homicide episode #38, 'let's have a funeral'

Another Homicide episode which in all honesty could have been an entertaining, if not riveting, film, if it had slightly different pacing and structure. Christopher Lodge is a failed businessman; his wife Margret is, I guess, a kind of a doorstop and their lodger Alec Thompson is a smart-aleck in a Kenneth Williams-y way. It's hard to tell whether Alec thinks of himself as the son they don't have or the husband Margret ought to have, maybe it's both (it's interesting too how there is a lot of parodying of English people in this episode; Thompson keeps implying the police are doing things wrong because they're not doing things they way they do them in the UK; acts like he has a special relationship with them; they mimic his accent at one point, etc). (Remember this was the only Australian-made weekly drama on Australian TV at the time; where else are you going to see Australians sending English people up?!) In any case the dynamic is good, although Beverley Dunn as Margret is woefully underutilised and her character frankly a bit ambiguous, though she shows a bit of gumption very occasionally when she's pushed. Beverley Dunn died only a few months ago. 

There's actually no murder in this episode, though there's an attempted murder right at the end, just in case you felt cheated. Essentially Lodge is getting death threats in the form of, for instance, the funeral director being called to his house or someone sending a wreath, and so on. He is a recent bankrupt and it transpires there are a couple of people who'd invested in his business who were irritated about losing large sums of money (£5,000).

Terry Norris as Christopher Lodge. Norris had already appeared in Homicide umpteen times previously, when the format was to end the show with five or so minutes of court case; Norris was usually the prosecuting counsel if I remember correctly. In any case, he had a standard role. And now here he is in what I think are his (character's) pyjamas. The Lodges live in Glen Iris (Kerferd St as I recall) although I have no idea if the place we see as their home, a corner house at I think no. 10, is actually in that street. There is a Kerferd St Glen Iris in real life btw; I had stopped checking the addresses they give out in the show because I figured they were usually made up. Not this time, at least, the address is real. 

Mac (Leonard Teale) and Alec Thompson (Stanley Walsh). I have started a bit of a collection of the art on Homicide set walls, too, and there's some good looking stuff in the Lodges' house but nothing you can really get a good shot of. 

After a bit of the practical joking about Lodge's death, he goes missing and the house is in disarray as a result. Here's Margret poking around in the mess. 

Bettine Kauffman has one scene as Rita Dalton, one of Lodge's debtors. It's a strangely gratuitous scene with no real connection to anything else in the episode, but she does a good job. You almost wonder whether she's been put in here to pad out the show, I don't know how much of Homicide was done on the fly. I'd like to know more about her career (like I'd like to know more about practically everyone I see on Homicide) but all I can find out at this point is that she was born on 21 September 1927 in Melbourne and her middle name is Rosalind.  

Also, in 1951 she played Eliza in Portrait of a Gentleman on ABC radio (ABC weekly Vol. 13 No. 3, 20 January 1951, p. 26).

Oh, and that in 1984 she was in a radio play by Astrid Saalbach called Footsteps in the Sand, according to the Age 'Green Guide' 23 August 1984 p. 19. 

Oddly enough I was scanning around that page of the Green Guide looking for the show they used to have on Sunday nights on I think 3AR where people in England and Australia sent each other messages, and instead my own name, misspelled, jumped out at me lol. 

So, Bettine and I were on radio on the same day. Who'd have thought. She's 95 this year if she's still alive. I am about as glamorous now as I was in 1966, I wonder if she is.

Alec boasts to the detectives that Margret brings him breakfast in bed and this is him expostulating during one of those times. It's clear that Alec is hoping that, when Christopher goes missing, he is either dead or at least permanently disappeared though Alec seems less keen after Christopher empties Margret's bank account and cash-around-the-house-supplies. 

Things are a bit easy for the Homicide squad after this (by the way, they shouldn't even be looking into this case - no-one's dead). Margret gives them some vague advice that Christopher is staying with a friend elsewhere in Glen Iris. So they go towards the friend's house and instead spot Christopher on the way. I think they claimed this was High St Glen Iris and I'd like to know but I can't find any detail. 

This is him coming out of a bank. 

And this is where they waylay him. 

This is what he has in his case. 

One of the only really identifiable businesses in this grainy film is what I'm almost certain is 'Chatfield's Four Square'. Can't find any mention of it in the papers though. I might try and look it up in the Sands and McDougall when I'm in the State Library tomorrow though. Or, even better, the 1966 phone book! Anyway, long story short, the detectives deliver Christopher back to Margret (and Alec), and she says she's going to use this massive amount of money to pay off his debts, and then he is going to be beholden to her and Alec, seemingly, I get the sense there is going to be a sort of Joe Orton world for him thereafter, except...

In a weird little twist, Christopher goes into the garden shed and puts a whopping dose of weed killer into Alec's tea, a crime he could not possibly hope to get away with and as it transpires Alec goes to hospital (and lives) and Christopher goes to jail for 5-8 years for attempted murder (we don't see any of this happen, we're just told about it). So everything's left up in the air. If it were me, I'd bring the Margret-Alec story back for another episode, but that's not generally how Homicide does things. 

By the way, Beverley Dunn was, like Colette Mann, a success at the South Street competitions. Much earlier though (1950). 

This is from the Age 13 October 1950 if you really beg me I'll find the page number for you. I mean she went on to do a lot of other things and playing Margret Lodge was, trust me, not her career highlight.