Armchair Thriller enters its second series and returns to the theme of a young girl’s life in danger: RICHARD PHILLIPS-JONES looks at The Victim
BROADCAST: in six parts 08-24 January 1980
STARRING: David Beckett (Frankie Martin), Lorna Yabsley (Sue Craig), Steve Morley (Len Trace), John Shrapnel (Vincent Craig), Paul Jerricho (Harry Turner), Godfrey James (Chief Supt.Lewis), Gerald Sim (Francis Durrant), Alan Downer (Rodney Marsh), Priscilla Morgan (Zena Heathrop), Meg Ritchie (Ellen Craig), Alan Benion (Praed), Leon Sinden (Governor Gregory), Raymond Witch (Bates), Richard McNeff (Chief prison officer), Catherine Owen (Policewoman), Edward Burnham (Professor Manson), Bernard Kay (Neecham)
WRITER: Michael Ashe
DIRECTOR: Gareth Davies
Armchair Thriller: The Victim Review
The world of high-profile electronics executive Vincent Craig is jarred when his 14-year-old daughter Sue is kidnapped, with a £100,000 ransom demanded. Although he initially agrees to pay up, Vincent also arranges for his own team of experts to track a call from the kidnappers, hoping for clues to their identity or whereabouts.
The police are shocked when Vincent then refuses to pay the ransom and abruptly cuts off the call, explaining that he is confident that he can find his daughter by analysing a recording of the interaction with his own experts and, with their help he is able to narrow the search down to the town of Hepton, linked to a man named Neecham whose past dealings with Vincent make him a prime suspect in the kidnapping.
Neecham, however clearly likes to employ others to do his dirty work and has subcontracted the job to a pair of teenage thugs: Len, despite initially looking the most violent of the two starts to get cold feet early on and is soon looking for a way out of the situation, but the clearly dangerous and increasingly unhinged Frankie has a hypnotic hold over the girl and is determined to see this thing to its conclusion, whatever that may be.
Meanwhile, Neecham’s apparently meek associate Rodney has confided to his more-than-accommodating landlady Zena about his role in the matter and that he is aware of Frankie’s violent tendencies. Zena somehow convinces Rodney to try to change his boss’ mind about his course of action…
Interestingly, The Victim returns to the child-in-peril theme of series 1 opener Rachel In Danger and the premise of the story isn’t a million miles from that of Taken (2009) but, where the latter was a high octane rollercoaster of a movie, the action here (or rather lack of it) is bogged down by procedural chat which doesn’t do much to build up the tension.
It’s a strange case of Armchair Thriller’s even-numbered episodic format having an adverse effect on the final product: Perhaps there was too much in The Victim to squeeze into four episodes, but it struggles to fill six. The underwhelming opening scene already feels like extraneous padding and does nothing to get the viewer engaged whilst the bulk of episode 3 feels surplus to requirements.
Meanwhile, the interminable chat between Rodney and Zena (once Rodney reveals his involvement in the kidnapping) feels more like Harold and Hilda in Ever Decreasing Circles (1984-89) having a minor, if prolonged disagreement than a life-or-death matter.
For all that, there are plus points: David Beckett is the production’s shining light as the psychopathic Frankie Martin and, with the development that the coerced Sue may not want to be rescued putting an interesting twist into the mix, things do pick up considerably in the final two chapters.
It would appear that a large number of viewers didn’t wait to find that out – after a strong showing in its first week, Armchair Thriller had fallen out of the top 20 ITV programmes by the time The Victim had concluded, an ominous statistic given the massive audiences the series was pulling by the end of series one.
The Victim would be the first Armchair Thriller without creator Andrew Brown running the show. Where he had gone after leaving Thames Television would become apparent with the next story…
TRIVIA POINTS: Fans of classic creepy TV will recognise Lorna Yabsley from the classic Tales Of The Unexpected episode, The Flypaper (1980), but she appears to have left acting altogether not long afterwards. As always, any info on what became of her is welcome.
There was a change of title sequence for Armchair Thriller’s second series: The live-action footage of a shadow settling in the titular chair was replaced by an animated version. Opinion amongst the show’s fans seems divided over which was the best/most creepy, but my personal vote goes to the original version.
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Read our Armchair Thriller Episode Guide: 1978-81 Anthology Series
