Whodunnit? No, not the murders, the hideous 1970s stuffed animals
Save the moth! The ravenous little blighters are doing Britain a great service. earlier this week on Ch5 we saw how pest controllers at the Natural History Museum have been laying traps to wipe out the greedy Tineolabisselliella, or common clothes moth. Insects have been devouring parts of their collection such as pinned butterflies and taxidermy displays.
Good for the moths, say I. Munch away! There’s nothing more hideous than stuffed animals or birds. Museums were crammed with them when I was a boy — Bristol had a threadbare okapi and a celebrity gorilla named alfred.
Stuffed exhibits were everywhere in Dalgliesh (Ch5) as the detective, played by Bertie Carvel, investigated a murder at a dreary museum. a puma stood in reception, snarling and hunched, looking for all the world like someone threw a bucket of water over it before taking the fatal shot.
On the walls were part of a black ostrich and an albatross with its wings half-folded like an angel with a beak. But the worst monstrosity stood in an exhibition dedicated to true crime. Towering over mementos of Jack the Ripper and pals was a grizzly bear, rearing up on its hind legs, with a tobacco pipe in its mouth.
Was the bear supposed to be Sherlock Holmes? Inspector Maigret?
Though these grotesques must have wounded his poet’s soul, adam Dalgliesh ignored the dead animals and concentrated on the dead humans. One was cremated in a car, another was stowed in a traveller’s trunk — both killings that mirrored cases memorialised in the murder museum.
Chief suspects were a snooty brother and sister, determined to keep the museum open, and also running a boarding school for young ladies. Their housekeeper was played by Sorcha Cusack, who is also Father Brown’s housekeeper — surely it couldn’t be her?
More suspicious is the barking mad major, who keeps Zulu shields and assegais on his sitting room wall. at least he didn’t have a stuffed zebra.
and of course there was a gardener. There’s always a gardener, looking guilty but never the killer.
One of the pleasures of this 1970s whodunnit is the sheer level of detail in the props and furnishings. The first victim owned a very swish stereo radiogram, which I confess I coveted. There was also a print of Tretchikoff’s Green Lady on the wall. Half the homes in england had a copy, 50 years ago, and now they’ve all vanished. Perhaps the moths got them.
Private detective Kenny (emun elliott) gave a nod to classic crime dramas of the 1970s in Guilt (BBC2). Sauntering round his office, Leith Legals, he sucked on a red lollipop, like Kojak. Who loves ya, baby?
If half the fun in Dalgliesh is the decor, the joy of Guilt is largely in the subtlety of its clues and connections. You need a sharp eye to spot all the links, not to mention a brain capable of doing sudoku and 3D chess simultaneously.
Kenny is convinced that his girlfriend, disillusioned police detective Yvonne (Isaura BarbeBrown), has spotted his link to a gangland investigation. But he doesn’t voice this fear aloud — we have to work it out, from the way his gaze falls on an incriminating photo of him in his niece’s flat.
and you’d need a good memory to know that, when brothers Max and Jake (Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives) take refuge with a devious old doublecrosser named Sheila (ellie Haddington), she’s the neighbour who blackmailed them in the first series, back in 2019.
If you can’t keep track without crib notes and a spreadsheet, that’s nothing to feel Guilty about. Better to be flummoxed than stuffed.