Seventies TV: Whodunnit
I genuinely thought I had already blogged about this already, but am unable to find it. I suspect I may have written a piece about this show and it vanished when I had a netbook die some time ago. Anyway, Whodunnit is a show which I can't resist writing about - as usual for all the wrong reasons!
By all means, watch this show the way it was intended to be watched, if that is what floats your boat - as an exercise in deduction, expanded into a full programme by a panel's deductions and audience participation. The formula is very simple, yet surprisingly effective: the show begins with a film showing the actual death. The panel and members of the audience who have also been selected to deduct who did the murder, are introduced. The events surrounding the murder are elaborated in another film. The celebrity panel members get to ask to see parts of the film again - they have to give some notice, because I imagine this would have presented some technical difficulties in the 1970s. The celebrity panel then question the actors (in character, obviously) in the film of the murder, they and the audience panel give their solutions, and Jon Pertwee, the compere, reveals the true murderer. If you want a straightforward deduction to work out, and to engage in a virtual discussion about how could be the murderer, then this is exactly what you are looking for. I do like a nice murder myself, but tend to lack the attention required to work it out.
But that is not all there is to a watching of this show in 2017. Did I mention that Jon Pertwee is the host (for most of the series - Edward Woodward was the host for the first series)? If I also mention that the two resident members of the celebrity panel are Anouska Hempel and Patrick Mower, it will reveal further what I am getting at here. This show is an orgy of 1970s culture, with none of the bleakness we expect from the gritty television of the era. The other guest celebrities, who differ each week, are an array of the big names of the time. One can name Honor Blackman, for example. I still intend to write about Aimi Macdonald elsewhere but she appears on this as a guest. Diana Dors is another. There are also great names among the men as well: who would have thought you could get Kingsley Amis among the panel of a TV quiz show? Obviously normally I don't like familiar faces distracting me from a TV programme, but in this case the big names are obviously the point. It is a very nice touch that members of the public also get to form a panel of deduction and submit their solutions.
Quite apart from the big names on the celebrity panel, there is something else that I love about this show. I was strangely hooked from the moment I saw Jon Pertwee smoking while presenting the show. The actors who are being questioned are often smoking as is the panel. Nobody questions this, and as a dedicated smoker who has given it up, even I am slightly surprised to see people smoking as they present a TV show! Probably that more than anything else, has brought home to me the fact that there is a huge historical gulf in the forty years between the 1970s and now.
The collars. It's not only the smoking which brings home that we are well and truly in the unadulterated 1970s here. It's the collars. Nowadays, if anyone wore a collar like those worn by virtually all of the men, it would be for a joke. Did people really wear collars like that and smoke as they presented TV shows? They must have done. Did people really have hair that long? Could Aimi Macdonald really maintain that squeaky voice without going hoarse? All of these are things which this show is making me wonder about.
The attitudes. There are some surprisingly sexist things said, or else some innuendos, which I have a feeling wouldn't appear on TV nowadays. There are even some double-entendres which probably would seem very unsophisticated nowadays, but they remind me that the 1970s was the age of the sex comedy, and the Confessions films were among the highest-grossing films of the decades. This is not even to mention some of the period attitudes which come out in the films showing the murders and the circumstances surrounding them.
There are other nice touches about this show. The set changes each show, since it based on the set of the film of the murder. The new set each week and the big names in the panel, make me think that this show must have been high-budget and high-kudos at the time. I also particularly like the relaxed way in which Jon Pertwee moderates: it is a far cry from the some of the more sedate quiz shows of the time. It is also very interesting to see Pertwee in a very different setting from the role he is best known for, and one is which he is not obliged to play anybody but himself, but just act as the host.
To be frank, I think the possible criticisms of this show are ones that you would really have to squeeze out of it. You could say, for example, that many of the filmed murders include large amounts of over-acting, but I feel that that is deliberate. The show is meant to be fun, and it makes gentle fun of its own genre. Personally I'm finding it very difficult to criticise this show for production or any in any other way. The actors who play in the films and are afterwards questioned by the panel, are doing something incredibly difficult for an actor: they are being asked questions for which they are sometimes visibly unprepared, about a character which is only a bit role for them after all. The murderer can lie, but the others have to maintain a consistency in the story, which must have been incredibly difficult to do. Naturally one thing this does is sort out the truly great actors, who answer their questions looking calm and collected in their role.
