by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2017 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
I put on a Doctor Blake
Mysteries episode on PBS: “Crossing
the Line” from 2014, set in 1958 and depicting a fire in the projection room of
the local movie theatre (which is showing, of all films, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo — not exactly a non-mainstream movie but still
pretty recherché fare for a small-town
theatre in the Australian outback) which kills its projectionist, Adam Summers
(Ted Stryke). In an anachronistic mistake I red-flagged on imdb.com, a
firefighter tries to revive Summers with CPR — which didn’t exist until the
1960’s. The cops initially suspect the owner of the theatre trying to burn the
place down for the insurance, but eventually Dr. Lucien Blake (Craig McLachlan)
deduces that the fire was actually started because Patrick Tyneman (John Wood),
spoiled son of local land baron Edward Tyneman (Lee Beckhurst), had formed a
ring to make and show pornographic movies, shooting them at a local estate his
dad had given him and forcing people, like the usher at the theatre (who, in a
touch that really dates this movie, is shown
walking the aisles of the theatre selling cigarettes as well as popcorn!), to
be his on-screen talent by blackmailing them. In her case, Patrick had loaned
her brother a large sum of money to start a business which had failed, and
Patrick offered to “forgive” the debt if she would agree to let herself get
fucked before his cameras. Adam Summers was part of this gang because he owned
a 16 mm projector and provided the expertise needed to show the films, and
though they promised they wouldn’t show them outside of the town of Ballarat,
where the Doctor Blake stories
take place, in fact they exhibited them all over the country — and the
reluctant porn star’s dad happened to see one of them at a stag party he went
to and, while everyone else was laughing and having a great time, he was so
ashamed at seeing his daughter doing it on screen he determined to have his
revenge, first killing Summers and then Patrick. When Patrick’s dad finds out
what he’s accused of he pulls the family attorney he’d assigned Patrick and
essentially disowns his son, leaving him on his own to face the consequences of
his actions for the first time in his life. This wasn’t the best Doctor
Blake episode I’ve seen but the
show remains reliably entertaining and has that odd reticence that makes
British mysteries so appealing (and it’s revealing that the one murder that
takes place is committed by rendering the victim unconscious and then locking
him in a sealed room and starting a fire — no gunplay or literal bloodshed).