Tuesday 18 September 2018

A Bad Habit


A Bad Habit

It's 26th July 1976 and Jon Pertwee's got some lovely Jersey flowers on his desk, as this is apparently "the first programme they'll ever have received in colour", which means he's also put his best blue denim shirt on to mark the occasion.




'Whodunnit?' this week is set in a monastery that sees its sacred sceptre shockingly swiped, although this one rather resembles a Glam Rock sonic screwdriver, especially when wielded by the dapper Mr Pertwee.


The monastery is populated by such familiar faces as John Abineri, John Clegg and Charles Lloyd Pack, but as always the guest panel is of interest, too. Our TV Times Competition winner this time around is Peter Clark (15, now 57-ish if my maths is right) from Bristol and I wonder if he's still around and, if so, what he can remember about appearing on the show.


Next to him, in a Snoopy T-shirt, is Robin Nedwell, who Jon claims can be seen again in 'Doctor On The Go' in September, although the next series would actually begin transmission in January 1977, so I'm not sure what happened there.



Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy are working well together and 'George & Mildred' is scheduled to start in September and will even manage to do so, thus giving them one up on their medical colleague.



Mentioned in passing are 'Kojak' and Ronnie Barker in 'Porridge' and there is possibly even a nod to 'Columbo' just to firmly root us in the mid 70s, though frankly the patterned shirts worn by Peter C and Brian M make quite a good job of that.



John Abineri ad-libs a quick prayer when being questioned by the panel and Jon Pertwee's gag about 'Brother's Pride' bread is memorably awful.


It's difficult to say too much about 'Whodunnit?' without giving the game away, but 'A Bad Habit' is a pretty standard episode of the show, and doesn't drift off too much into the weirder mode it could sometimes adopt.


Our video about 'A Bad Habit' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)

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