“A new Screen Two season opens in cracking style with a weird but very definitely wonderful comedy… Old Flames crackles with pace, wit and more than a few crunchy lines” Evening Standard
“All very odd and savagely funny and beautifully done” The Guardian
Old Flames was first broadcast by the BBC on 14th January 1990. The cast included the following:
DANIEL – Stephen Fry
QUASS – Simon Callow
JACKABOY – Clive Francis
NELLIE – Miriam Margolyes
SOPHIE – Hetty Baynes
CAROLINE – Zoe Rutland
DAVINA – Celia Imrie
HERMAN – Frank Ellis
PARKES – Peter Guinness
STRAUSS – Henry Goodman
ZELDA – Shaheen Khan
LUIGI – Romolo Bruni
COOKSON – James Coyle
Directed by Christopher Morahan
Produced by Kenith Trodd
Designed by Don Taylor
Review of Old Flames by Sheridan Morley in The Times
Alongside his stage plays…Simon Gray has been developing an intriguing line in stage and screen thrillers. This started in the theatre a decade or so ago with Stage Struck and moved more recently on to television with After Pilkington.
His Old Flames, which opened what looks like a very promising Screen Two series on BBC 2 last night, was the best yet. It was a creepy urban mystery rooted in a lost friendship from his own schooldays, and superbly played by Stephen Fry and Simon Callow, in one of the greatest thriller double-acts since Hitchcock first put Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne into The Lady Vanishes.
Gray’s screenplay was full of subtle cheap real xanax online references to Hitchcock and Agatha Christie, and had one running gag of rather less subtlety. All the victims on the killers’ hit list bore the names of contemporary London drama critics, and I have yet to decide whether I am relieved or insulted to have been left off it. But what really mattered here was the speed and confidence of Christopher Morahan’s direction and of Kenith Trodd’s production
…At a time when the West End thriller would sadly seem to be in terminal decline, Gray is offering television audiences something vastly more witty and literate….
The plot… had a stylish cohesion which made it the greatest tele-treat of an admittedly still rather new year.
MORE REVIEWS
“Simon Gray’s crackling black comedy is produced by Kenith Trodd and directed by Christopher Morahan – a pedigree that fulfils its promise. Dominating the production, however, is the dazzling performance by Simon Callow as Quass – the asthmatic with the old school-tie” Sunday Correspondent
“Both funny and suspenseful with sublime performances from the leads, and from Miriam Margolyes as Nathaniel\\\’s strange sister Nellie” The Observer
“I only watched Old Flames because it starred Stephen Fry and Simon Callow, the long and the short of theatrical eccentricity, and what an unexpected treat! … It was surreal and savagely funny. It also had moments of utter pathos” Daily Express