Philip Broadley

16th December 1969 (epguides.com) or 12th November 1969 (IMDb)

19^th July, Southern France in France

A festival in Southern France. Idols are being carried through the town as tourists snap away at the gaiety. But one photographer seems more interested in a fellow tourist than the festival going on before them.

A business man in his office is shown one of the photos by a slimy blackmailer and is appalled by what he sees. He plunges a knife into the photograph.

The man in the picture is sleeping soundly when a couple of scary men…

…very scary men come in to kill him. But the gun jams and he is instead smothered to death.

His body is taken to the morgue where it is visited by the same two rapscallions. Who shoot the corpse.

Why? Why would anyone shoot a dead body? Why? Why? Why?

The murdered man turns out not to be the person the murderers thought he was. The French police fingerprinted the body and confirmed he was just an American doppelganger.

Jason is so convincing when he tells the late Chris Lomax’s girlfriend that he’s still alive that she has his grave dug up. Sir Curtis and Stewart find the empty grave the next morning but was there a body in there to take?

Six minutes into the play – he’s climbing a mountain with a gentleman friend.

Kieron Moore plays Lomax - he had an extensive film and TV career until suddenly retiring in the mid-70s to work for the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development.

Barbara Murray was in "Black Orchid" as Lady Cranleigh, did the rounds of the ITC shows in the 60s and 70s and is listed in the IMDb - for what its worth - as appearing in a 2007 movie called "Bad Dog and Superhero".

Edward Caddick is Alain - he was in the William Hartnell anti-classic "The Savages".

She dons a long wig and a pair of glasses and goes under cover as a reporter keen to interview the Mister Big behind the killing. He is a shocking perve who only agrees to see her because she’s "under thirty". He openly leers at his secretary and she has a "one day there will be laws against him" look on her face.

Interestingly, she keeps the long, Emma Peel hair for the rest of the episode so it wasn’t just a one-scene disguise.

Jason suggests Annabelle takes "a tour of the bars" to find information. She’s the ideal person because she makes "tempting bait". The natives clearly agree.

She agrees to get into a car with this man and be driven somewhere. Not her finest move I think you’ll agree. Still, nothing ventured, nothing raped.

Luckily, she beats him up, steals his car and gets away. Girl power.

Then he turns up in her hotel bedroom and makes her another offer. She agrees to go with him again. She is told that there is no chance Lomax is alive but finds a cigar butt in the ash tray which is the same brand smoked by Lomax. A panel in the wall slides back and we fade into a commercial break with this Bond-esque shot.

Chris Lomax – the real Chris Lomax – decides to keep Annabelle in his secret apartment as a sort of confidante-cum-pet and wanders round wearing nothing but a towel.

Jason seems to be wearing sun glasses all the time in the current batch of episodes. Was Peter Wyngarde on a series of massive benders during filming? Should I rephrase that? Or did someone think they made him look cool? Sun glasses indoors have never looked cool. No matter who tells you otherwise.

Jason, having not done much in the episode, finally pipes up at the half way mark and enigmatically remarks "If Chris Lomax didn’t exist, would we have to invent him?"

Jason is multilingual and can apparently read a Greek newspaper. With sunglasses on.

He says the first time he drank ouzo was on a "Byronic pilgrimage". He then quotes some poetry with all the dignity a man wearing gold trousers could ever muster.

Having climbed the mountain in his introductory scene he plants a Union Flag and a Jason King novel at the top as a token of victory. We don’t see which novel as he puts it the wrong way round.

While on surveillance, Jason seems to be correcting a proof copy of his latest novel.

His idea of evidence is a bit shaky. "I’m sure he was behind the shooting" says Annabelle. "That’s plenty" replies Stewart.

He meets up with Sir Curtis three times during this episode which much be some kind of record.

So we’ve gathered that Chris Lomax isn’t dead after all. Things became a little heated so he faked his own death and has been living in a secret apartment ever since.

With Annabelle trapped in the alcove with the borderline-sane Lomax (he kept saying he was going to go back out into the world and that he’d be ok even with people wanting to kill him left, right and centre) it is down to Stewart and Jason to storm the apartment and deal with the baddies. But when they hear a shot from the secret room they fear the worst. But when the panel slides back, Lomax is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

We never find out why he kills himself. Throughout his conversations with Annabelle he claimed he’d never killed anyone so why would he fear discovery by the authorities so much more than discovery by his enemies?

None of it made any sense. Why did the assassins shoot the corpse in the morgue? If they were dead set on shooting him after death, why not just shoot him after smothering him? A pointless gimmick added to a story to try and make it all Department S-y is one thing but a pointless gimmick added to a story and then not explained is far worse. This was one of those episodes with no style, no substance, no imagination and no wit. And when they realised they had no ending they bolted a hasty and totally unconvincing one on.