece and employs many major English actors. Detective Inspector Marriott (Arthur Cox) played the newspaper reporter Salcombe Hardy in Dorothy L. Sayers' Have His Carcase (1987).

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"I promise to pay"

After the Grate World War, Tommy Beresford (James Warwick) and Tuppence (Francesca Annis) are out of work and form a partnership in a detective agency. They eventually marry and continue their detection business. On the surface they look like they are stumbling into the answer of each mystery they solve. But upon further observance they are cunning and resourceful.

In this "The Crackler" A story by Agatha Christie and screen play adaptation by Gerald Savory, Tommy and Tuppence are approached by inspector Marriott (Arthur Cox). He has a problem with funny money and needs someone with class to do a little snooping in the hoity-toity crowd to find the culprit(s). The inspector suspects it is a gang.

The partners in crime will be forced to go night clubbing and dancing. There are many suspects and they need to be narrowed down. They are aided by the third detective young Albert (Reece Dinsdale).

While they seem to be lead around by the nose we may be able to figure the plot but are the duo that naive or the cat's meow.