3.15 - The Gilded Cage

[darren]

Written by Roger Marshall

Directed by Bill Bain

Production completed: 25 October 1963

[Rhonda]

6 for me. A police story like in the earlier ones but with a few good moments.

[cyberrich]

Very slick with no noticeable mistakes, which is unusual for a 'live' episode. Honor gives a stellar performance here. A terrific script, and one of the better Cathy episodes that predates her future experience with gold bullion by over 6 months. Like all UK viewers my age, this was the very first Cathy episode I saw when channel 4 showed it in 1992, the first time since 1964 that Cathy Gale had been on UK TV. A solid 9 out of 10

[Frankymole]

So Cathy Gale lived at 14, Primrose Hill, and Tara King lived at 9 Primrose Hill, (which is in real life no 19 Chalcot Crescent). Just a few doors apart.

[Frankymole]

Good Roger Marshall script with a well-depicted criminal gang, all with their own personalities (we see no other characters but the criminals and the two Avengers, you can't count the faceless gold-guards). Cathy is back in Holloway again (see Intercrime). The to's and fro's between the villains are well-played.

Cathy's "post trial" episode is genuinely disorienting, preceding the Prisoner and its Thomas M. Disch novel by some years.

8/10.

[Frankymole]

Strange that the ersatz prison wardress claimed "they topped her last week" when the last woman to be executed in Britain was Ruth Ellis in 1955. Were they trying to give Cathy a clue that this wasn't real?

[Allard]

From memory: the death penalty was abandoned in the UK in the (late?) sixties and not made illegal until the nineties.

[Frankymole]

True for two very limited crimes (e.g. treason, and piracy with violence) but it is interesting how its use was really ramped down in the 1950s, especially after the Homicide Act 1957. The sudden execution of a woman after over 8 years would've been so noteworthy as to render their pretence incredible.

[mousemeat]

From memory: the death penalty was abandoned in the UK in the (late?) sixties and not made illegal until the nineties.

interesting....is the death penalty ban, still in effect today ? and has it affected crimes, that would warrant it ? i.e. less crime , more ?

this has been a raging battle in the U.S. some states have banned it.
others such as the state I live in TN, still have it...in fact, I believe TN is
getting ready to put to death a prisoner, who's currently on death row.

myself, I have mixed feelings ...perhaps, it'll get banned totally in the U.S.
and I can certainly live with that...

[Frankymole]

The studies at the time concluded there was no proof it deterred crime (see the articles). The miscarriages of justice, that they'd been covering up (especially Christie's murders and necrophiliacism - immortalised in many films and TV series since - being blamed on a man with mental incapacities who got killed, after his wife was raped and killed his daughter murdered, the ultimate insult) turned us against it.