The Capone Investment

I watched this series last week for the first time on the Film 24 channel on the Sky network here in the UK (which was shown in two parts) and was surprised by the quality of the fast-moving plot and the sharp acting. It was more entertaining and gripping than many cinema films of this type.

I disagree strongly with the review shown on IMDb. I think that modern TV directors can learn a lot from the uncomplicated camera angles and long scenes used on this production - it gave the actors more scope to let their characters breathe and allowed the dialogue to be more realistic. I was also impressed by the excellent locations used, which gave the story more of an edge.

All in all, it was a very good TV drama which deserves to be shown on more prominent TV channels.

I saw this as a film which was heavily cut from the TV series and it must have suffered from that as it was not all that good. I had an idea who the baddy was fairly early on but it would probably have taken a lot longer of course watching the much longer TV series.

A fabulous "medallion man" character with an unbuttoned flowery shirt, hairy chest, and a medallion, it's worth watching just to see this dinosaur, thankfully long extinct.

A snapshot of the glorious 70s with very bad wallpaper and soft furnishings.

An interesting plot but I would like to see the full TV series to compare it to the poor film cut from it.

Like some other reviewers on this page, I saw the film version of THE CAPONE INVESTMENT rather than the TV miniseries. I imagine some crucial material was cut out in order to condense this into a two-hour slot, but given that even the film version is sometimes slow in places, I'm not too worried.

This is a '70s production about the hunt for a missing wad of cash with links to old-time gangster Al Capone. Various interested parties are interested in the money, and a series of brutal murders reveals that some of them are willing to do just about anything to get their hands on it. The story is presided over by Glyn Owen and Peter Sallis as a couple of officials chasing after the mysterious villains of the piece, with John Thaw in a star-making turn as the belligerent suspect determined to find the murderer himself.

This is a low budget affair that nonetheless provides adequate viewing material for those who don't mind their productions dated and with some awful back-screen effects in places. It's quite a talky piece but it has some fitfully suspenseful moments and the end in particular is quite well staged. The actors all do solid work and are easy to commend too.

My review is based on the six part series.

Overall I enjoyed it, it is very much an attempt to copy the style of Francis Durbridge, we even get a few faces that had appeared in Durbridge dramas, although penned in the style it doesn't quite have the subtleties and intrigue that Francis contrived. Still it's enjoyable, and intriguing, it's a little slow to start, but the last episodes are very good.

The acting is a little up and down, Peter Sallis is undoubtedly the standout performer.

Credit to the writer for having an Al Capone themed story, it was well woven in. It has decent production values, and the music is very much of its time.

If you enjoy the likes of Melissa, Game of Murder and Paul Temple, I think you'll enjoy this. 7/10

This is a strange, antediluvian pleasantry (old-fashioned even in 1974), resembling nothing so much as one of those Francis Durbridge serials where everyone is a suspect, everyone has a secret and everyone lies like mad.

A businessman is shot, and suspicion falls on his 'friends' (all parasitical hangers-on), 'secretary' (mistress) and his estranged son (John Thaw, just prior to his Sweeney superstardom). A gritty detective (Glyn Owen) and an enigmatic MI5 man (Peter Sallis) investigate, and soon link the crime to the murders of various shady Chicago characters in the UK. The suspects are slain at regular intervals, until the final unmasking of the villain and a somewhat perfunctory climax.

Absolutely nothing wrong with this, and it is great fun for those who like Paul Temple, or who prefer the slower pace of 70s television, and a whodunnit spread over six episodes. It is certainly not cutting edge drama, and is a surprising product of the pen of Ian Kennedy Martin, who usually produced somewhat more sophisticated material than this.

The one really hard thing for the modern viewer to cope with is the dreadful CSO, especially as for some reason a large part of this drama seems to involve deep discussions between car drivers and their passengers, all outlined by a terrible blue line, and with the background remaining stubbornly at the same perspective as the camera zooms in and out on the characters. It couldn't have looked good even then.