Leave it to Todhunter

Article by Laurence Marcus

From September 1958 until January 1959, Monday night was dubbed Mystery Night for BBC viewers, with three series either adapted from popular novels or written directly for television, each thirty-minutes in duration and played out over six episodes. Leave it to Todhunter fell into the former category. Only one of these dramas still exist in the BBC archives. Leave it to Todhunter is not one of them.

Leave it to Todhunter was a macabre comedy of sorts, having been adapted by Patrick Campbell from the novel Trial and Error by the English crime writer Anthony Berkeley (Cox), who had his first novel published in 1925 and later founded the Detection Club in London along with Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and other established mystery writers. Trial and Error was published in 1932 and was loosely a sequel to his 1929 mystery The Piccadilly Murder. Both stories feature the unassuming yet clever Ambrose Chitterwick and Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard.

The story, set in 1958 for the adaptation, is not a traditional 'whodunit' but more of a 'we know who hasn't dunnit'. It aims to shed light on the inner workings of the legal system and centres around Lawrence Todhunter (Mervyn Johns), a seemingly mild-mannered little man working as a theatre critic for a London newspaper. Todhunter learns he has a heart condition and only six months to live. Armed with the knowledge that he won't face any consequences; he decides to do the world a favour by killing a truly evil person. He boasts that he will commit the crime without getting caught and will only confess when his own death is imminent.

After much deliberation, Todhunter chooses his target: Marcia Loraine (Helen Cherry), a glamorous but bitchy self-obsessed actress whom he has never particularly liked and believes the world would be better off without, though the reasons why he would go to such extremes are not clearly specified. He carries out the murder flawlessly, but his plan unravels when the police arrest an innocent man for the crime. Despite Todhunter's repeated attempts to confess, the authorities remain unconvinced, leading to a farcical bureaucratic nightmare. Desperate, Todhunter seeks the help of Ambrose Chitterwick (Kynaston Reeves) to prove his own guilt.

Leave it to Todhunter has the accent on suspense and is well-laced with humour - sometimes of the grim kind. But not all critics liked it. "Too wordy" complained one critic and others were disappointed with the denouement where Todhunter, about to face the hangman, attacks his prison guard and has a fatal heart attack. Another critic thought that the story was 'unorthodox in many ways' but 'it raised many legalistic hares, there were many loose ends, and the last scene was needlessly macabre' and 'the murder lacked a powerful motive.' However, that disappointment wasn't universal and the Manchester Evening News critic enjoyed the 'ingenious foundations' and 'highly polished mystery complete with background music which sets just the right atmosphere.'

Among the cast was Ballard Berkeley, the almost-senile Major Gowen from Fawlty Towers as Detective Chief Inspector Moresby, Peter Bryant from The Grove Family who later turned associate producer and worked on Doctor Who for two years was Moresby's sidekick Detective Sergeant Williams, and Arthur Lowe was Gunsmith, a character who appeared in two episodes. Helen Cherry was the wife of Trevor Howard.

Mervyn Johns was a Welsh stage, film and television actor who never really became a leading star, but was hardly ever out of work. He appeared in over a hundred different screen roles and has been described as 'one of Ealing Studios' most prolific actors'. In September 2022, he was named the 40th most popular Welsh actor of all time, after being absent from public attention for almost fifty years and dead for thirty.   

The two Mystery Night series that followed Leave it to Todhunter were Solo for Canary by Ken Hughes and Quatermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale.