Here in the ogre’s cave we watch quite a lot of English detective shows; my housemate orders them from Netflix. The title of this post comes from an observation of hers that – since the biggest role in a detective show, after the regulars, is the criminal – if you see a prominent actor in the guest cast you can bet who dunnit.
When Anton Rodgers (whom you may remember from The Prisoner) showed up as ragged hypochondriac Lord Chetwood in “Market for Murder”, I eagerly hoped the rule would hold, because the dotty old lord rarely gets to have much fun. Alas, it was not to be.
A curious thing about that series Midsomer Murders, by the way: most episodes appear to be intended for widescreen format, but are not letterboxed, so the faces are distorted. My eye adapts to it before the show is half over.
And while I’m up, another curious thing: at the beginning of this episode the detective’s sidekick gets out of a car whose front plate is mirror-reversed. First I thought the shot was reversed; but the driver got out of the correct door. Then I thought perhaps that’s standard in Britain, so that you can easily read the plate of the car that rear-ended you; but no, all the other plates in the episode are normal. Could it be that the only car available for that shot was foreign, with the steering wheel on the wrong side?
