Sister Boniface Mysteries: "Stage Fright" (BBC Studios, BritBox, PBS, 2023)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

I wanted to watch last night’s episode of Sister Boniface Mysteries, “Stage Fright” (not to be confused with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950 film of that title, a disappointment despite Marlene Dietrich’s great performance in the lead as the subject of a murder plot by her faithless lover), on KPBS last night. Sister Boniface Mysteries is an engaging British TV series derived from G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown novels, about a Roman Catholic priest who goes around helping the typically clueless local police solve crimes. This time series creator Jude Tindall decided to make the lead detective character a middle-aged (or older) nun living in the fictitious town of “Great Slaughter” (a great name for a village in a mystery series!) who helps the police solve crimes and seems to be the only person in British law enforcement in the 1960’s who’s ever heard of forensics. One of the running gags of this show is Sister Boniface in full habit leaning over a Bunsen burner or using a magnifying glass to examine some clue or other. “Stage Fright” is about the Great Slaughter Theatre Company giving a newly discovered play by recently deceased author Ambrose Chance (Tom Crowhurst) – he’s been dead for months when the action starts but he’s seen in a key flashback. The play is a dreadful pastiche of pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue (ironically, all the other plays the Great Slaughter Theatre Company has produced, judging from the posters we see for their previous productions, are by the real William Shakespeare), and during one of the main rehearsals the leading lady, Hildy Prentice (Carli Norris), stabs the leading man, Lewis Garner (Jack Ashton, who whatever the level of his real acting skills has to impersonate someone who delivers all his lines in a flat monotone and is clearly way out of his depth on stage, though he’s so drop-dead gorgeous it doesn’t really matter he’s playing someone who can’t act). She’s supposed to use a prop dagger with a retractable blade, but someone has sabotaged her prop dagger and stuck on a real blade with glue, so Lewis actually dies.

Eventually Sister Boniface deduces that the crime is tied in with the mysterious disappearance of one Henry Buck, who went missing 30 years earlier. The key clue that gives it away is a painted backdrop for the play that looks exactly like a real location in the same area, and Our Heroic Nun realizes that Henry Buck was murdered and buried in the area, that Ambrose Chance was one of the original killers, and the other one was … Ambrose wrote the true-life story into his script, and his partner in crime was Captain Pargiter (Owen Brenman), who caught Henry Buck trying to burglarize his home. Rather than report the crime to the police, Pargiter and Chance got high-powered rifles and hunted down the man themselves, The Most Dangerous Game-style. Pargiter ultimately killed him and the two buried the body in the woods, only Sister Boniface is able to recover the bullet that lodged in a nearby tree. The plot was uncovered when the Great Slaughter Theatre Company decided to produce Ambrose Chance’s last play, and Lewis Garner realized he’d witnessed the original crime as a child and threatened to report Captain Pargiter to the police – only Pargiter, to keep him quiet, rigged up this elaborate murder plot to eliminate him and fake it to look like an accident. Mixed in with the murder is a rivalry between the Great Slaughter Theatre Company and a rival troupe in the area over which will get an Arts Council grant from the British government and thus be able to improve the quality of their productions and not have to live a hand-to-mouth existence. The shabby quality of their work is exemplified by a prop “bear” that’s little more than a bear’s head draped over a human mannequin, which is supposed to represent a fearsome beast menacing the characters. Ultimately the “bear” is replaced by assistant police superintendent Felix Livingstone (the African-British Jerry Iwu) in a bear costume, and he’s singled out for special praise in the letter awarding the Great Slaughter Theatre Company the prized government grant. It was a cute and clever ending to what’s basically a cute and clever show, not especially thrilling (British crime shows generally aren’t) but a good deal of fun – and Lorna Watson’s playing of Sister Boniface is right on target and quite enjoyable as one of the unlikeliest crimefighters in fiction.