The
lowdown: 'Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective' is a made-for-television
movie that is based on a novel of the same
name by Leslie Thomas. It
stars Bernard Cribbins as Detective Constable 'Dangerous' Davies, who gained
his nickname
because he is considered
by both his fellow officers and villains alike to be harmless (indeed,
he is more likely to injure
himself than anyone else).
Davies is accident-prone and always manages to get injured in the course
of his duty, but while
he may take longer to solve
cases than his colleagues, he is dedicated and hard-working, and eventually
solves the crime
in question. As the opening
credits note, Dangerous Davies is a born stumbler, but patient and very
dogged. He is also
called 'the last detective',
as his superiors only put him on a case when no-one else is available.
The
plot: A local career criminal has returned to London after
some years in Australia, and the police station's commanding
officer, Chief Inspector
Yardbird, assigns Dangerous the task of locating said villain and keeping
an eye on him, as the police
suspect he has come home
to pull off a big robbery. The Home Office wants the investigation to be
as clumsy as possible,
in the hope of drawing the
villain out into the open. Dangerous of course is perfect for the job...
His investigation leads him
to the unsolved case of
Celia Norris, a teenage girl who dispeared 15 years ago and is believed
to be dead, although her body
was never found, just her
clothing (with the exception of her underwear). Dangerous is ordered by
his superiors to drop the
investigation into the young
girl, but he persists and eventually discovers that the two cases are linked.
Dangerous interviews
people who knew Celia, including
her then-boyfriend, William Lind (played by Colin Baker), who admits that
he has kept his
long-dead girlfriend's knickers
in his mum's loft (as one does). Davies' investigation reveals that a policeman
may have been
behind Celia's disappearance,
and it turns out to be none other than Chief Inspector Yardbird.
Who
connections: Aside from Colin Baker and Bernard Cribbins,
this film features several other actors who have been
in Doctor Who. Maureen
Lipman from 'The Idiot's Lantern' plays William Lind's promiscious wife,
who tries to seduce Davies
in an elevator. Frank Windsor
was in 'The King's Demons' and 'Ghost Light', while Roy Stewart played
Toberman in 'Tomb of
the Cybermen' and was also
in 'Terror of the Autons'.
Trivia:
'Dangerous Davies' was remade for ITV, starring Peter Davison in the title
role, with 17 feature-length telemovies made
between 2003 and 2007. The
pilot episode has a number of differences to the 1981 film, although in
both instances Davies is
investigating the death
of a teenage girl many years ago. In the ITV series, the killer was a sergeant,
Raymond Yardley, who
was about to retire, rather
than Davies' boss. Likewise, in the film version, Davies refers to himself
as 'the last detective', but
in the TV series it is his
boss, DI Aspinall, who calls him this after he has the highly-popular Yardley
arrested for murder.
Video
Clip: William Lind
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