Good Salary - Prospects - Free Coffin - Series 5 Episode 5, Saturday 10th May 1975 (ITC movie title "Mirror of Deception")

The story...

American student Helen Terek is sharing a flat with Wendy Phillips and Babs Bryant. Soon though Wendy is gone when she sees an advert for an exciting job involving travel, just getting in her application before Babs can do so. Helen isn’t too surprised that Wendy doesn’t get back in touch – she’s got used to the transitory nature of relationships with flatmates.

A couple of months later the same job advert turns up. Babs is excited to see it and with a shade of schadenfreude speculates that the job has reappeared because Wendy got fired. This time around Babs gets in her application and is successful. Soon after she moves out, Helen gets married to her English boyfriend Charley. The pair seem very happy although Helen is a little surprised not to have heard back from Babs. However she becomes much more worried when she sees the same job advert again; even worse when she visits the Embassy to get her passport changed and meets a member of staff called Babs – Babs Bryant – whose background is the same as her former flatmate. She starts to believe that something awful has happened to Babs and Wendy, her new husband unable to settle her mind…

Review

This episode doesn't quite live up to the great expectations of its excellent story idea. However it remains a valuable and thought-provoking effort.

It was the third and final of the espionage stories. Espionage was perhaps not the best material for Thriller and for me only Night is the Time for Killing ranks (just) above the average although all three were sound efforts and not far below the norm. As with the other two examples impersonation is the technique used by the villains. Once again their country of origin is never specified but it seems safe to assume that they represent the Eastern Bloc. A virtue of this vagueness is it allows for conjecture and avoids stories getting bogged down in Cold War propaganda. Carter and Gifford are intended to blend in as thoroughly English but are enemy agents. Carter though seems almost too English and has a rather odd, ultra-refined accent that could easily be that of a foreigner trying rather too hard to pass as a native.

The plan is an extraordinary one: to replace Britons with lookalikes who can then act as spies. Women with few friends and family are deliberately targeted. Quite why women are chosen is unclear. Maybe the instigators feel they are less likely to be suspected as spies but it was probably to satisfy the standard Thriller theme of "women in danger". Conversely though, it does mean that women get to break the stereotype by acting as assassins. The replacements take the same name and personal history as their victims, such as the Babs Bryant impersonator, but are not exact copies. It's a clever idea but does raise a few questions. Although these are women with few connections there might still be some, like Timothy Bryant, asking after them. There is no guarantee that the agents will get jobs with real spying potential. However, as Gifford notes, they have been told that any information is meaningful.

The brilliant teaser sets up this idea. We never see the replacement for the tall blonde but we do see those for Wendy, Babs and ultimately Helen. The scenes in which the women are disturbingly confronted by their replacements and then killed are very powerful, especially that of Babs in which Babs Two runs through her victim's whole personal history while Babs moves from excitement and astonishment through to horror. The nervousness of two of the female assassins - who had not killed before - are also very well depicted.

Gifford (Julian Glover) gives some advice to the woman about to "inherit" the role of "Babs Bryant" (Gillian Hawser)

There is an interesting contrast in attitudes between the two villains. Carter appears to find the whole business unpleasant but necessary. He regrets, "I wish they didn't have to be so young." He never lets slip his charming and dignified exterior. Gifford on the other hand seems to enjoy what he is doing - a delight that Carter finds sickening. Maybe Gifford has become hardened by violence and this is his way of coping. Perhaps he has managed to depersonalise the victims to avoid any pangs of conscience. In a very revealing exchange Carter protests, "They're human beings!" and Gifford retorts, "On the other side!" These may be ordinary young women to others but they are just members of the “enemy” to him and no pity should be extended. A parallel might be to contemporary terrorists with Gifford representing the attitude that anyone in the enemy country is a legitimate target. These tensions between the pair are excellently demonstrated. One annoying aspect though is how Gifford continually repeats Carter's remark about him being, "a pig". However as he points out to Carter maybe his brutality is very necessary and he does seem to play a key part in giving the assassins the resolve for their deadly tasks - Carter insists he could do such things if necessary but Gifford has his doubts.

