Slipknot (1967)

A murder-mystery by Ngaio Marsh and Brian Bell

Roderick Alleyn - Donald Hope Evans
Lady Kerr-Bates - Pamela Seebold
Harold Tillet - Athol Coats 
Bradley Crewes - Bruce Allpress
Dennis Rayburn - Rhys Jones
Jill Walker -Irene Wood
Beatrice Peynton - Yvonne Lawley
Violet Crosse - Anita Webster
Det. Insp. Dawson - Jim Coates
Det. Sgt Frampton - John Larking
Produced for the NZBC By Brian Bell

Although at first Dame Ngaio Marsh doubted that she would be able to write anything for the workshop she was intrigued by the idea and decided to start immediately – before she could decide she didn't have time. Brian Bell, who produced Slipknot also worked with her on the script. A murder mystery, the play is set in the Auckland art world. Although many of Ngaio Marsh’s novels have been adapted for television, this was her first television play. 

There will be many faces familiar to TV viewers when the Dame Ngaio Marsh contribution to the NZBC’s Television Workshop drama series gets to our screens. The cast list includes Donald Hope Evans, a veteran of BBC and local radio productions who has also been seen, in Junior Magazine. He has the lead as Detective Superintendent Roderick Alleyn. Pamela Seabold has been in several TV productions but will be spotted as the partner of Merv Smith in a current commercial series referred to most felicitously by local TV critic Barry Shaw as a continuing breakfast cereal. John Larking was in some of the Revue '66 sketches; Irene Woods had a part in Yo Heave Ho; David Prosser was briefly the front man for Speak Up; Bruce Allpress was occasionally a panellist a year or two back; Michael Noonan has been in junior shows: and Rhys Jones will be remembered in the We Three Show. The rather surprising member of the cast at first glance is Town and Around’s Tom Finlayson-but there is no surprise when you know that the play is set in "Auckland’s art world" and includes a Town and Around sequence

First published in New Zealand TV Weekly, September 11 1967.

Reviewed by Patricia Roddick, ‘Four Television Plays’, Landfall 84 (1967), 366-371.

Extract from script

SCENE 1 FILMED INSERT
(On a TV screen, Alleyn is being interviewed at Mangere Airport, Auckland for Town and Around)
INTERVIEWER: This is not the first time you've been to New Zealand is it. Mr Alleyn?
ALLEYN: No. I've been here twice before.
INTERVIEWER: And on each occasion you were caught up in cases?
ALLEYN: As it happened-yes
INTERVIEWER: And this time?
ALLEYN: This time it's strictly a holiday. I'm staying with friends and am hoping for a little fishing at Taupo. That's all.
FRONTMAN: That was my colleague talking to Detective Superintendent Roderick Alleyn at Mangere Airport this morning
....

Town and Around was a nightly magazine programme shown on New Zealand television in the late 1960s. For the broadcast, presenters from the programme played the interviewer and the front man

Many thanks to David Brawn for the news that the script has been published in Bodies from the Library 3

• ISBN: 9780008380946
• ISBN 10: 0008380945
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Imprint:Collins Crime Club
• On Sale: 2020-07-09

Also released as an audiobook read by Philip Bretherton