SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those watching series one of Partners in Crime. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen episode two.
For the episode one recap, click here.
When we left Tommy and Tuppence last week – welcome back, proper old-fashioned cliffhanger – Tommy was about to be rumbled at the criminal hideout in Soho and Tuppence was under suspicion by one of the thugs from the gambling den as she posed in an unconvincing wig as typist and home help to Rita, the self-centred soprano.
Naturally, they both wriggle out of their respective jams. Luckily, the criminals they are trying to infiltrate are particularly gullible.
Mr Brown’s associates in Soho now believe Tommy to be Drennan, the money man they’ve been expecting. Our intrepid two waylay the real Drennan as he gets off the train, and drug his pint with Albert’s angel dust.
Rita is visited by tall, suave James (who turns out to be a “200, all out” chap sent by Carter). Rita orders Tuppence to get out the best china. I want to see the best china, but we are straight back to Tommy as he dices with death. Then it all gets a bit serious. Suddenly, the pleasantly cartoonish, jolly hockey sticks adventure turns sour when the hoodlum who has rumbled Tommy – and is blackmailing him – is throttled to extinction right in front of Tommy (and us). I fully believe this should have happened off screen. A decision should have been made early doors about whether this is The A Team (no one ever died in The A Team) or something more realistic.
Tommy crawls in drunk from his Soho experience and Tuppence enlists Albert to help her chuck a bucket of water over him. Once he’s awake they hold a debrief, for their benefit and ours. The target is American, Rita is involved, Brown plans an assassination. It all feels a bit like Tommy’s hangover this episode – things are moving very slowly indeed and it’s not helping the chemistry, but next week’s teaser looks very promising. Any show featuring a Morris Traveller barrelling through a muddy field is good in my book.
We learn from Albert that the US secretary of state will be in London in two days’ time. Carter explains even more fulsomely that the murder of the US visitor would “ruin relations” with Britain. This sounds unlikely, but on we go. When are Tommy and Tuppence going to realise that Jane put that recording in their bee box? When?
The next day, a foolhardy Tommy is, of course, apprehended by Whittington snooping around the basement room looking for Jane. Back at Rita’s, Tuppence is similarly scuppered when her atrocious typewriter ruse backfires and she has to scarper through a window and down the drainpipe to freedom.
With the police completely missing a captured Tommy in the Soho basement, we leave at least one Beresford in peril as is traditional. But overall, this was a less pacy episode than the first. High hopes for next week having seen Tuppence smash a vase on someone’s head in the trailer. Bet she learned that in the girl guides, too.
Case Notes
- Tuppence whips off that blond wig in the middle of the street, surrounded by people. She doesn’t really seem to get this disguise business at all, does she?
- The Beresford chemistry is still on a very low heat. However, they did have their first kiss this episode (outside the pub after drugging Drennan) and I swear I almost felt a warm breeze.
- Tuppence finds “ANASSA” scratched into the wall of Jane’s cell. What could it mean? Am resisting the temptation to Google it as I can’t remember it from the books.
- I like the fact the pair are already disobeying Colonel Carter and following their own instincts. It points to an increase in their confidence each episode, which will surely make for more fun.