So contrary to the drabness of much UK 1970s TV, this programme not only does what it sets out to do, but also provides an entertaining spectacle of contemporary costume, celebrities, and attitudes.
By all means, watch this show the way it was intended to be watched, if that is what floats your boat - as an exercise in deduction, expanded into a full programme by a panel's deductions and audience participation. The formula is very simple, yet surprisingly effective: the show begins with a film showing the actual death. The panel and members of the audience who have also been selected to deduct who did the murder, are introduced. The events surrounding the murder are elaborated in another film. The celebrity panel members get to ask to see parts of the film again - they have to give some notice, because I imagine this would have presented some technical difficulties in the 1970s. The celebrity panel then question the actors (in character, obviously) in the film of the murder, they and the audience panel give their solutions, and Jon Pertwee, the compere, reveals the true murderer. If you want a straightforward deduction to work out, and to engage in a virtual discussion about how could be the murderer, then this is exactly what you are looking for. I do like a nice murder myself, but tend to lack the attention required to work it out.
But that is not all there is to a watching of this show in 2017. Did I mention that Jon Pertwee is the host (for most of the series - Edward Woodward was the host for the first series)? If I also mention that the two resident members of the celebrity panel are Anouska Hempel and Patrick Mower, it will reveal further what I am getting at here. This show is an orgy of 1970s culture, with none of the bleakness we expect from the gritty television of the era. The other guest celebrities, who differ each week, are an array of the big names of the time. One can name Honor Blackman, for example. I still intend to write about Aimi Macdonald elsewhere but she appears on this as a guest. Diana Dors is another. There are also great names among the men as well: who would have thought you could get Kingsley Amis among the panel of a TV quiz show? Obviously normally I don't like familiar faces distracting me from a TV programme, but in this case the big names are obviously the point. It is a very nice touch that members of the public also get to form a panel of deduction and submit their solutions.
Quite apart from the big names on the celebrity panel, there is something else that I love about this show. I was strangely hooked from the moment I saw Jon Pertwee smoking while presenting the show. The actors who are being questioned are often smoking as is the panel. Nobody questions this, and as a dedicated smoker who has given it up, even I am slightly surprised to see people smoking as they present a TV show! Probably that more than anything else, has brought home to me the fact that there is a huge historical gulf in the forty years between the 1970s and now.
The collars. It's not only the smoking which brings home that we are well and truly in the unadulterated 1970s here. It's the collars. Nowadays, if anyone wore a collar like those worn by virtually all of the men, it would be for a joke. Did people really wear collars like that and smoke as they presented TV shows? They must have done. Did people really have hair that long? Could Aimi Macdonald really maintain that squeaky voice without going hoarse? All of these are things which this show is making me wonder about.
The attitudes. There are some surprisingly sexist things said, or else some innuendos, which I have a feeling wouldn't appear on TV nowadays. There are even some double-entendres which probably would seem very unsophisticated nowadays, but they remind me that the 1970s was the age of the sex comedy, and the Confessions films were among the highest-grossing films of the decades. This is not even to mention some of the period attitudes which come out in the films showing the murders and the circumstances surrounding them.
There are other nice touches about this show. The set changes each show, since it based on the set of the film of the murder. The new set each week and the big names in the panel, make me think that this show must have been high-budget and high-kudos at the time. I also particularly like the relaxed way in which Jon Pertwee moderates: it is a far cry from the some of the more sedate quiz shows of the time. It is also very interesting to see Pertwee in a very different setting from the role he is best known for, and one is which he is not obliged to play anybody but himself, but just act as the host.
To be frank, I think the possible criticisms of this show are ones that you would really have to squeeze out of it. You could say, for example, that many of the filmed murders include large amounts of over-acting, but I feel that that is deliberate. The show is meant to be fun, and it makes gentle fun of its own genre. Personally I'm finding it very difficult to criticise this show for production or any in any other way. The actors who play in the films and are afterwards questioned by the panel, are doing something incredibly difficult for an actor: they are being asked questions for which they are sometimes visibly unprepared, about a character which is only a bit role for them after all. The murderer can lie, but the others have to maintain a consistency in the story, which must have been incredibly difficult to do. Naturally one thing this does is sort out the truly great actors, who answer their questions looking calm and collected in their role.
So contrary to the drabness of much UK 1970s TV, this programme not only does what it sets out to do, but also provides an entertaining spectacle of contemporary costume, celebrities, and attitudes.