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The Mystery Of The Missing TV Series
02 Dec 2005
The Curse of the Bronze Lamp - "Carter Dickson" (John Dickson Carr) - Carroll and Graf, 1997
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Here's a puzzle for you. We have here a classic mystery. In Egypt, in the 1920s, a young archaeologist called Lady Helen Loring (yes, she's a toff) encounters a seer who tells her that if she removes an ancient bronze lamp from the country, she will be "blown to dust". She ignores him, returns to her ancestral hall in Gloucestershire with her friends Kit Farrell and Audrey Vane, enters the front door - and disappears, leaving the lamp in the middle of the floor... Now this is a sufficiently intriguing puzzle in itself, but to me there is a much greater one. Why hasn't it been turned into a period murder mystery for TV?
Let us review the evidence. First, the locations: Egypt (shades of Death on the Nile), a stately home in the south of England and the local hamlet that adjoins it. Perfect! Now the characters. We need: a strong and striking detective with no discernible family or back-story, a cohort of dodgy upper and middle class suspects (including at least three major acting stars, one of whom is invariably the villain, and a token American to help it sell in the US), a clueless detective and a bunch of forelock-tugging lower class extras. We have: Sir Henry Merrivale, a large florid-faced man with no modesty whatsoever and a tendency to refer to any women he comes across as "My Wench" (one can imagine a PC-fixated producer reading the script and commenting approvingly on that daringly edgy character trait), five or six suspects (including Kit, Audrey, Helen's father Lord Severn, his assistant Sandy Robertson, an antiques seller called Julia Mansfield, and a dodgy American occultist), the clueless Inspector Masters, and the house servants represented by the butler Benson and the housekeeper Mrs Pomfret. Check, check, check.
What about the plot? Does it have enough twists and turns to keep the audience interested for an hour and a half? Well, yes. Dark secrets are revealed. There is love interest (Kit and Sandy love Helen, Audrey loves Sandy). There are several unexpected twists. The modus operandi, when explained by Sir Henry at the end, makes perfect sense and could easily be dramatised. And it's not as if it would be a one-off either - there are many other Henry Merrivale mysteries, so establishing a franchise would be no problem.
So, if this is the perfect made-for-TV book, why hasn't it been? It is of course possible that Carr's estate has refused to sell the rights. But television executives can offer exceedingly persuasive amounts of money. Perhaps none of them has read the book? This also seems unlikely - John Dickson Carr is well known in crime and thriller circles as one of the greatest of the "golden age" writers. One can only conclude that they have read the book and decided that it was fundamentally flawed in a way that not even an expert scriptwriter could fix. But what could that flaw be?
A clue was given in the description of Sir Henry Merrivale. For his condescending attitude to women appears to be true of his creator as well. There are three main female characters and they are all young, beautiful and idiotic. Apart from the bit part of Mrs. Pomfret, there are no older women in the story at all. And this means that a large part of the demographic would be excluded. In Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers there is a wide variety of female characters, and while some of them are also extremely silly, there are normally at least one or two with whom women can identify and empathise. Only 20-somethings would identify with any of the female characters in The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, and they are not the ones who would be likely to watch a period TV. The crystalline precision of the plot would make introducing characters or modifying existing ones next to impossible, frustrating the efforts of would-be script doctors.
So that's my answer - Carr's inability to write convincing female characters (a common failing of writers of his period) makes his books unsuitable for a modern-day television audience. Mystery solved?
The Curse of the Bronze Lamp - "Carter Dickson" (John Dickson Carr) - Carroll and Graf, 1997
* * * *
Here's a puzzle for you. We have here a classic mystery. In Egypt, in the 1920s, a young archaeologist called Lady Helen Loring (yes, she's a toff) encounters a seer who tells her that if she removes an ancient bronze lamp from the country, she will be "blown to dust". She ignores him, returns to her ancestral hall in Gloucestershire with her friends Kit Farrell and Audrey Vane, enters the front door - and disappears, leaving the lamp in the middle of the floor... Now this is a sufficiently intriguing puzzle in itself, but to me there is a much greater one. Why hasn't it been turned into a period murder mystery for TV?
Let us review the evidence. First, the locations: Egypt (shades of Death on the Nile), a stately home in the south of England and the local hamlet that adjoins it. Perfect! Now the characters. We need: a strong and striking detective with no discernible family or back-story, a cohort of dodgy upper and middle class suspects (including at least three major acting stars, one of whom is invariably the villain, and a token American to help it sell in the US), a clueless detective and a bunch of forelock-tugging lower class extras. We have: Sir Henry Merrivale, a large florid-faced man with no modesty whatsoever and a tendency to refer to any women he comes across as "My Wench" (one can imagine a PC-fixated producer reading the script and commenting approvingly on that daringly edgy character trait), five or six suspects (including Kit, Audrey, Helen's father Lord Severn, his assistant Sandy Robertson, an antiques seller called Julia Mansfield, and a dodgy American occultist), the clueless Inspector Masters, and the house servants represented by the butler Benson and the housekeeper Mrs Pomfret. Check, check, check.
What about the plot? Does it have enough twists and turns to keep the audience interested for an hour and a half? Well, yes. Dark secrets are revealed. There is love interest (Kit and Sandy love Helen, Audrey loves Sandy). There are several unexpected twists. The modus operandi, when explained by Sir Henry at the end, makes perfect sense and could easily be dramatised. And it's not as if it would be a one-off either - there are many other Henry Merrivale mysteries, so establishing a franchise would be no problem.
So, if this is the perfect made-for-TV book, why hasn't it been? It is of course possible that Carr's estate has refused to sell the rights. But television executives can offer exceedingly persuasive amounts of money. Perhaps none of them has read the book? This also seems unlikely - John Dickson Carr is well known in crime and thriller circles as one of the greatest of the "golden age" writers. One can only conclude that they have read the book and decided that it was fundamentally flawed in a way that not even an expert scriptwriter could fix. But what could that flaw be?
A clue was given in the description of Sir Henry Merrivale. For his condescending attitude to women appears to be true of his creator as well. There are three main female characters and they are all young, beautiful and idiotic. Apart from the bit part of Mrs. Pomfret, there are no older women in the story at all. And this means that a large part of the demographic would be excluded. In Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers there is a wide variety of female characters, and while some of them are also extremely silly, there are normally at least one or two with whom women can identify and empathise. Only 20-somethings would identify with any of the female characters in The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, and they are not the ones who would be likely to watch a period TV. The crystalline precision of the plot would make introducing characters or modifying existing ones next to impossible, frustrating the efforts of would-be script doctors.
So that's my answer - Carr's inability to write convincing female characters (a common failing of writers of his period) makes his books unsuitable for a modern-day television audience. Mystery solved?