Tim Curry and Eileen Brennan are great in this dramatised game of "Cleudo". The former is butler "Wadsworth" who is to welcome a select gathering of guests to his employer's stately pile for a dinner with a difference. Once assembled, we discover that these ostensibly upstanding folks are all really miscreants and that they were all being blackmailed! Unbeknown to them, their nemesis is in their midst - but not for long, and what now ensues is a cleverly written and staged murder mystery that pits each of them against the other in an entertaining and funny ninety minutes complete with a rope and some lead piping. There are loads of quips in the pithily delivered script - some more subtle than others, and as the deductive element of the plot heats up, the characters - especially Brennan's "Mrs. Peacock" and Christopher Lloyd's eccentric, slightly sleazy, "Prof Plum" - each start to exude their own sense of chaotic, slapstick, mini-menace. By the end I wasn't quite sure who was dead, if anyone was dead, should anyone have been dead, should they all have been dead, should I have been dead? It races along just like it does on the stage, and as screen adaptations from that medium go - well, it's amongst the best. Looks great too and is really worth sitting in from of the telly with some Malbec with, and enjoying Tim Curry doing what he does best.