Wendy and Babs are both vulnerable because of their isolation and quest for what seems a great opportunity. Like the shy and lonely Jenny in Lady Killer they are easy prey for deceivers. Helen's remark about departing flatmates being, "ships that pass in the night," reflects the fleeting and fragile nature of many apparently strong relationships when one person moves on to another job or partner. Helen though is rather more perceptive than her flatmates. She spots the warning signs as the advert reappears and realises their silence may well be involuntary. In true heroine style she picks up on danger signs despite the derision of her new husband Charley and sticks to her beliefs despite his opposition. The friction this causes between them is starky portrayed, and her independent sprit leads him to suspect the influence of "Women's Lib,", a topic never far from the surface in the minds of many 1970s male screen characters. .

Linking to chauvinistic male attitudes, Timothy Bryant (Babs' brother) initially invites hackles with his awful chat-up of Helen but once he appreciates she is unavailable he makes a very valuable contribution. He is wise enough to see there may be something strange going on and gives her much-needed support. His meeting with Carter is electrifying. Inspector Bruff offers a diplomatically sceptical perspective, in neat contrast to Charley, before being won around.

The final minutes are quite strong. There is a struggle which doesn't entirely work on screen but there are a couple of striking twists in terms of who will save the day. In this respect it's a little like the climax of If It's a Man - Hang Up! a few weeks earlier where there were a couple of very late surprises as regards who was the ultimate villain and who was the ultimate hero. Both conclusions are well done overall but perhaps a little rushed.

Although the story is generally a fascinating one it doesn’t best serve some of the characters and the performances. The central couple of Helen and Charley Masters are not particularly appealing on screen and this limits the scope of actors Kim Darby and Keith Barron. Helen spends almost all the episode in negative emotion mode, understandably very worried about the fate of her former flatmates or in conflict with her new husband who not only disbelieves her but is angered at her concerns. While these emotions are entirely justified given the story they do make her character rather dour. Worse is Charley who comes across for most of the action as selfish and unsympathetic. Although the pair get married within the episode their spells of happiness are brief and so the couple are rarely at ease. While the sceptical partner wasn’t unknown in Thriller (e.g. Bruce Nelson in A Place To Die) earlier examples came across as rather more supportive and less antagonistic. The hostile reaction of Charley might be quite realistic in terms of how many partners would respond but all the same it can be somewhat relentless for the viewer. Both actors give capable displays but would have benefitted from more light as well as shade in their characters.

Probably for most viewers the most memorable characters and performances will be by the villains. James Maxwell gives the best display as the enigmatic, ambivalent, even sympathetic Carter, contrasting well with Julian Glover who is typically strong in his role as the brutal Gifford. Martin Read is impressive in his cameo as Tim Bryant but again might have been better served by not having to spout the dreadful chat-up dialogue in his first lines. Helen’s unfortunate flatmates Wendy and Babs also run the emotional gamut from excitement and joy to bewilderment and ultimately horror and are well-performed by Janina Faye and Susan Dury respectively.

In general a little reworking, maybe broader characterisation and performances and more innovative direction might have turned an average episode into a fine one. The results remain though very entertaining by general TV standards.

Notes

Although over thirty actors appeared more than once in Thriller, Susan Dury (playing the real Babs Bryant) was the only one whose character was murdered on both occasions. She had previously appeared in Killer with Two Faces and it may not be coincidence that the director each time was John Scholz-Conway who may have felt she "died beautifully" in the earlier outing and cast her again for a similar role. James Greene also appeared in both these episodes, each time playing a policeman.

It seems odd that Inspector Bruff's detective colleague (seen with him at the US Embassy) is not credited even though he is prominent on screen and has a few lines of dialogue. At the same time an actor is credited as "Police Driver" even though he only appears briefly in the background and has no dialogue. it is possible the driver originally has more dialogue which was cut from the broadcast episode.

The ITC Movie version was named "Mirror of Deception". Opinions will vary but I prefer this more enigmatic title to the more attention-grabbing though less subtle original one. Generally I prefer the more intriguing titles such as Someone at the Top of the Stairs and An Echo of Theresa to the more graphic ones including words such as "Kill", "Death" and variations thereof which predominated. While such episode titles are certainly eye-catching they are perhaps "overkill" (pardon the pun) for a show already called Thriller. 

The opening titles for the movie also overlays dialogue from the original episode onto a new scene of a killing (a similar approach was taken in the "movie" version of Killer with Two Faces). There is a photograph of the intended victim (below - and not played by Susan Dury, just how the credits rolled at that point!), a rare case of a face being seen in a movie version but as this was an extrapolation of events in the episode (we know other victims were killed and replaced by agents) the depiction is plausible. The end credits play over a freeze-frame rather than an artistic montage as in most versions.