It was, er, quite a killing. That is the correct term, isn’t it?

The Avengers

4.4: Dial a Deadly Number

Dial a Deadly Number features a number of memorable scenes and abundant witty dialogue, as well as a return by the then-in-everything Peter Bowles, but despite strong direction from series stalwart Don Leaver, it’s difficult to care very much about who’s doing what to whom in Roger Marshall’s teleplay.

The title suggests something Hitchockian, but the reality is more mundane, revolving around the then very contemporary, nay futuristic, use of bleepers, and their corruptibility as a means of murdering company CEOs. That there needs to be a means of conveying the signal to the victim (in whom a heart attack is triggered) leads to a Steed sporting a Chekov’s Pocket Watch, not hitherto known for carrying one; it was bequeathed by an uncle and dented in the battle of the Somme (“German Bullet?” asks Emma. “Canadian mule” replies Steed). Its presence needs to be established in order for it to become a vessel for the signal implanted in a similar item by Fitch (John Carson, Ambril in Snakedance, and also previously in the series in A Chorus of Frogs and Second Sight).

Fitch is perhaps the most memorable villain here, particularly in his desire to do for Emma (“I shall kill you with scientific tenderness, Mrs Peel”). Dissolute.com clearly got excited by this scene, as its plot synopsis describes how he “unzips part of her catsuit and touches her milky breast”. Steady! He’s also part of the second-best scene in the episode, in which Steed arrives, ostensibly unable to open his watch and calling on Fitch’s skills to do so (“Having trouble with my watch… The button’s stuck”) as the latter flees across the room in panic at his prospectively imminent demise.

Harvey: There are two occasions in life when one shouldn’t speculate. When one can afford it, and when one can’t.

Steed: Thanks for the advice.

Harvey: Not mine, Mark Twain.

The best sequence involves wine, however, albeit this aspect isn’t as well-integrated into the plot as in The Secrets Broker (and it wasn’t well integrated there at all, but at least it was a consistent thread). Steed is inveigling himself into the world of stock market investments (the chairmen who died all saw share prices plunge in the aftermath, with a banker in common, although it is his lackey John Harvey (Bowles), rather than Clifford Evans’ Henry Boardman, who is the ringleader), and their elitist methods finds him called upon to partake in the delicate art of wine tasting.

Shot by Leaver in the manner of a western gunfight, Steed and Boardman stand at opposite ends of the cellar giving their take on the plonk in question. Boardman identifies his Latour ’59 immediately (“A hit, a palpable hit”), while Steed takes his time honing his options, before picking a “Chateau Laffite-Rothschild…1909, from the northern end of the vineyard” (Steed may not pass his IQ tests, but he knows his drink).

There’s more cellar action at the climax as Steed emerges from behind a barrel and announces “I just couldn’t stay away. It’s that Chateau Rothschild”. This extends into the alcohol-fuelled coda, with Emma guessing the wine in a manner we could all see coming (“Nose or palette?”: “I read the label”).

Ruth Boardman: I have an appointment with my hairdresser.

Steed: Are you sure?
Ruth Boardman: Certain.

Bowles is on good form as John Harvey, but as with Second Sight, he’s making more of the material than he has on paper. Jan Holden (previously of The Undertakers) is strong as Boardman’s promiscuous missus (“A true gentleman doesn’t know of a lady’s promiscuity” chides Emma when Steed confesses his suspicions).

Steed: What’s the Club Special when it’s at home?

Waiter: Oh, that’s one layer of delicious prawns, one of egg mayonnaise and lightly toasted rye bread. I can recommend it, sir.

Steed: Splendid, at least one of us will enjoy it.

Steed’s ever playing up the sly dog (“Oh, Mr Steed” replies Suzanne – Tina Packer, Anne Travers in The Web of Fear – when he emphasises studying round figures). He’s subject to a decent assassination attempt by bikers in an underground carpark and shows wanton disregard for Mrs Peel’s cover when he greets her at the bank (she professes to be from Barbados and he remarks upon the absence of a tan). And then there's his wonderful menu put-down (above). Most of the episode plays well in individual increments, then, but it falls down somewhat in conveying a compelling plot.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

The guy practically lives in a Clue board.

Knives Out (2019)
(SPOILERS) “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she’d have a character who’s an Internet troll.” There’s a slew of ifs and buts in that assertion, but it tells you a lot about where Rian Johnson is coming from with Knives Out. As in, Christie might – I mean, who can really say? – but it’s fair to suggest she wouldn’t be angling her material the way Johnson does, who for all his pronouncement that “This isn’t a message movie” is very clearly making one. He probably warrants a hesitant pass on that statement, though, to the extent that Knives Out’s commentary doesn’t ultimately overpower the whodunnit side of the plot. On the other hand, when Daniel Craig’s eccentrically accented sleuth Benoit Blanc is asked “You’re not much of a detective, are you?” the only fair response is vigorous agreement.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

Do forgive me for butting in, but I have a bet with my daughter that you are Hercules Porridge, the famous French sleuth.

Death on the Nile (1978)
(SPOILERS) Peak movie Poirot, as the peerless Peter Ustinov takes over duties from Albert Finney, who variously was unavailable for Death on the Nile, didn’t want to repeat himself or didn’t fancy suffering through all that make up in the desert heat. Ustinov, like Rutherford, is never the professional Christie fan’s favourite incarnation, but he’s surely the most approachable and engaging. Because, well, he’s Peter Ustinov. And if some of his later appearances were of the budget-conscious, TV movie variety (or of the Michael Winner variety), here we get to luxuriate in a sumptuously cast, glossy extravaganza.

I am constantly surprised that women’s hats do not provoke more murders.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
(SPOILERS) Was Joe Eszterhas a big fan of Witness for the Prosecution? He was surely a big fan of any courtroom drama turning on a “Did the accused actually do it?” only for it to turn out they did, since he repeatedly used it as a template. Interviewed about his Agatha Christie adaptation (of the 1925 play), writer-director Billy Wilder said of the author that “She constructs like an angel, but her language is flat; no dialogue, no people”. It’s not an uncommon charge, one her devotees may take issue with, that her characters are mere pieces to be moved around a chess board, rather than offering any emotional or empathetic interest to the viewer. It’s curious then that, while Wilder is able to remedy the people and dialogue, doing so rather draws attention to a plot that, on this occasion, turns on a rather too daft ruse.

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993)
(SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Of course, one m…

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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