This is the pilot episode of a British mystery series that follows Detective Cribb, played with affable stolidity by Alan Dobie, through his adventures in Victorian era London. In this episode, which is a full ninety minutes, as opposed to the standard forty-five minute running time of the other episodes, a woman has been sentenced to hang for killing a blackmailer; but it’s the first time a woman will be executed in Britain, so there’s interest in high places in making absolutely sure the conviction was just and her guilt is assured. So Cribb is put on the case. This is a really wonderful episode of television. The main problem is the quality, which is basically old VHS level even though this is DVD. But old shows suffer like that a lot and I found the story and acting to be well worth putting up with the poor quality. There’s a lot of surprisingly dark humor in the story. One of the side-plots is in regards to the executioner who will be performing the hanging and how he’s planning to use his celebrity as the first man in Britain to execute a woman to make money and it’s quite funny. Likewise, the final shot of the show is a really dark joke that made me both laugh and gasp at the same time. The mystery is super-good though; at various points, I thought I had it figured out but, even as a mystery aficionado, I got the wool pulled over my eyes and the solution was something that had never even crossed my mind. Dobie is really good, plain spoken and blunt, seemingly a little behind, but always a step ahead, not unlike Columbo. This episode features a great performance by Carol Royle as the convicted woman; it’s a performance with a lot of layers and she gets them all right. I thought this was a great, great episode and I’m super excited to keep going with this series. 4 stars.
tl;dr – pilot episode of Victorian-era mystery series is compelling, darkly comic and it has a solution that is genuinely surprising; poor video quality detracts, but not much. 4 stars.