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Guest stars
Colin McFarlane, Stuart Milligan and Adrian Edmondson
Directed by Sandy Johnson
First transmitted 21st February 2004
Ratings t.b.a.
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The Puzzle:
Detective Inspector Adrian Fell, a highly respected police officer, seems to be the ideal subject for an Eyes and Ears profile. He even solves the locked room mystery of a dead judge faster than Jonathan Creek might have.
But then damning evidence of Fell's involvement with the death of a barrister is discovered. A reporter is tipped off and witnesses the officer at the scene of the crime, seemingly staring at the body and stealing evidence. Is he, in fact, a ruthless killer? Is Carla in danger? Is Jonathan getting too close to the truth? And what sinister secret is contained within Fell's strange chequered box...?
Does a piece of chewing gum that moves from one plant pot to another, and a piece of David Blaine style endurance magic from Adam, provide the answer? [Solution]
Quiz
Five quick questions to test your knowledge of the episode.
Alan Davies
"[David Blaine and Derren Browne's styles of magic] really aren't new. There have always been endurance spectacles, if you like, in the history of magic, and in the history of entertainment there's always been men who sit on poles for days and men who get buried alive.
"David Blaine is following a long tradition. People really like it. And if people enjoy all that, people stretching themselves, people squeezing themselves into holes, going without food, standing in dark places in the cold and you know... I went down to see David Blaine hanging in his box. I was down there at one in the morning and there were loads of people starring at him and it was amazing, completely harmless and quite intriguing.
"Like all good entertainment or art, some people were outraged, some people fascinated, some people sent messages of support, and some people threw eggs at him. It says more about the people involved than it does about him. As for mind control and tricks and so on, I love all that stuff and any kind of con like that is fascinating."
David Renwick
"People will notice that Adam Klaus is now emulating David Blaine. That's just me scrubbing around for inspiration - as one always is as a writer - and taking it from anything that is going on.
"The very fact that Blaine's star is in the ascendant gives me obvious material. You're always looking through current events to give you the germ of an idea. It's just a gift that Klaus takes on this cool, savvy street magician persona - and he's not very good at it."
Going underground
David Blaine spent seven days in a plastic coffin in Manhattan, New York, in April 1999. Three months previously, Geoff Smith od Mansfield claimed the world record for being buried alive by spending for 147 days in a specially constructed coffin in his garden.
In the process he won the world record title once held by his late mother Emma, who in 1968 spent 100 days down a hole in Skegness, Lincolnshire.
The Solution: (point your mouse over the space below)
Fell, the judge and the barrister had all helped put away a major crime lord many years previously. Recently released, the criminal had set about killing the judge and the barrister, intending to frame Fell for the latter's murder.
He had arranged for the reporter to witness the aftermath of the murder from a specific viewpoint - a stairwell in an office opposite the crime scene. That limited view hid a secret - that fake builders had partitioned the large office where the barrister was murdered into two smaller ones. Fell, lured there by false claims that evidence of his daughter's drug dealing would be there, entered one office and discovered the paperwork in question - oblivious to the body on the other side of the partition.
The reporter was fooled into believing that Fell had a clear view of the entire office when he chuckled at the corpse, unaware that he was simply looking at a humorous print hanging on the fake partition.
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Trivia
Writer David Renwick also created classic comedies One Foot in the Grave and Whoops, Apocalypse.
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