division 4 february 1972 - 'the man who dug his own grave'

Truly late 1971-early 1972 was a golden era for Division 4 (maybe it went longer than early 1972, I'll let you know). This episode, 'The Man Who Dug His Own Grave', is - like many Crawford police procedurals - virtually a movie in its own right and like many of the best such shows, the police really play an incidental part in the overall story, which is essentially played out as the story of Sammy Goodall, played by Ken Goodlet. Goodlet is remarkably good, as is Charmian Jacka, who plays a woman he is living with, Maisie.* There's a brilliant piece of dialogue wherein Maisie puts the wind up Sammy by giving him a description of the people in Hell: 'they're too busy burnin - all shrivelled up, all their skin, their nose, their eyes and their hair, all burnin, cryin' out for water, no-body'll give 'em any'. The only thing that this scene lacks is any reason why Sammy might be interested in Hell in the first place; he just asks her if she's religious. But anyway. It's still an amazingly great scene. 

So, spoiler: I can't help but spoil and tell you Sammy dies in the end. But the thing that intrigues me is this: apparently on the way home before he is shot, Sammy has stopped off to buy a copy of Wochen End, a German magazine (title translates as 'Weekend'). It's apparently - from what little I've been able to glean from the internet - a simplistic magazine probably in the vein of That's Life. But there has been absolutely no suggestion in the rest of the episode that Sammy is German, speaks German, or is interested in anything German, and in fact I don't even think we get to see him go to the newsagent and there is no reason on earth he should have a magazine with him, let alone this one. He just dies with a German magazine. Because this episode is almost 52 years old and surely anyone involved with it is no longer with us (or even if they are, surely they would not recall) here we are with a mystery. 

This episode also has another wonderful solitary scene featuring Joan Letch, this time as a character so minor she's only called 'Maisie's Friend'. JL might have lived round the corner from Crawford's which is why they could get her in for things like this but actually I think she worked on the premises a lot of the time in some other capacity - casting director. So why not get her in for a couple of hours of acting. This is a brilliant scene with JL and Charmain Jacka.

At this time JL was 47. Notwithstanding 47 was regarded as a lot older then than we might consider it to be now, if you know what I mean, she could play this kind of character - obviously not a young hottie, but also obviously not an old lady, and she could also play an old lady, as per this episode.

Late in life JL wrote to the newspapers but I don't want to take away from the weirdness of the Wochen End situation by muddying the waters any further, I'll come back to those letters. 

* nb IMDB gives them both the last name Goodall, but the actual credits of the show only gives first names and there's dialogue suggesting they haven't been living together very long.