The Mrs Bradley Mysteries

Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley was the creation of the successful crime and adventure writer Gladys Mitchell, a groundbreaking detective who has never reached the popularity of Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple or Sexton Blake. Yet Mrs Bradley was one of the most prolific detectives in literature, appearing in sixty-six novels published between 1929 and 1984. The last few were printed posthumously after Mitchell's death in 1983, aged eighty-two; she was writing right up to the end.

However, this isn't the story of Mitchell's great literary output. It's the story of the very short-lived television adaptation, which ran as a pilot episode in 1998 followed by a series of only four episodes in 2000. Each episode is based loosely – often very loosely – on one of Mitchell's novels, cherry-picked from the entire range. Dame Diana Rigg stars as Mrs Bradley. Although a mature lady detective in the Miss Marple mould – debuting after Agatha Christie's creation, but heading a full-length novel a year before – Mrs Bradley is also a qualified medical doctor and psychoanalyst, bringing her skills to solving the various murders she stumbles across. In Mitchell's novels, Mrs Bradley is an explicitly ugly, haggard old woman, often described as bird-like or crocodilian, and in her first novel even as resembling a pterodactyl. This is not how Diana Rigg could ever be described, even at the end of her life, and certainly not in her early sixties. Rigg's Mrs Bradley is a glamorous, charismatic woman fully aware of how desirable she is, having collected and discarded husbands over the years and much happier as a widow, three-times over.

Rigg is the star of the show at all times, quietly dominating her every scene, beautifully if eccentrically dressed in the most elaborate fashions of the 1920s. This is Rigg at the mid-point of her career, the period between her action heroine days in The Avengers and On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the ferocious, oft-underestimated old women of Game of Thrones and Last Night in Soho. Just in case barging in, taking command and solving murders wasn't enough, Rigg gets to almost break character as she addresses the audience multiple times per episode, delivering witty observations on the events. Bits of fourth wall everywhere.

Mrs Bradley is accompanied by her faithful chauffeur George Moody, sadly not retaining his literary name of George Cuddleup. As well as ferrying her between social occasions, George assists Mrs Bradley in her crime solving, quizzing the staff while Adela grills the uppers. George is played by the ever-stalwart Nigel Dudgeon, one in a long line of solid characters who bash through investigations, from Messiah and Between the Lines to the second Barnaby in Midsomer Murders. The sexual tension between George and Mrs Bradley is obvious, but they are both too buys fending off the attentions of various characters of their respective social stations.

Every episode is sumptuously realised, with the BBC's usual high standards of period costuming and set dressing recreating the 1920s setting. The soundtrack is peppered with songs from the twenties and thirties, with a wonderful rendition of Ray Henderson, Lew Brown and Buddy DeSylva's 1928 number “You're the Cream in My Coffee” as the series theme, sung by Graham Dalby and the Grahamaphones.

The 1998 pilot episode, Speedy Death, is based on the very first Mrs Bradley novel. It begins with Mrs Bradley making a surprise appearance at the funeral of one of her ex-husbands, embarrassing her son (Tyler Butterworth – Mike & Angelo), before heading off to the engagement party of an old friend's young daughter. Emma Fielding (A Dance to the Music of Time) plays the newly-engaged Eleanor “Mouse” Bing with Tristan Gemmill (Casualty, Coronation Street) as her aggressive brother Garde. There are also roles for Lynda Baron (Open All Hours, EastEnders), Tom Butcher (The Bill, Doctors) and even a sixteen-year-old Russell Tovey (Being Human, Years and Years) as a stable boy. When Mouse's fiance is found, firstly, drowned in the bath, and secondly, anatomically female, family and friends' many secrets start to unravel. It's all spectacularly contrived, but also extremely entertaining.

Quote of the episode: “Marriage is one of those things it's best to get over and done with early in life... like chicken pox.”

The pilot did well enough to prompt a full series, which arrived around a year-and-a-half later in early 2000. The first episode, Death at the Opera, is easily the best of the four regular episodes. It sees Mrs Bradley return to her old finishing school, seemingly so she can complain about how awful it is. While she befriends several of the students, she still doesn't get along with the staff, even when one of them is found dead. Death at the Opera is based broadly on the fifth Mrs Bradley novel, and the opera in question is a school production of The Mikado. As Mrs Bradley and George investigate, they turn up a complex array of secrets, stealthy romances, hidden identities and sundry intrigues.

