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 generic xanax brands 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.