Tony Williamson

28 January 1970 (IMDb) or 10 March 1970 (epguides.com)

4^th of April in Marlingdale, Cheshire, England.

A diplomatic car is driving along a country lane. The driver looks back and sees his lord and master reading the papers.

Their destination is the Marling Dale military base. Men are on duty, other men are smoking discretely. The car continues along its merry route until it arrives, everyone intact, at the base. The driver gets out to do the decent thing and open his boss’s door.

The old gent doesn’t move. That must be one dashed interesting newspaper. What am I saying, it’s the FT.

They draw back the pages and find… a skeleton.

Summon the experts – they’ve roughly twelve stone of flesh to find before the whole thing turns into a diplomatic incident.

Just when you’re thinking it is a plastic skeleton or some such rag week prank, Stewart assures Jason that it matches Blain – size, age and teeth. And the driver swears the car didn’t stop at all.

One skeleton isn’t the end of the matter – Sir Curtis and the chirpy driver are found sans-flesh within the first quarter hour. The tests "prove" that they are the skeletons of the supposedly deceased.

Three and a half minutes into the episode, Jason is fishing on a yacht, in the Caribbean, surrounded by beauties and having quite literally the time of his (or anyone else’s) life.

He’s caught something and is having terribly trouble with his rod.

Patrick Barr plays the military chap Stewart annoys in act 2. I recognised his voice immediately – he was Maurice Lonsdale in "Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery". He was also in "Octopussy", "The Moonbase" and began his film career in 1932 as a torturer in "The Merry Men of Sherwood".

Byrom Blain is played by John "CJ" Baron who didn't get where he is today without playing one of the all time great characters in British sit com history.

The funny little driver is Gerald Campion who was the porter in "Shada" and played Billy Bunter on TV in the 1950s.

Anouska Hempel played the stewardess - I've heard of her but her CV doesn't suggest why she should be so well known.

For the first time in simply ages I get to mention her hair. I’ve been a bit lax of late but she’s been so stuck in her ways that I couldn’t bring myself to type another word about it. But finally she’s given us a bit of variety and chosen the Emma Peel. Sadly, it is accompanied by that wretched pink and yellow kilt which marks her down as a member of the clan McMigraine.

Auntie comes up with a possible solution – a weapon that can destroy human flesh and leave the bones untouched. Which sounds all fine and dandy but what about the newspaper? Does it leave paper untouched too? And blankets? Are they too tough for it? That’s what you get from ye olde computers. A proper Windows machine would’ve taken an eighth of a second to think about it and then crashed incomprehensibly like computers are meant to. Annabelle looks cute.

"Your computer is producing facts not based on logic" snaps Stewart. That doesn’t make sense. Annabelle does some angry typing to prove him wrong.

"I wonder what Jason would look like… without his moustache?" she asks humorously.

She doesn’t have long to wait – she visits him in his bedroom and finds nothing but dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

The police take it very seriously. A prank and nothing more. You can see his point.

She decides to check out the garage which took Jason’s car away. In a locked draw she finds some photos of the men who have been boned. The last picture is that of an important American official due to arrive in the country shortly.

Just as she’s leaving she finds a skeleton in her own car and she’s pounced on by a bunch of disreputable men. Under different circs she’d probably be delighted but work before pleasure has always been her motto.

Forget the stock bikini footage setting Jason’s Caribbean scene, this is sexy. It’s like the opening shot of a grown up version of Scooby Doo. I always did prefer Velma.

He arrives at the office wearing this theatrical ensemble.

He’s cross because he’s been dragged half way across Paris for this meeting. Hasn’t he just been dragged half way across the world for this meeting? He flirts with Annabelle and then kisses her on the lips. It’s never a good idea for his skin to be so close to anyone of a normal colour.

He gets dangerously pompous when he suggests they check the age of the skeleton. It turns out they haven’t already done so despite claiming that earlier. He says they may find that the skeleton is a hundred years old and not the sixty or so summers Byrom Blain has under his former belt.

"Why didn’t London think of that?" asks Annabelle.

"Why didn’t we?" replies Stewart.

