"As ever, Mystery! does a superb job recreating the period with costume, cars, hair styles and speech, social habits (in Jericho everyone smokes incessantly, it being the cool thing to do in the 1950s), interiors and street life."
Barbara Peters,
The Poisoned Pen
Mystery! kicks off its 16th Season—and I've been a viewer for every single one—with Jericho . Curiously, I've spent the past four years, or rather bits of them, in 1950s Soho in company with a gloriously seedy, "crimey" bunch created by the pen of Pip Granger who spent her childhood there. Not All Tarts Are Apple, The Widow Ginger, Trouble in Paradise, and No Peace for the Wicked have been terrific publishing successes for Poisoned Pen Press of which I am the editor.
So it was a thrill for me to queue up Jericho and see Soho and other parts of post-war London leap into (colorful) life in this production. As ever, Mystery! does a superb job recreating the period with costume, cars, hair styles and speech, social habits (in Jericho everyone smokes incessantly, it being the cool thing to do in the 1950s), interiors and street life. I really love the Schweppes Tonic sign, so bright! Actually I was just at the Royal Victoria Docks, where a body is discovered, in March while at the London Book Fair at Excel, so it was spooky to see it as it was a half-century ago.
The viewer is immersed in the 1950s.
In this first two part episode, "A Pair of Ragged Claws," airing April 30 and may 7, we get hints of the insomniac Jericho's past (the murder of his policeman father whose murder he witnessed as a boy) and a touch of if not romance, friendship for him, with a lovely French prostitute. He's a loner, gutsy, almost manic in working a case of murder, a young black man shot on the streets of Notting Hill (now a very posh area and home to mystery doyenne P.D. James). But the higher-ups pull Jericho off the murder to handle the kidnapping of a financier missing from his gentlemen's club. His family, who dwell in Belgravia, are willing to pay—indeed, do pay—the ransom but it appears the man is killed anyway. But where's the body?
Jericho, Scotland Yard's highest profile policeman, works from his gut which appears to betray him once or twice. He's well served by his DS (Detective Sargent) Clive Harvey whose much tried wife keeps a surprisingly cheerful temper, and his new and ambitious DC (Detective Constable) John Caldicott. These two policemen have the only warm relationships (wife and sweetheart) on view, underscoring the dynamics of the rest of the drama.
And it was good to see Francesca Annis gain as Lady Clare Wellesley, wife to the missing Sir Nicholas. Longtime viewers of Masterpiece Theatre may remember her portrayal of Lily Langtry, mistress of King Edward VII as Prince of Wales. The Jersey Lily. Lovely.
Jericho doesn't pretty up crime or the city. Indeed, it's pretty gritty, and the policing is realistic. Cops do work several cases at a time, following leads, often blundering along trying to get it right. There's a level of police brutality here, racism, and of course, none of the technical flash we see today in cell phones, GPS, computerized systems. It's old-fashioned, street-pounding work requiring imagination, tenacity, tactics, and pure luck. And plenty of error on the part of the cops and the crooks. Robert Lindsay is completely convincing as Jericho. And Jericho makes an interesting change from an Agatha Christie drama, though Miss Marple in her way, or Hercule Poirot in his, is just as ruthless in seeing the truth be served.
Jericho continues with "The Killing of Johnny Swan´on May 14-21.
Mystery! "Jericho" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. April 30 - May 21.
