Feb 19, 2025
Shadows of Fear: The Party's Over (1.11, Thames, 1973)
"Frankly, Mr. Parker, I'm very concerned."
"Oh, why?"
"It would appear to me that you haven't given your wife the care and consideration she needs."
"I don't understand on earth what you mean!"
"Mr. Parker, your wife is under sentence of death."
#shadows of fear#the party's over#1973#single play#horror tv#thames#kim mills#george markstein#roy h. lewis#suzanne neve#edward fox#philip brack#susan tebbs#penelope lee#walter henry#lloyd shirley#finally drawing a line under my revisit to a series i remembered really very little about. one thing I did remember however was the weird#case of this final episode; i mentioned it in my tags on the first episode. unfortunately I've found out nothing new since then. the facts#are these: episode 11 aired very nearly 2 full years after episode 10. it runs to half the length of the other episodes‚ is the sole#episode to have a period setting‚ it has a slightly different style and a greater use of incidental music‚ is less grotty in general and is#the only episode of the series to be produced by Lloyd Shirley. it's also one of just two screenwriting credits for Roy Lewis‚ and the only#episode to involve Markstein. it feels‚ basically‚ like an unrelated play that was slapped with the Shadows titles‚ but there's no proof#that was the case and in fact‚ considering it aired so much later‚ it makes less sense to put this out as an installment of a minor#anthology that most people would have forgotten by then. the final run of eps before this one were largely a two handed job by Roger#Marshall and Kim Mills but neither were involved with this play. so what happened? i dont know! unfortunately. there just isn't much info#out there unsurprisingly. regardless this is a pretty fun little story‚ a relatively familiar bit of hokum but well sold by Neve's sincere#lead turn and a rather large performance from Fox. oops correcting my own mistake here rather than rewrite the tag: Kim Mills directed this#so of course he was involved. but not as producer interestingly (he'd pulled double duty on much of the series). he'd moved onto the Rivals#of Sherlock Holmes series in the meantime‚ which could explain the Lloyd S connection (he produced that series). it might also explain the#rather handsome edwardian set design and costuming.. possibly borrowed from Rivals sets? pure speculation on my part tho