A typically fast moving mystery thriller, once thought lost, from one of Francis Durbridge's radio serials 'News of Paul Temple'. Crime fighting duo, mystery writer Paul Temple and his vivacious wife and partner in detection, Steve, find themselves up against a gang headed by an individual known only as 'Z' after one of Steve's friends has been murdered following the kidnapping of her scientist father. It's one of those familiar sounding organisations that "steal state secrets and sell them to the highest bidder".
As in the earlier CALLING PAUL TEMPLE (see my review), John Bentley and Dinah Sheridan are ideal as Durbridge's answer to Nick and Nora Charles. Bentley was perhaps only surpassed in the role by Francis Matthews, star of the BBC series of twenty years later, that was stymied by some abysmal scripts. Again, there's a delightful chemistry with the lovely Dinah Sheridan, who is the most perceptive, lively and charming of Steves. It's a shame she did not stay on for the final entry of the series, PAUL TEMPLE RETURNS, but by then she was in demand for more prestigious productions. There is the usual abundance of red herrings and coincidences and it's not difficult to notice the cliffhangers that closed each radio episode.
Temple can't be doing too badly from his mysteries, as he drives an Aston Martin, a car that wouldn't have been seen too often on the roads of the austerity Britain of 1949/50. Location shooting includes a glimpse of the New Forest as well as Northolt Airport, then being used for commercial flights. Busy character actress Beatrice Varley, who often played downtrodden and lowly women, was far more assertive in this series, holding up men at gunpoint in the first, SEND FOR PAUL TEMPLE, while here she's a no nonsense hotel owner with something to hide. Her husband is played by another stalwart, Ben Williams, who seemed to turn up somewhere in every British film of the 1940s and 1950s. Carry On favourite Peter Butterworth makes the most of a small part as a Post Office engineer. Good entertainment from a bygone age.
