Revisiting The Enigma Files
 |
I think I have one of ‘those faces’: you know the type. There’s something naggingly familiar that reminds you of someone you’ve seen on TV. At work and elsewhere, people often used to tell me I looked like such-and-such off the telly. Not all of them good, either. But the first of these ‘not quite lookalikes’ is the one I always remember: Tom Adams.
He may have been 42 to my 20-something, but, around the early 1980s there was a certain, and occasionally-remarked upon similarity between myself and the stage and screen actor who, at the time, was perhaps best known for fronting a long-running series of commercials for furniture warehouse DFS. Much later, I learned that our dates of birth were merely two days apart (and some 23 years...) but I don’t think astrology has much to do with physiognomy. Maybe it was on account of this slight resemblance that I was prepared to cut old Tom rather more than the usual amount of slack when it came to his appearances on the small screen.
A capable actor and a familiar face on television and film during the 1960s, there was, nevertheless, a certain quality about Tom Adams that made him an ideal candidate when the DFS gig came up. Remember Patrick Allen buzzing around in his helicopter whilst extolling the virtues of Barratt Homes? Yes, that quality... avuncular yet assertive: the tone is warm and reassuringly confident, but there’s no mistaking the call to sit up straight and pay attention. Admittedly, nobody did it quite like Patrick Allen (still much imitated long after his demise), but Adams came pretty close. Over the years, he clocked up guest appearances in the likes of The Avengers, Maigret, Dr. Who and even The Great Escape, as well as ongoing character roles in The Onedin Line and Emergency – Ward 10, although he remained under my own personal radar until the spring of 1980 when the BBC smuggled onto the schedules a low-budget crime drama series called The Engima Files.
The Enigma Files was possibly the first example on television of what would now be called a ‘cold case’ drama. Adams played an ex-Detective Inspector placed in charge of a warehouse of ‘open case’ files: investigations that have been left unconcluded but are no longer being pursued. It was original enough to grab my attention in an era when new, British detective type drama series were surprisingly thin on the ground, and accordingly, I tuned into BBC2 at 9.30pm on Tuesday, April 15, 1980.
Let’s just look again at that last
sentence: BBC2, Tuesday, 9.30pm, April 15... this was
clearly not a series of which the BBC entertained great expectations.
With a start date of mid-April, the 15-part series would end in late
July, a traditional television graveyard. A start date in January
would have given it more of a chance, and as to the channel
placement: well, I’m not sure to what extent if at all BBC2
commissioned its own drama series or whether this was a case of a
show considered a dud being quietly hidden away in an inconspicuous
slot. And slots don’t come much more inconspicuous than 9.30pm on a
Tuesday, on BBC2. Even One Man and His Dog managed better...
So what was all the lack of hoo-hah in
aid of? Thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, we can now find out,
as some public-spirited user has uploaded what may very well be the
entire 15-part series. The Enigma Files wasn’t just buried
on release, it’s stayed that way ever since, without so much as a
half-baked VHS to its name. I’m not sure if it found its
way onto satellite, but if so, it eluded me (not that I was looking
out for it). You might say, it became its own cold case...
Watching it again after over thirty years, it has acquired a quality it most certainly did not possess at the time: nostalgia. The street scenes, populated by dirty, unappealing cars (not to mention citizens) are strongly redolent of the late 70s (with good reason), and the grim November/December weather merely adds piquancy to that whole ‘winter of discontent’ vibe. Contasting this, the VT scenes look, to quote a comment from the TV forum Roobarb’s, ‘beige’: an excellent description which can be applied to a whole raft of videotaped drama and comedy from the same era.
The opening episode, The Sweeper, sees Detective Inspector Nick Lewis shunted out of the force, apparently on account of his maverick tendencies. The way his superior officer is going on, you’d think he was dealing with Jack Regan, not cosy Mr. DFS sofas. But heigh-ho... Nick takes up his new job in a very beige late 70s office where Sharon Maughan is doing a screen test for the Nescafé commercials that would make her a household face later in the decade (she is, honestly, stirring a cup of coffee when we first meet her). Sharon plays Kate Burton, a civil servant in charge of the administrative backwater in which Nick has been dumped. The only other member of the ‘team’ we get to meet is Phil Strong, a slightly chubby guy with a bad sweater and an even worse haircut, played by comic actor Duggie Brown (and, surprise, surprise, Phil is the series’ token ‘comic turn’).
Rather than spending all day filing dusty old Eastlight box files, DI Lewis, egged on by a daughter old enough to be his wife, decides to look into some of the unsolved cases, and starts with the murder of a petty criminal in the grounds of the mansion of a wealthy crime boss, portrayed by that doyen of Talking Pictures TV, Sydney Tafler. In the course of the investigation, Nick narrowly avoids being blown up by a car bomb and blown away by a sawn-off shotgun, all of which sounds like ripping adventure on paper and must have helped sell the series to whoever signed off on it. But the Enigma Files is no Sweeney. Sure, it had aspirations in that general direction: but Tom Adams is just too likeable to be a rival to Jack Regan, and despite some half-hearted efforts on the part of series writer Derek Ingrey (nope, me neither), the hoped-for bristling relationship between Nick and Kate doesn’t really catch fire... at least not in this first episode.
The music doesn’t help: back in the late 70s, it was written into the statute book that every crime or detective drama series must feature slightly funky incidental music with wah-wah guitar. That box was ticked with due diligence, but the result sounds more suited to accompany the exploits of PC Penrose than a hard-nosed detective on the mean, rainy streets of North London.
The drama proceeds at a reasonable pace, with a few talky interludes punctuated by some action sequences that feel more like an obligation than a natural part of the storyline; and, if you check it out, don’t expect much from the ending. But do check it out, because The Enigma Files had its heart in the right place, and is warmly nostalgic in all the right ways. It’s easy to see why the BBC clearly thought so little of it in its day, but the series did spawn the obligatory paperback novelisation, which suggests it might have done rather better business than Auntie anticipated. And, as a 19-year-old viewer, I stuck with it for pretty well the entire run, so it must have had something... apart from a lookalike lead actor, of course.
And now, having said all that, I’d like to take this opportunity to sell you a three-piece suite...
No comments:
Post a Comment