Another made-for-TV effort starring James Mason which shows the same kind of professionalism as if it had been a feature-film, a typical espionage tale of the era: in fact, the star would appear in the excellent THE DEADLY AFFAIR the same year which, like this one, was adapted from the work of master spy novelist John Le Carre'. Mason plays a mild-mannered middle-aged man: having conveniently fled the dominance of his father (Hugh Griffith!) by going to live in West Berlin, his life is still run by two spinster cousins (one of them played by Kay Walsh yet again). Sent for by the other side to pick up the old man's coffin, he finds him very much alive upon arriving but is still required to transport him (making Mason sweat at the checkpoint, even if he had shut the air from the coffin for the duration of the inspection and Griffith had actually assumed the semblance of death thanks to a special drug)! However, not wanting to suffer his father's meddling once more, he chooses to delay crossing the border in the hope that the old man will suffocate! At Griffith's house, our unlikely hero had met – and grown to like – a woman (Jill Bennett) the authorities are looking for
so it comes as a complete shock to him when the soldiers insist on taking a look inside the coffin and happily report back to Mason afterwards that he is really transporting what it says in the papers i.e. his mother. Though the ironic/tragic implications of this obviously pulled quite a dramatic punch, creating the perfect sour note on which to conclude the gloomy program, I could not help laughing out loud at the sheer adversity afflicting the protagonist here!
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