Customer Reviews

Campion - Police at the Funeral

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Campion is a bit different from the usual detective. BBC has Campion from a wealthy family, yet down to earth and always ready to help and solve murder mysteries. The first season allows you to get to know him, and the second season really gets him into action. Highly recommend for any BBC mystery lover.

As much a "why was it done" as a "who done it", this is a fine piece of British acting, bringing to life the world of the well off in the period after WWI. [The grande dame of the family is shown being driven to church in a horse-drawn cabriolet -- such a grand lady!] Peter Davison must be able to count himself as a lucky actor if for no reason other than the chance to drive such marvelous vintage cars! He's very good as the upper-class but ambiguous sleuth Albert Campion, with many pseudonyms and a mysterious royal connection if not provenance.

Margery Allingham wrote a fine set of mysteries centered on Albert Campion. It is interesting to compare these works to the Dorothy L. Sayers series on Lord Peter Wimsey, both well born men, very Anglo-Saxon in appearance with vacuous faces hiding skills and quite a lot of brains, with butlers/valets with wide-ranging abilities. Wimsey was an Oxford man; Campion went to Cambridge.

The death (murder?) of Uncle Albert starts off the proceedings, followed shortly by the death (murder?) of Aunt Julia. Mischief plagues the family, but why? Then black sheep Cousin George bullies his way into the house, and dies in a locked room. The acting is marvelous, particularly Davison as Campion and Brian Glover as his reformed burglar butler, Lugg. Mary Morris is also very good as the matriarch with the sole accumulation of functioning brain cells in the beleaguered household. Andrew Burt, in the continuing role of Chief Inspector Stanislaus Oates, plays his usual excellent second banana role.

Not so absorbing that you can't stop in the middle for a biscuit and a glass of sherry; it won't keep you up at night; but a nice British stiff-upper-lip mystery among the upper class.

I love murder mysteries. I especialy like the ones set in the early 1900. And I like that the mystery is solved without a lot of blood and etc. I like that there isn't any profanity in the production. I like Campion as he is intelligent, very brave. I like his companion as he is the old rough guy that's been transforned with just enough of the roughness left to make him very wise.