Thursday 10 September 2015

236 The Ellery Queen Whodunnit



First  watched : January  1976

Here's  an  interesting  entry. Ellery  Queen  was  the  creation  of  two  American  crime  writers  Frederick  Dannay  and  Manfred  Lee,  a  writer  and  amateur  detective  who  helps  solve  the  crimes  which  are  confounding  his  father, a  New  York  City  police  inspector. In  the  States  it  became  a  massively  successful  franchise ; this  was  the  fourth  separate  TV  series  to  feature  him  over  there.

However  it  meant  curiously  little  over  here  where  this  was  the  only  one  of  the  adaptations  to  be  broadcast. It  was  made  by  the  team  behind  Columbo   and  followed  a similar  format  of  an  unconventional  detective  solving  a  complicated  crime  then  announcing  his  deduction  to  the  assembled  suspects. The  unique  feature  of  the  series  was  the  eponymous  hero  played  by  Jim  Hutton  turning  to  the  camera  with  ten  minutes  to  go  and  breaking  the  fourth  wall  by  asking  the  viewer  "Do  you  know  who  it  was  ?"  ( which  I  invariably  didn't ).

I  thought  it  was  OK  but  it  failed  to  live  up  to  expectations  in  its  Tuesday  early  evening  slot  and  was  pulled  after  only  12  episodes  had  been  broadcast. Three  more  were  used  to  fill  a  gap  in  the Monday  schedule  in  August   then  it  disappeared  for  good  with  no  repeats  and  seven  of  the  episodes  never  broadcast  here.

Jim  Hutton  died  of  liver  cancer  in  1979  and  didn't  live  to  see  his  son  Timothy's  Oscar  triumph  the  following  year. Both  Dannay  and  Lee  are  long  since  dead  although  the  publication  they  founded  in  1941,  Ellery  Queen's  Mystery  Magazine  is  still   published  monthly  and  is  only  on  to  its  third  editor.

No comments:

Post a Comment