The Hidden Truth 1.1 Cause of Death (16th July 1964); written by Martin Woodhouse; dir. Lionel Harris. Featuring regulars Alexander Knox, James Maxwell, Elizabeth Weaver & George Moon, with guests Derrick Sherwin & Ellen McIntosh, Dyson Lovell, Hamilton Dyce, Brian Badcoe & Stanley Lloyd.
“Well, I’d really like to know what you think - were those wounds caused by glass or weren’t they?”
A tramp stumbles on the body of a lonely old man, found, with a lacerated neck, close to his crashed car. Inspector Hollin (Hamilton Dyce) investigates and suspicion falls on the man’s son-in-law Roger Maitland (Derrick Sherwin), an ambitious, career-minded young man, putting strain on his marriage to wife Jean (Ellen McIntosh). The pair are beneficiaries of the victim’s £27,000 life insurance policy - money they’re badly in need of. Dr Mossford (Brian Badcoe), concerned by the nature of the lacerations, asks Professor Lazard and Dr Fox for help in establishing the cause of death. It looks like a straightforward car crash, so Lazard sends Dr Fox to take a look - but there are several different possible explanations and it turns out to be “more of a whatdunnit than a whodunnit” with “no simple solution”.
Initially scheduled for Thursday 9th of July at 8pm, The Hidden Truth was one of many ITV shows hit by a technicians’ strike. It was especially unfortunate as the original publicity & schedule details confused critics (and no doubt viewers), robbing the show of its allotted space in some papers. (The Guardian‘s TV critic, duly tuning in on the 9th, found themselves watching Our Man at St Mark’s & shrugged and left it at that.)
It was re-scheduled for the 13th, (three days before the second episode “The Shape”), but wound up going out instead of “The Shape” on the 16th July & causing further confusion. (IMDB, even now, gives its broadcast date as the 9th & its episode summary as that of The Shape!)
In the Daily Herald (July 17th), Dennis Potter found it better than he had anticipated, although thought that might only be because he’d just had to sit through HMS Paradise “the worst comedy show I have ever seen,” but “Even so, this drama about pathologists did not begin to live up to its billing as “the most unusual series ever shown on T.V”. It was as “usual” as a wet bank holiday...
A close-up of blood cells under the microscope gave us a reassuring flash of authenticity... But a drama series has to drag in irritating little irrelevancies to get us interested in characters likely to pop up again in the next episode.
About the same standard as No Hiding Place, this new venture fills an hour of screen time without making it seem like two hours. And that, by current ITV standards, must pass as a sort of praise.“
The Stage, on the 23rd, was still confused: “THE first of this new series last Friday [sic] was, for some reason, not the advertised episode, but with the same principal characters. The Hidden Truth is there to be uncovered, I imagine, by the Department of Forensic Medicine which forms the background of the series.
This was, on the surface, a fairly run-of-the-mill whodunnit by Martin Woodhouse, but it turned out that it was really more of a whatdunnit ... Alexander Knox was authentic and efficient in the part of Professor Lazard and James Maxwell looked splendidly scientific and full of authority as the forensic expert, Dr. Fox. As the young man suspected of murder, Derrick Sherwin gave a strong, well-defined performance, but Ellen Macintosh as his wife seemed constricted and stilted almost until her last scene.
Elizabeth Weaver was given little scope as Dr. Coliton, but perhaps she will have more consideration in later scripts.
Generally well directed by Lionel Harris, it was quite a promising production. When shall we see The Shape I wonder.”
Meanwhile, the Crewe Chronicle (July 25th) felt “the first of Rediffusion’s dabbles in forensic science… looked fairly promising, although” [the recent switch to 50 minute episodes for drama series evidently being a bugbear] “stretching it out for sixty minutes is rather like putting lead weights round the feet of the cast and then expecting them to rumba. But view on regardless, bearing in mind that all thirteen stories are pure fiction though they are presented with the documentary-maker’s eye for minute detail.”
[Edited 16 Jan 2022 for additional info from surviving clips now shown on Talking Pictures! \o/ Plus edited again to add screencaps of the clips.]
