Saturday, January 20, 2024

The Princes in the Tower: The final verdict

This is the one I've been waiting for. I've not watched it yet, but if they leave Richard III alone in the interview room with Barlow, he'll get a confession out of him in no tome.

It's an odd programme: Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor investigate historical crimes in the roles of Charlie Barlow and John Watt that they played in Z Cars, Softly Softly and Softly Softly: Task Force.

This device was first used in a six-part investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders screened in 1973. It was notable because the writer, Elwyn Jones, introduced the conspiracy theory involving the Royal Family that Stephen Knight later popularised in his Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which was published in 1976.

Now to watch them tackle Richard III and see Barlow get his man.

1 comment:

Neil Hickman said...

Thank you. Well worth watching.
Not as irritating or repetitious as a lot of stuff on Channel 4 or a lot of stuff featuring Lucy Worsley (who, of course, manages to tuck in quite a lot of solid history alongside the irritating bits).
I'll avoid spoilers; let's just say that Barlow does a pretty convincing demolition job on some highly questionable historical sources that are frequently quoted far too unthinkingly.
But then, having spent quite a bit of time studying the English Reformation (and mourned the fate of a lot of good and brave people who suffered at the hands of the ghastly son of Henry the Usurper), I'm pretty unsympathetic towards the Tudors.