Kill Two Birds - Series 6 Episode 5, Saturday 8th May 1976 (ITC movie title "Cry Terror")

The story...

Charley Draper returns home after ten years in prison for bank robbery. He comes in saying, "Charley's home and Charley's rich," to his friend Busby. However he then finds that Busby has been killed. Some rival criminals, led by the refined but ruthless Gadder, appear. They know that he still has money and want a share of it. Charlie makes an audacious escape but is injured in the process. He gets away to Dorset but has been followed - and not just by Gadder's mob. He is trying to get to his brother who has a garage and cafe there but can he avoid the dangerous Gadder? Also heading there are two American tourists who prove to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Review

Excepting the comedy-drama of K Is for Killing this is the most unconventional episode of Thriller. It was one of a number of episodes experimenting in some way with the show's conventions and settings in the final series. This may explain why - to my surprise - it is one of the lowest-rated episodes on the Internet Movie Database. It's an ambitious and fascinating effort – not wholly successful but still making a strong impression. The final series was - with the exception of Dial a Deadly Number and Death In Deep Water - rather pedestrian but this is the strongest of the other six stories.

The standard format of Thriller involved a single villain - occasionally with an accomplice – targeting women. The title alone might have led viewers to think that was on the cards here, especially with very prominent billing given to Susan Hampshire and Gabrielle Drake. Newcomers might then be surprised to encounter a teaser where women are conspicuously absent. Not only do we not see the usual Thriller locales of country houses or smart modern flats but a rather run down London street and a very run-down house. The teaser itself could easily have been from a gritty police drama like The Sweeney as gang members make an "offer" to a newly-released prisoner that they think he can't refuse. The ultimatum is then transformed into violence and the ex-prisoner Charley makes his escape by diving through a closed window - an action sequence hardly expected in Thriller but very well done all the same.

The women do appear soon after. Tracy and Sally are two American tourists - a background typical of many Thriller heroines. They do ultimately become involved in a hostage drama but their parts are almost incidental and a far cry from the normal pattern. It has to be said these are underwhelming characters. A mistake was to cast British actresses. American "impersonators" were not unprecedented in the show. These worked best when supporting a genuine American guest star. When they were on their own it was harder to be convincing, but possible. However two faux Americans is asking too much. Gabrielle Drake and Susan Hampshire make a game effort but it isn't enough. Generally the characters haven't much to offer. Tracy is very annoying with her inane chatter. This is realistic in that such annoying people exist but they do not make for entertaining television. Sally is simply unremarkable. They do improve later in the story as they become embroiled in the deeper drama and involved in some tense scenes but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they were shoe-horned into the story to provide an American angle when the story is essentially about villains and the police. Possibly the women could have been retained if bona fide Americans had been cast or they had played British characters but these were always likely to be minor parts.

Essentially this is a police versus villains - or more accurately police versus villains versus villains - story. Such a scenario would be far more likely in a police drama but in addition both the police and villains are cut from a very coarse, realistic cloth. The characters and the core storyline would not be out-of-place in an aggressive, realistic drama like the contemporaneous The Sweeney. The villains - and the presence of a gang is otherwise absent in Thriller - are robbers rather than murderers although they are clearly prepared to kill if someone gets in their way or crosses them. They are all too willing to use violence as intimidation and punishment, as Tosher's chilling threat to Farrow makes clear - again without precedent in the show. The feeble alcoholic Dr. Kemp is also threatened if he doesn't cooperate. These are not mentally disturbed individuals - they are very rational in their brutality - and that makes them highly unnerving.

The villains have a proletarian nature to them that distinguishes them from their middle-class counterparts elsewhere in the show. Gadder to some degree departs from that pattern. He has a certain urbanity and is well-dressed but this could be the pretension of a working class villain playing up to a refined image rather than someone with middle class roots. Interestingly all his gang are smartly-attired, perhaps showing that ill-gotten gains are allowing them to enjoy the finer things in life or perhaps Gadder has installed some "corporate look" or "uniform" on his men. The police are not much different and have the rough edges and streetwise quality of the realistic cop shows, although without the more daring excesses in behaviour of the likes of Jack Regan. The long-haired, casually-dressed Sergeant Turner rather fits the "trendy copper" bill. As in the cop shows villains and police could almost be interchangeable in terms of their personalities and looks! The dialogue reflects the very different character of this story. There is much more banter and edge than in other episodes, where the dialogue would be darker and more reflective.

Gadder threatens Sonny Draper while Farrow, Sally and Tracy try to keep out of trouble

One frustrating aspect is Sergeant Turner's stereotypical argument that villains like Charley are "only violent to their own" while the likes of Gadder see everyone as fair game and have no criminal "code of honour". As a convicted bank robber it is hard to see how Charley could not have been violent to the public. Maybe he is - or was - less vicious towards public and police than Gadder but he is still dangerous. This romanticising of some villains is really unjustified.

Another similarity with The Sweeney and a big break from the normal style of the programme was a vastly greater amount of location filming. This included a rare visit to an ordinary London street where Busby lived. The interior locations are easily the most down-heel in the show. Busby's flat is pretty shoddy. The doctor lives in a shabby room in a cottage. Sammy's cafe is very plain and basic. Such locations are a far cry from the style and grandeur of other Thriller residents and again are a marked departure.

Although it has much location work on 16mm film and the unusual subject matter this still creates some suspense in the usual Thriller fashion, notably in the night-time shots as Charley closes in on the garage, all very well handled by director Robert Tronson. The kidnap produces its share of tension as well. The ruthless, disdainful Gadder is undoubtedly the outstanding character, and Dudley Sutton gives a very fine account. David Daker is impressive as Charley who does win viewer support. It's unclear whether Charley intended to turn over a new leaf on his release but we do know he is being hunted by the brutal Gadder mob and any enemy of theirs becomes a hero of everyone else. His brother Sammy is very much a sympathetic figure placed in an impossible situation. Bob Hoskins performs well in probably the only Thriller episode one could ever imagine seeing him in. The undercover detective Farrow is a neatly enigmatic character well conveyed by Granville Saxton. The least said though about P.C. Wilson with his dreadfully unconvincing yokel accent the better - a waste of John Flanagan who had performed so well in a very different police role in The Double Kill.

Maybe this more realistic, abrasive drama might have had a more prominent part in the future of Thriller had further series been produced. With some refinement the results could have been more impressive. All the same this one example is a worthwhile addition to the Thriller canon.

Notes

The ITC movie version of this episode renamed at as "Cry Terror!". When I come across that movie title it takes me a while to remember which episode it applies to as is so generic and could apply to just about any Thriller episode. It also meant the loss of the clever punning original title although the thinking may have been that the pun may not have worked outside the UK and the movie versions were very much for worldwide release; non-UK viewers may also not have been familar with the expression "kill two birds" so both issues may have led to the change. "Cry Terror!" is also the name of an entirely different feature film and this led to some confusion in repeat listings in the 1980s with some newspapers believing it was the feature film being shown and therefore giving the wrong synopsis.