An unconvincing plot, and three hammy performances out of four, up to the brilliant final twist, which we can't reveal.
It is the ending alone that seems to have caused this episode to be named so often as the best of the whole series, all seven years of it. But the other 24 minutes you might as well miss. David J. Stewart makes a fair fist of playing the magician in a travelling show, taking-in a starving and mentally-deficient runaway from a boys' home (Brandon deWilde), and allowing him to watch the act where his glamorous wife (Diana Dors) gets sawn in half, in the time-honoured way. The besotted boy thinks she is being murdered for real, and wants to kill the magician - which gives the wife an idea, since she is wanting to elope with one of the other performers (Larry Kert).
For once, Dors looks every bit as evil and scheming as she really was, and deWilde is just his usual pretty-boy self, while Kert is no more than ballast. It was, however, a word from their sponsor that kept the episode from the small screen for at least forty years - Revlon deciding at the last moment that its beauty-creams would not mix too well with blood.
It is the ending alone that seems to have caused this episode to be named so often as the best of the whole series, all seven years of it. But the other 24 minutes you might as well miss. David J. Stewart makes a fair fist of playing the magician in a travelling show, taking-in a starving and mentally-deficient runaway from a boys' home (Brandon deWilde), and allowing him to watch the act where his glamorous wife (Diana Dors) gets sawn in half, in the time-honoured way. The besotted boy thinks she is being murdered for real, and wants to kill the magician - which gives the wife an idea, since she is wanting to elope with one of the other performers (Larry Kert).
For once, Dors looks every bit as evil and scheming as she really was, and deWilde is just his usual pretty-boy self, while Kert is no more than ballast. It was, however, a word from their sponsor that kept the episode from the small screen for at least forty years - Revlon deciding at the last moment that its beauty-creams would not mix too well with blood.