Series 5 — Episode 23
Murdersville

Regional broadcasts

TV Times listing

International broadcasts

Episode Rating

Second only to The Hidden Tiger, as far as I’m concerned. There’s really nothing to fault with this episode, one of the strongest pieces of television drama ever recorded.

The sleepy hamlet of Little Storping In-The-Swuff has its calm disrupted by a man coming out of the pub and gunning another man down. The villagers, however, carry on regardless.
Mrs. Peel goes to the village with Croft, an old school friend who has quit the Army and retired to the country. His butler has disappeared, leaving all his objets d’art smashed around his house. Croft disappears, and Emma finds his butler’s body, and is then knocked out by an unseen assailant.
When she recovers, she is told she had a car accident, but she notices Paul’s watch on the wrist of one of the men in her car. She discovers she has stumbled upon a village of murderers when she finds bodies at the doctor’s house, but is captured. After a dunking Emma is forced to ring her ‘husband’, John, and manages to pass on a message to Steed unbeknownst to the villagers. He turns up in time to rescue her from the local museum and Mrs. Peel craftily pelts the villagers into submission.
Mrs. Peel has found her knight in shining armour when Steed becomes trapped in the helmet she has just escaped from.

The Cars

Who’s Killing Whom?

Victim	Killer	Method
Martin	Wilson	Pistol
Unknown victim (off screen)	Sunglasses-wearing assassin	Shotgun
Forbes	Hubert & Mickle V*	Sickle
Samuel Morgan	Frederick Williams	Silenced Pistol
Major Paul Croft	Hubert & Mickle? V*	?
Unknown man	Trilby-wearing assassin	Tommy gun
Unknown man	Unknown killers	Body thrown from passing car (Humber Sceptre, maybe), but probably already dead.
Dr. Haymes V*	Emma	Spear

Click a name to see the face

The Fashions

Continuity and trivia

1. 
   1:40 — As you can read at Avengerland, the village of Little Storping In-The-Swuff is in fact Aldbury, which remains pretty much the same today. It also appeared, under the moniker of “Swingingdale” ("Not very swinging.") in Dead Man’s Treasure.
2. 4:00 — There’s a yellow cast on the picture for the whole scene in Steed’s flat - bad lighting or was it not remastered?
3. 5:50 & 20.59 — Product placement for Breitling Navitime watches.
4. 9:46, 10:19, 18:23, 20:15, etc. -
   
   ©1961–9 CANAL+IMAGE UK Ltd All Rights Reserved
   Mrs. Peel’s purple and blue catsuit appears to change colour several times throughout the episode - it becomes a red and deep purple/black catsuit. It’s obviously caused by some dodgy back-projection techniques. It only occurs when she’s inside a car, so they must be projecting the moving background onto the actors from the front, rather than onto a screen from behind, as was more usual (and more successful) practice.
5. 10:00 — Mrs. Peel drives Paul to his house they enter from the far end of the village, behind the large triangular road markings (let’s call that North). Paul later runs into town (13:05), correctly, from the South and Mrs. Peel drives back in later also from the South (26:15), to stop at the honey shop; however, the faked accident has her facing South, just near the honey shop, as if she had entered town from the North, and when Haymes drives her back from the house they come from the North (20:40). (Of course, the locals might know a shortcut that causes this).
6. 10:16 — There’s another For Sale sign in the village, I assume it’s just for show.
7. 12:55 — The shot of the “The Happy Ploughman” sign is a cut taken from the opening sequence
8. 15:05–15:20 — I just love the scene where the dastardly Frederick Williams is about to shoot Samuel Morgan, but then the librarian, Miss Avril, points to the "SILENCE" sign and he slips a silencer on the end of his pistol.
   
   ©1961–9 CANAL+IMAGE UK Ltd All Rights Reserved
9. 16:25 — There’s blood on Forbes’ forehead, in contravention of Brian Clemens rules for this series.
10. 21:33 — When Mrs. Peel gets back into her Lotus after it’s been dragged out from under the fence after the supposed accidents, there’s not a scratch on it!
11. 
    21:48 — Dr. Haymes is in the credits with that name, and is referred to by that name throughout the episode, but the sign outside his surgery definitely says “Doctor D.L. Haynes”.
12. 24:48 — Dr. Haymes seems to collect the same vintage car prints as Professor Rushton and Sir George Benstead.
13. 26:15 — When Mrs. Peel drives in from South it’s looks like Diane West is driving; it’s definitely not Diana Rigg and probably not Cyd Child.
14. 30:20 — An obvious stunt double for Bates, but I havenb’t identified him.
15. 31:10 — clearly not the back of Colin Blakely’s head, it must be a professional helicopter pilot.
16. 33:42–33:49 — One of the iron maidens in the museum was also seen in Castle De’Ath. The other? I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere else as well.
17. 34:10 — Are those the stocks from Escape In Time?
18. 38:50 — Great intercutting of Cyd Child doing the dunking stunt with mid shots of Diana gasping for breath.
19. 39:11 and 40:04 — Despite the great intercutting, two of the mid shots of Diana have her clothes much too dry compared to the rest of the footage.
    
