Miss Scarlet And The Duke
Johnny Vegas: Carry On Glamping
Detectives!’ announces a newspaper advert from 1896. ‘If you desire an object accomplished, a mystery cleared up or the doings of a person secretly ascertained, consult Slater — “the greatest detective of the age” — at No 1 Basinghall St, E.C.’
This was one of many advertisements placed on the front page of the Standard by Henry Slater, who claimed to be ‘successful in nearly every case’. One of his specialities was shadowing wives who claimed to be shopping when they were meeting gentlemen friends instead; another was ‘the new photography’, which guaranteed invaluable evidence for divorce proceedings.
He offered a unique service: ‘lady cyclist detectives’. He employed ‘an army’ of them, he announced, ‘throughout the kingdom, for confidential services of all descriptions’.
Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet and Stuart Martin as William ‘The Duke’ Wellington
Eliza combines a pert, flirtatious manner with masculine dress sense, wearing a waistcoat and tie in some scenes
The frustrated romance between Eliza and her oldest friend, Scotland Yard copper William ‘the Duke’ Wellington, lacks real tension
Slater’s methods ought to suit Eliza (Kate Phillips), taking over a rival detective agency, as Miss Scarlet And The Duke (Alibi) returns. She combines a pert, flirtatious manner with masculine dress sense, wearing a waistcoat and tie.
Sunshine set-up of the week
Like a cross between Love Island and The Apprentice, Rylan’s reality show Hot Mess Summer (Amazon Prime Video) sends eight shallow show-offs to Zante . . . and makes them work, not party. It’s not original, but it is slick, funny and a bit mean.
But this doesn’t seem to impress her potential clients. Perhaps a bicycle is the answer.
The pace is brisk, the mysteries are well plotted and the dialogue is sharp and witty, but this cosy Victorian crime serial has two faults.
The sets are often dimly lit, perhaps to convey city smog and flickering gaslight. It’s meant to be atmospheric, but too often looks dark and dingy.
And the frustrated romance between Eliza and her oldest friend, Scotland Yard copper William ‘the Duke’ Wellington (Stuart Martin), lacks real tension.
They obviously fancy each other rotten, and bicker constantly.
She barges into his office to taunt him, he spends his evenings chatting to her on a chaise beside the fire.
In short, they behave as though they are already married. And since they’re both single, what’s to stop them doing something about it?
But Paul Bazely is an excellent addition to the cast as Clarence, a snide and snippy clerk in the reluctant employ of Eliza, and doing all he can to express his disdain without actually getting sacked.
The investigation was great fun, too, as Eliza discovered a secret passage in a brothel masquerading as an ‘elite gentleman’s club’, and quizzed a laudanum-addled government minister after he was shot in bed with one of the girls. He said it was a ‘hunting accident’.
There’s little fun for Johnny Vegas as he trudges round the country in search of a campsite for his converted buses in Carry On Glamping
The actor tries to be upbeat and boisterous, coming up with new ways to draw a crowd
There’s little fun for Johnny Vegas as he trudges round the country in search of a campsite for his converted buses in Carry On Glamping (Ch4).
The actor tries to be upbeat and boisterous, coming up with new ways to draw a crowd: ‘I want to get ordained as a Jedi; then I can do weddings. I want to marry people and knight them with my light sabre.’
But, suffering from waves of anxiety and depression, he couldn’t hide how tough he found the constant round of filming and TV appearances.
Trying to keep a holiday business afloat in his spare time was clearly too much, and it became upsetting — even painful — to watch.
Sitting in the back of a car on his way to ITV’s This Morning studios for a chat on the sofa, he was slurring his words and close to collapse.
‘I’ve become agoraphobic,’ he said afterwards, and it wasn’t a one-liner. ‘I don’t like leaving the house. I just want to be left alone with my thoughts.’
A couple of days later, in the middle of filming, he asked for the cameras to be turned off — he was unable to keep going.
‘Mental and physical exhaustion’ was diagnosed. For Channel 4 to scrape together a series from these remnants of footage, when the star appears so unwell, seems both pointless and cruel.
