The Armchair Thriller that never was? RICHARD PHILLIPS-JONES rounds off his episode guide with a serial killer at large in The Chelsea Murders.
BROADCAST: As a TV-movie on December 30 1981
STARRING: Michael Feast (Steve), Guy Gregory (Artie), Miranda Ball (Mary), Richard Hampton (Editor), Dave King (Warton), Anthony Carrick (Summers), David Gant (Frank), David Yip (Denny), Toria Fuller (Wilhelmina), Anthony Barnett (Len), Christopher Bramwell (Mason), Darien Angadi (Abo), Derek Broome (P.C. Nutter), Chris Gannon (Publican), Fiona Mathieson (Librarian), Douglas Sheldon (Otto), Penny Leatherbarrow (Barmaid), Gavin Campbell (Chef), Maryann Turner (Landlady), Susie Jenkinson (Girl), Lucy Griffiths (Mrs Bulstrode), Robin Parkinson (Landlord), Ishaq Bux (Arab servant), Ian Liston (Policeman), James Charles (Policeman), Harold Reese (Neighbour)
WRITER: Jonathan Hales (from a novel by Lionel Davidson)
DIRECTOR: Derek Bennett
Armchair Thriller: The Chelsea Murders Review
Police suspect a serial killer is behind four murders in Chelsea. An intended fifth victim survives her ordeal and thinks she has identified the killer in a student film: a tall performer, in a cape, wearing a mask.
Three student filmmakers, working on the movie are already under suspicion but, whilst keeping them under surveillance, the police receive a series of strange notes, all quoting works of literature, with the initials of each author matching those of each victim.
Two of the deceased are known to the film students and the death of one is even caught on videotape, the killer taking an audacious bow to the camera. The police are struggling to pin the crimes on any of the prime suspects and, when their journalist friend (Mary) decides to make her own investigations, she puts her own life on the line…
It might be considered the Armchair Thriller that never was: Originally intended as a six-parter for the second series, and already roughly assembled in that format, The Chelsea Murders was pulled, presumably to make way for two stories provided by series creator Andrew Brown’s new employers, Southern Television (see separate entries for Dead Man’s Kit and High Tide).
Unlike Southern’s contributions (and some of Thames’ own, for that matter), The Chelsea Murders was perhaps more in keeping with what fans of Armchair Thriller’s first series had loved so much, being a thriller with a masked murderer on the loose, plus enough grisly kills to keep horror fans content.
Eventually re-cut for broadcast as a TV-movie in late 1981, the edits have such an impact on the finished product that this is very much two reviews in one. On the one hand, the truncated version certainly hits the ground running and cracks along at a fair old pace, but it’s lacking the brooding darkness of the original edit and what were effective end-of-episode cliffhangers are squandered, instead jumping into another scene to accommodate the different ad-break points required by the new format.
The Armchair Thriller theme music was also jettisoned in the shortened version, replaced by a jaunty tune which originally only accompanied the film-within-a-film of the opening scene. To say its repeated use rather undermines the atmosphere is an understatement.
Still, it does benefit by discarding much of the early footage featuring Frank – not only does the original version go to such lengths to make him look guilty that you can smell the red herrings from a mile away, but the character, and indeed performance, are so larger-than-life that they throw things off-balance.
It is, in a way slightly unfair to compare the two versions – after all, there’s no guarantee that the six-parter wouldn’t have undergone further revisions, had it been fully completed whilst the broadcast version is ultimately a hasty attempt by Thames to get something out of their investment. However, based on the materials that we do have available, neither version of The Chelsea Murders is quite up to classic status (both have advantages and flaws) and there’s a niggling sense that, had it been tautly planned as a four-part Armchair Thriller serial from the off, it might have fared a lot better.
This late in the day, it’s nigh on impossible to guess at the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres which led to The Chelsea Murders’ ultimate fate, but (and this is pure speculation on my part) it may be that Thames were simply not happy with the production in its original state, perhaps noting the underwhelming audience reception for series two opener The Victim. They may also have felt that they owed Andrew Brown a favour as the show’s creator and Southern, keen for more primetime exposure, were happy for the opportunity.
Regardless of the reasons, there was a strangely ironic twist to the saga: The Chelsea Murders would be one of the last programmes broadcast by Southern Television. After just over 23 years on-air, they ceased transmissions the following night, having lost their ITV franchise for the south and south-east of England to newcomer TVS.
Armchair Thriller, meanwhile, was left to die a quiet death, only repeated briefly on the pan-european Super Channel in the late 1980’s. The show’s corpse was only revived in years to come whenever those of a certain age would recall those moments which had frightened their younger selves out of their wits.
Thanks to those who did keep its memory alive, and the efforts of those who eventually released the series to DVD, that shadowy corpse would eventually come back to life. I can only hope that, in some small way this series of reviews can play its part in introducing Armchair Thriller’s finest entries to a fresh cohort of viewers.
TRIVIA POINTS: David Yip would soon play the lead in his own police-based series, The Chinese Detective (BBC1 1981-82).
Darien Angadi (playing Abo) died by his own hand barely three weeks before The Chelsea Murders was finally shown.
FOOTNOTES: Despite not being fully completed, the six-part version of The Chelsea Murders was included in Network’s Armchair Thriller collection (along with the broadcast version) and, more recently it has finally been transmitted, courtesy of Talking Pictures TV.
With Southern off-the-air, Andrew Brown moved on, producing the ambitious mini-series Kennedy (for Central, 1983) starring Martin Sheen, and the Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears (1987) before returning to Thames at their Euston Films subsidiary for Dealers, Capital City, Selling Hitler and Anglo Saxon Attitudes (between 1988 and 1992). He passed away in 1994, aged just 55.
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Read our Armchair Thriller Episode Guide: 1978-81 Anthology Series
