Death in a White Tie

One of the best.......
Ngaio Marsh was one of the big three mystery writers who kicked off the genre for women writers in the 20th Century. She was a New Zealander who migrated to England around the time of WWII and who, along with Christie and Sayers, developed a version of the upper crust male protagonist dectective modeled on Sherlock Holmes.

Sadly, few of Marsh's stories were dramatized for PBS Mystery Theater, though I a number of them have been turned into "talking" books. I recall that there was some discussion at the time of the release of the PBS films about the suitability of Patrick Malahide for the part of Inspector Alleyn. I don't know if that was a factor in PBS not showing more episodes or not, but I think Malahide was just fine.

The first episodes of the Alleyn series cover his early days as an Inspector for Scotland Yard where he teams up with DI Fox (William Simons - Inspector Cribb) and meets his future wife, the artist Agatha Troy (Belinda Lang --To Serve Them All...

Excellent and lots of fun + but one problem
I cannot imagine what some of the people who wrote reviews here were watching. Of the four films, Death at the Bar and Final Curtain are brillaintly written and acted. A Man Lay Dead is a bit slow here or there and as is the Nursing Home Murders, but nevertheless I always enjoyed this series and was sorry they did not make more or them. A&E took over airing the series after the show was on PBS (A&E outbid PBS for a number of programs over the years) and A&E was so busy promoting things like Midsommer Murders that Allyen never got the exposure it deserved.

As for the Troy character she is played wonderfully here by Belinda Lang and there is real chemistry between her and Malahide. FYI to one of the reviewers, the characters never married in the series although Allyen proposes and Troy accepts in Dead Water.

2 out of 4 of these are five star films, the balance being 3/4 star but very enjoyable and well cast.

Let's hope the other 5 films come out as...

Less fun than Christie but very good of kind
Consider all the detective series now available on DVDs: Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders, Philip Marlowe, and the like. The success of each one depends on the individuality of the sleuth himself rather than the mysteries. The first three on that list are real "characters" in the "eccentric" sense of the word, whereas the other three series seem to rely more on the settings rather than on the main character.

We can now add to this list, thanks to Acorn Media, the first set of the "Inspector Alleyn Mysteries" (AMP-7427), based on mystery novels by Ngaio Marsh, with Patrick Malahide in the title role. Here we have a time setting of post-WWII England and a place setting of old manor houses and remote fishing villages. Alleyn himself is a bit aristocratically stodgy in the first two episodes, a bit looser in the last two. One interesting gimmick is that his sidekick, Detective Inspector Fox (William Simons) is every bit as sharp as...

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