Talking Pictures TV - A crime to miss these shows

Talking Pictures are currently showing Dixon of Dock Green, from the early surviving episodes in the 1950s. The quality of picture is sometimes a bit grainy, but watchable, and it has subtitles. I grew up with Dixon as a staple of Saturday nights, so it is really good to see it again. 

Subtitles are great if your hearing is none too good, and Talking Pictures has more and more shows with subtitles, including those below.

I've always enjoyed John Dickson Carr's detective fiction, so it is wonderful to see this series of half hour stories, which I'd never seen before. Some plots are better than others, but Boris Karloff, in a heroic mode for once as the exceptionally clever Colonel March of the Department of Queer Complaints (when that word just meant "odd") is always good in the role. And some plots are very good. Wiki notesL

Colonel March of Scotland Yard is a British television series consisting of a single season of 26 episodes first broadcast in the United States from December 1954 to Spring of 1955. The series premiered on British television on 24 September 1955 on the newly opened ITV London station for the weekends Associated Television. It is based on author John Dickson Carr's (aka Carter Dickson) fictional detective Colonel March from his book The Department of Queer Complaints (1940).

The producer Hannah Weinstein had worked as a publicist, journalist and campaigner for radical causes throughout the 1930s and 1940s. She left America in 1950 when the McCarthyite antiCommunist persecution was at its height. She bought the rights to the book and character. Weinstein was involved in every facet of production. She was also notable for her use of blacklisted writers. 

Historian Dave Mann notes:

"Her chief writers on Colonel March, both blacklisted, were Walter Bernstein and Abraham Polonsky who operated from New York, as Hollywood was too exposed to scrutiny. Together with another blacklisted writer, Arnold Manoff, they allotted work on the basis of need and availability. Furthermore, Karloff, a noted Hollywood liberal and founding member of and negotiator for the Screen Actors Guild, was a lynchpin in the series' development."

Another new series to me - previously only shown in America, is this series of half hour Sherlock Holmes stories, mostly original but loosely based on some of Conan Doyle's Stories. Ronald Howard is a very engaging Holmes, and there's humour, as well as clever twists. Watson (played by the excellent H.M. Craword) for once is not a buffoon unlike the Nigel Bruce version, and the banter between them is wonderful! A bit of extra information, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Sherlock Holmes was a detective television series syndicated in the autumn of 1954, based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard (son of Leslie Howard) as Holmes and H. Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade (and in a few as other characters). Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.

Also showing are the Edgar Wallace Mysteries which I remember on TV because of the distinctive opening melody, and the slow turning of the bust of Edgar, shrouded in fog (or smoke?). One from Merton Park studies, these are brilliant hour long crime stories, often with a twist, in which actors who became very well known later appear. Wiki notes:

The Edgar Wallace Mysteries is a British second-feature film series mainly produced at Merton Park Studios for Anglo-Amalgamated. There were 48 films in the series, which were released between 1960 and 1965.The series was screened as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre on television in the United States

All these shows are black and white, and apart from Dixon, they were originally filmed, so the definition is very clear. The audio track on all is very good, and as I said above, they all have subtitles. It is also interesting to see two women producers, both of whom predated Verity Lambert at the BBC.