Death at the Opera's main boast is its cast. Susan Wooldridge (All Quiet on the Preston Front, Kaos) plays the stern headmistress Mrs Simms, with Roy Barraclough (Coronation Street's inimitable Alec Gilroy) as her oleaginous husband and school doctor. Annabelle Apsion (Call the Midwife), Carli Norris (EastEnders, Hollyoaks) and Amy Marston (Neverwhere, Insomnia) also appear, along with David Tennant as the mysterious Max Valentine. Also making his first appearance is Peter Davison as recurring character Inspector Christmas, a police detective who takes an immediate shine to Mrs Bradley. This is the first time that the future and former Doctor Who leads appear on television together; Tennant was reportedly starstruck (we're a long way off their becoming in-laws).

The next episode, The Rising of the Moon, is a bit of a chore, in spite of being based on one of the most acclaimed of Mitchell's novels. Most murder mystery shows get round to a circus episode eventually, and they're rarely the best ones. Inspector Christmas asks Mrs Bradley to investigate a travelling circus when one of their members is found stabbed to death. Mistrust between the performers and the local villagers makes it almost impossible to get information, but Mrs Bradley finds herself among kindred spirits. Naturally, suspicion falls on the knife thrower, but with sinister clowns and manipulative fortune tellers in the mix, Mrs Bradley isn't so sure.

Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me, Broadchurch) has the best role of the guest cast as the mysterious Madame Marlene, with Janine Duvitski (Benidorm, Waiting for God) and Felicity Montagu (I'm Alan Partridge, Beyond Paradise) also giving strong performances. The recently lost Kenneth Colley (Moving Story, Pennies from Heaven) has a memorable turn as a melancholy clown. The cast can't really save the episode though, which takes too long to get going and never really makes a big impression, in spite of some fun set pieces and some surprisingly gruesome moments.

Laurels are Poison is another of Mitchell's most popular novels and was the author's own favourite. Fortunately, this time the adaptation does it justice. Mrs Bradley is invited to visit by her oldest friend, Lady Marchant, played by Phyllida Law (That's Love, Kingdom). However, Lady Marchant isn't quite prepared for Mrs Bradley's eccentric behaviour, for some reason, and there's a deep sense of buried secrets in the house. When the cook is poisoned, mysteries unravel both upstairs and down. Laurels are Poison is one of the best episodes of the series, a far darker and more emotive story than those around it, with some heavy themes.  Ronan Vibert (The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Cat's Meow) gives a powerful performance as the shellshocked Captain Prideux, who has a wartime link to George. The horrifying memories of the Great War that still haunt both men add enormous depth to their characters, with Dudgeon giving his best performance as George thanks to some really meaty material.

The final episode, The Worsted Viper, manages to combine the darkness and family secrets of Laurels are Poison with the silliness of The Rising of the Moon. Mrs Bradley and George visit a Cornish seaside village where Inspector Christmas is receiving an honour before his retirement, and also happens to be the home of George's soon-to-be-wed daughter Cecily (Rebecca Callard- Detectorists, The Grand). However, they soon find themselves investigating the murder of the ironically-named Chastity Baines, a ritualistic killing that calls back to one of Mrs Bradley's earliest cases.

Inspector Christmas gets more character development here, which Davison makes the most of. His increasing closeness to Mrs Bradley does not go over well with George, and the unspoken attraction between the widow and her chauffeur very nearly becomes spoken. Davison, Dudgeon and Rigg have developed a great chemistry by this point which makes this convoluted mystery, involving cultish rites, murder and smuggling, all the more enjoyable. It also features eccentric guest appearances by Pooky Quesnel (Family Affairs, Waterloo Road, The A Word), Isla Blair (When the Boat Comes In, The Advocates, Fall of Eagles) and the brilliant Eddie Marsan (The Best of Men, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, Friends and Crocodiles) in a very early role. The Worsted Viper rounds out the series with a contrived but effective twist ending.

With sixty-one more novels to adapt – or, at least, inspire – the creators of The Mrs Bradley Mysteries must have thought they had the recipe for a long-running series. However, it just didn't gain the reviews or ratings that were hoped for and a second season wasn't commissioned. Unfortunately, it's easy to see why; it's an odd show that doesn't quite know how serious it wants to be, and in spite of its charms it never quite came together as a truly compelling mystery series. Still, it's a pity that it didn't have a little longer to find its feet and make a greater impact. Twenty-five years on, it's long past time that another, more faithful, attempt was made to adapt Mrs Bradley's adventures for the screen.

^{Daniel Tessier}