Season 3 - Clouds of Witness/The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1973-1974)
Love or hate Lord Peter Wimsey and his antisemitic creator Dorothy L. Sayers, if not for them Mystery! would never exist. These adaptations of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries were so popular that Mobil suggested underwriting a crime based spinoff of Masterpiece Theatre and thus Mystery! was born. So I say thankee to Lord Peter in his own argot. But being indebted to him doesn't mean I'm willing to unequivocally embrace the adaptations of Sayers's second and fifth books. Even if it's one of my father's favorite television shows of all time. Which of course he prefaced with, remember, it was a different time. Oh, I know, I've read Dorothy L. Sayers and can say the best thing this series did was skip the first book. Whose Body? is as incomprehensible as it is antisemitic. So I saw this series as an opportunity, a chance to fix all the problems and strip out the outmoded and hateful speech, even if it was the seventies and therefore still problematic. And, for the most part, they succeeded, so far, the problem is they started with Clouds of Witness, which is painfully boring. I first read this book over a decade ago and literally when the episode started I went, hang on, is this the one where he wanders around the moors forever? Yes dear reader, it is. Sir Peter wanders around the moors forever and it's just as boring to watch as it is to read. And unlike every other book adapted for this series it was five instead of four episodes. Which means a whole extra moor episode just for me! How did you know this is exactly not what I wanted? And as for his family? They are a group of annoying prigs played by fabulous actors that couldn't escape the morass of the source material. We were all trapped in Peter's Pot without a chance in hell that an extra from Cold Comfort Farm was coming to rescue us. But I was willing to keep an open mind. With The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, which for years I thought was the Belladonna Club, I was getting a clean state and a new, inferior Bunter. Don't worry, Bunter number one returns soon enough, much to my father's surprise. He was convinced that the bad Bunter stayed until the end. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is all about an inheritance and finding out which of two siblings died first. Because there were shenanigans with a corpse. And then more shenanigans when there was an inquest. This was a wonderful mystery because it dealt with so many issues from money insecurity with damaged veterans to Bloomsbury artists yet with a light touch that is Lord Peter's trademark. Always help, but do it with a smile, and don't forget your thankees. It also doesn't hurt that he's an honorable and people tend to doff their cap to him. What made this second episode so special to me was it included some of my favorite actors from seventies British television whom I of course refer to by favorite character name or familial connection. So I had Merriman (John Walsh in The Duchess of Duke Street), Dolly Longstaffe (Donald Pickering in The Pallisers), and Emma Thompson's mom (Phyllida Law). It created a wonderfully rounded cast, even if it appears I'm better at interpreting bad art than the characters on this show. Maybe that's what my art degree is useful for? If the show hadn't ended on a note of bygone notions of valor and honor it would have been the perfect mystery.
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