"Yes" replies the audience, "why didn’t you?"

Jason goes to London to speak to the chirpy little driver who looks like Peter Glaze.

He lets the little man bang on about beer and sandwiches while he has a good old rummage on the back seat. There not being a lady present, he has to make do with finding a concealed microphone-slash-speaker.

He takes it round to Special Branch – it is just the sort of thing they either use themselves or find when anyone else tries to use them. Special B deny any knowledge of it. Emphatically.

But what if it was put there after the disappearance of Blain? What if it was being used to snoop on the driver? Hmm?

Jason decides to visit the pub where Blain and the driver had lunch. He makes it clear through the medium of sarcasm that he isn’t relishing slumming it in a pub called the "Nag’s Head". He gets there and finds it is just a typical English pub. Obviously.

He decides to stay the night – everyone is just a little bit too friendly. Something is afoot. A tow truck pulls up outside and the driver shares some knowing looks with the suspicious waiter. No one speaks – a wise economy methinks.

When the hour is at its darkest, Annabelle asks what Mark Caine would do in these circs.

"Sit down and relax".

He doesn’t let us down – brown, brown and just a hint of brown. Luckily, ITC never found out about Joel Fabiani’s secret Cadbury’s sponsorship deal.

The episode seems to be in the wrong order – we met Jason at about the time we normally meet Sir Curtis and now Stewart goes to meet Sir Curtis at about the time we normally meet Jason. He knocks on his compartment door – they are on the train to Geneva – and when he gets no reply he goes in. He pulls back the bed covers and finds…

He decides to ingratiate himself with military intelligence by annoying one of the most senior men in the service. He barges in to the squash court demanding information and gets the shortest shrift. And possibly a bullet in his head next time he’s not looking.

Luckily, with Annabelle’s help, he manages to get on the general’s good side and the latter is only too happy to spill the beans about Operation Groundshield. It is a pooling of resources between British and American intelligence. They were due to have a first meeting soon but with Blain and Sir Curtis both in bits, it is doubtful the meeting will now take place.

He boards the American delegate’s plane but is knocked the heck out by a loaded cigarette proffered by a pretty girl. Smoking is bad for you – even Department S agrees.

Needless to say, this tale ends with the American’s skeleton being discovered when the plane lands.

Luckily, Stewart recognises the pair who drugged him and has them arrested. Not before they tell him where the American’s body is. It is in a packing crate in the hold. One switcheroo later and Stewart is on his way to faux-Marlindale to save the day. Hoorah.

Except that when they open the box there is a skeleton inside. Stewart is outside in the grounds. He must’ve made a second switch (tricky given that the box was padlocked from the outside).

After being zapped down to their very foundations, Jason and Annabelle wake in a country house – guards are conspic by their absence – where they find Sir Curtis and Byrom Blain happily chatting about paintings.

They think they are at the conference about sharing intelligence between Washington and London. They want the names of all undercover men (and possibly even women if you’ll credit it) working behind the iron curtain.

At the chimes of midnight, Sir Curtis and Blain become all glassy eyed and rigid. Some form of mesmerism perhaps?

Yes – post hypnotic suggestion backed by nightly tapes reminding them of all the things which haven’t actually happened.

Stewart breaks into the house, saves Jason and Annabelle and they pool the hell out of their scraps of info to produce a working hypothesis. The switch of Blain and skeleton was done at the garage when they stopped for petrol. That makes sense – get the funny little driver occupied for a couple of minutes and Bob is quite literally your bony uncle.

They find Sir Curtis and Blain. A fight breaks out. The baddies are bashed, the goodies win and everyone goes home with their secrets in tact.

A brilliant episode. The teaser is impossibly good, the story belts along at a decent pace, the explanation is first rate and the only criticism one can level is that they do the skeleton gag perhaps once or twice too often. It even makes sense that they used skeletons as it holds up the police investigation – do they have a body or don’t they? It would slow down their missing person inquiry as they don’t know whether there is a person missing or not. It may not ring true in the real world but this isn’t the real world. It is television land and that is some good television logic.