    ©1961–9 CANAL+IMAGE UK Ltd All Rights Reserved
20. 40:44–41:55 — That telephone conversation in full:
    
    (phone rings) STEED: (faintly) Hello? EMMA: John, darling, it’s Emma STEED: Mrs, oh, uh, Mrs... EMMA: Don’t be silly darling, it’s your wife. How’s my little Johnsie-wonsie? STEED: Johnsie-wonsie’s fine! you sound like you’ve been soaking up just a little bit too much grape-juice. EMMA: You haven’t been out all day? Poor darling, go out and take the children with you. STEED: Children?! — You’re in trouble, aren’t you? EMMA: That’s right. STEED: Is somebody listening? EMMA: Yes, and I’ve had an absolutely torturous day. STEED: Ah, would you mind telling me where you are? EMMA: No darling, that would be silly. STEED: Are you in Little Storping? EMMA: Yes, I’ve had some trouble with my car. I had to drive over to — HAYMES: (quietly) Salisbury EMMA: Salisbury, I’m calling from there. STEED: That’s what they want me to think. EMMA: That’s right. Kiss little Albert for me, and Julian, and Gordon and baby Brian. STEED: Can you give me a clue, hint, anything? EMMA: Don’t forget that you promised to take them to the museum, you can do that after you’ve been to the pub. HAYMES: (sternly) That’s enough. STEED: The pub and the museum? You want me to meet you in the pub in Little Storping? (Haymes taps Mrs. Peel on the shoulder) EMMA: Good-bye. (she hangs up the phone) STEED: Mrs. Peel?

    The children’s names are the producers, Albert Fennell, Julian Wintle, Gordon L. T. Scott (not credited on screen until Series 6) and, of course, Brian Clemens.

21. 44:30 — Rocky Taylor bursts through door, doubling for Patrick Macnee.
22. 46:42 — The padlock on the chastity belt is already unlocked when Diana Rigg spins the belt around, and Patrick Macnee flips it up before he starts pretending to unlock it.
23. 48:00/46:00 — Rocky returns to double for Patrick in the fight sequence and Les Crawford doubles for John Ronane.
24. 48:13 — What was in those custard tarts? They’re heavy enough to send someone as solid as Banks reeling, and have a similar effect on Mickle. They must have been made by Steed’s Aunt Penelope (viz. her rock cakes in Dead Man’s Treasure).
25. 
    ©1961–9 CANAL+IMAGE UK Ltd All Rights Reserved
    48:42–48:50/46:46–46:54 — Emma gets a very creamy body during the (food) fight at the end when Joe Dunne throws Cyd Child onto the table, but when she threatens the Jenny and Maggie with a custard tart, played by diana Rigg, she is much less splattered.
26. 46:50 — That’s Joe Dunne doubling for Colin Blakely.
27. 46:55 — Speaking of Jennny and Maggie coming in - how come they didn’t trip over, or even notice, Haymes’ body with the spear in the chest?
28. Running time: 51′41″ / 49′18″
29. This episode has a video Q&A and commentary with Cyd Child and Philip Hawkins on the Lives in the Pictures YouTube channel.

Cast notes

1. Joseph Grieg is wrongly credited as Joseph Greig.
2. There’s a whole bunch of people not credited in this one! Mostly just random bodies and killers, but some are quite notable. Anyone know who they are? ‘Martin’ also played ‘Zoric’ in The Correct Way to Kill, but wasn’t credited for that either. You can also see him driving a Land-Rover at the beginning of The £50,000 Breakfast - he appears to be stuntman Art Thomas.
   Villager #9 may be Bill Nick, a semi-regular on The Prisoner, Villager #10 also played the man killed by the “Trilby-wearing assassin”, strange that he turns up for the dunking several minutes after being shot, and is shot shortly after being one of those pursuing Mrs. Peel through the village.