Once the Killing Starts - Series 2 Episode 2 (Saturday 2nd February 1974)

The story...

Oxford Professor Michael Lane is indulging in an affair with one of his young students, Stella. They want to be together, but how? Without Stella's knowledge Michael kills his wife, setting-up an elaborate scheme that makes it seem she has been killed by an intruder while he was meeting a colleague. He is delighted when the plan seems to work, with the police none the wiser.

However somebody knows his secret and he starts to receive disturbing blackmail notes, with the words cut-out of newspapers. His affair continues but he becomes more anxious and suspicious. These suspicions lead to another murder but the notes keep coming. Can he silence his accuser?

Review

This is an episode which is very important in my own Thriller history. It was the first episode I ever saw any part of. This was back in 1982 when I saw around the final ten minutes - it wasn't planned viewing, simply what was on TV when I entered the room. However I was feeling ill at the time and bizarrely saw the programme as an omen and avoided it thereafter! I must stress this was nothing to do with the contents of the episode (which I long remembered) but superstition.

Fast-forward twelve years and two articles by Ian Kerr about Thriller got me intrigued about the show. One of them in the magazine TV Zone featured a striking photograph from the episode featuring a blackmail letter sent to the Professor and I suppose I also found the title and the synopsis fascinating so putting all these elements together it was an instalment I very much wanted to see although in the end it was one of the last I got to view in 2002. This was in its movie version. There is no doubt that the movie versions with their new titles and music have often been panned but I felt those for Once the Killing Starts were wonderfully chilling and really set up the episode well. Perhaps all these factors have contributed to this being one of my top episodes. Objectively there are probably many better and many viewers rank it quite low but sometimes for all sorts of often random personal reasons an episode gets an unusually high or low rating...

This is a fine, very intriguing story. The small cast allows the few characters to be very well-drawn. There are interesting insights into religion rarely seen in Thriller, with the Professor a confirmed non-believer and his wife a devout Catholic. The themes of anxiety and suspicion are very well-developed. All the main cast give strong performances. Patrick O'Neal is very convincing as the Professor. Gerald Sim gives an excellent performance as Petersen who exudes gentlemanly decency, although that doesn't stop Michael suspecting him as well. Quite possibly the best display is by Gary Watson as the enigmatic Inspector Rush. Rush appears to suspect nothing but it is evident he knows much more than he lets-on. Angharad Rees and Michael Kitchen play Stella and George (another student) capably and later became very frequent television faces.

Just what does Inspector Rush (Gary Watson) know of Professor Lane's crimes?

Typically for "Thriller" the direction by John Scholz-Conway is fine but probably even better than normal. There are some very poignant shots of a photograph of the Professor and his wife. There is a "whodunit" element of sorts in the episode in the form of who is the blackmailer and skilful direction and performances give viewers the impression that certain characters are either the blackmailer or know what the Professor has been doing. The ending is absolutely extraordinary. For me it an absolute masterstroke but it is fair to say others have found it quite incredible. It certainly will get you thinking about the vagaries of the human mind! Could such things happen? Watch .. and judge for yourself...

Notes - the Thriller answer (homage?) to Columbo?

There are some interesting parallels between this episode and the American detective series Columbo which was running at the time. There are some similarities in story format. There is a well-to-do villain whose villainy is transparent from the start - the American show rarely did "whodunits" and instead the focus was on what might the killer do next and how he would be caught (the latter far more prominent in Columbo). In both productions we also often see elaborate methods either to commit a murder or to cover it up. In both the detective only appears until fifteen or twenty minutes into the episode after we have seen the villain set-up the crime. This episode ends with a calm, very low-key arrest not unlike those seen  in Columbo and in sharp contrast to the often dramatic climaxes in other Thrillers. The lead actor Patrick O'Neal had even appeared as a villain in Columbo ("Blueprint for Murder" in 1972).

However the greater parallels are between the detectives. In this episode Inspector Rush is unfailingly polite in his enquiries, never giving any overt sign to Professor Lane that he was under suspicion (although little hints are dropped). He is though very persistent and gets under the skin of Lane before at the climax moving in to present the damning evidence. All these were hallmarks of Columbo. Rush also wears a mac at one point although it must be said his appearance is always much more dapper than the dishevelled Columbo!

Was there overt influence? TV writers (of that era anyway) often spoke of being influenced by films and sometimes by theatre, very rarely of being influenced by other TV shows or TV writers. Brian Clemens in particular was very open about the influence of Hitchcock on his work. Writers (and indeed actors and directors) of that era often gave the impression that they watched little or no television but it may still have had some influence. Columbo was a rare beast in the TV world in being both a big success with viewers and critics (who would often be very hard to please with TV shows and could give the impression the medium was beneath them). Therefore it would probably be one of those shows that those in the TV world would be more willing to make an exception for and possibly be influenced by. Of course resemblances between shows can occur for many reasons which are often coincidental, or some in the production may be "channelling" the spirit of a particular show while others are not. Whatever the reality it is fascinating to speculate on the links, actual or potential. Columbo had already done a rather mediocre episode set in the UK ("Dagger of the Mind" from 1972) and this with a little adaptation would have probably served rather better as a script, even running about the same screen length as most episodes of the American show.