MONEY TO BURN • REVIEW

MONEY TO BURN • DECLASSIFIED

• Pre-Titles Teaser... At the Bank of England in the City of London, a trolley stacked with metal boxes full of banknotes is wheeled into a room for checking. These notes are being withdrawn from circulation and are to be sent to be burned in a furnace at Battersea Power Station. Derek, the security man pushing the trolley thinks his is the worst job in the world, looking at all that money knowing it will all be destroyed. "There must be someone, somewhere, who's trying to save it," he muses. And there is: Kevin O'Malley, an Irishman who wants to make a proposition to his old friend Jeff Randall. However, when O'Malley arrives at the private detective's office Jean tells him that Jeff is out. She asks if she can take a message or at least let Jeff know who called, but O'Malley, while charming, is evasive and decides it's best if he doesn't leave a message or his name and says he will find Jeff himself. He leaves and Jean is confused and somewhat concerned at the encounter. What was it all about?

• Production Brief... Money to Burn was the fifteenth episode to go before the cameras. It was the sixth episode to have been written by Donald James, and the fourth to be directed by Ray Austin. The director had previously been responsible for You Can Always Find a Fall Guy, Whoever Heard of a Ghost Dying? and When the Spirit Moves You.

• Annette André's involvement in this episode was restricted to one short studio-based scene, with Sue Lloyd called in to perform a Jeannie-like role in the story. With the subsequent episode The Man from Nowhere featuring her character much more heavily and also involving several fairly lengthy location shoots, it seems likely that her omission from Money to Burn was a decision arrived at to allow these two episodes to be filmed simultaneously.

• It's also possible that with The Man from Nowhere being rather light in terms of scenes featuring Kenneth Cope he was more available to film for Money to Burn - and with Jeff stuck in a prison cell and therefore at ABPC Studios in Elstree, scenes that were quite possibly shot within a single day, he was also free to film for the other episode.

• Production slates on surviving film trim footage reveal that scenes were filmed on the 29th January, 5th and 6th February and 18th April (all 1969).

• Exact filming dates for this episode are unknown, but it is believed to have been filmed between January and April 1969. A fully edited version of this episode was completed by mid-June 1969.

• On Location... Money to Burn is essentially an inner-city based episode, with filming performed in Battersea, Belgravia, Victoria and the City of London. Second unit filming was undertaken a little further afield in Burnham Beeches while the environs of ABPC Elstree Studios were, as usual, eagerly employed. Some footage was also quickly shot in the Borehamwood locality of the studio base. More details in Locations: Money to Burn.

• Haunting Melodies... Edwin Astley composed many fresh music cues for Money to Burn and two library tracks were used as dance music at the Club 70: Eric Delaney's Lucky Mambo in Act One and Blue Theme by Robert Farnon in Act Three.

• Seeing Things... Money to Burn received its first UK broadcast on Friday 30th January 1970 at 7.30pm when it aired in colour in the London Weekend Television ITV region.

• Trivia... Actor Richard Kerley, who had first appeared in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in When the Spirit Moves You as an unnamed plainclothes policeman, reprised the role in Money to Burn in which the character was given a moniker: Sergeant Hinds (and is referred to within the episodes as Detective Sergeant Hinds). He would feature in one further episode, Could You Recognise the Man Again?

Image © ITV Studios, 1969

• This is one of only four episodes in the series to have been presented on DVD with their original 'graveyard' British opening titles, on the Network release of the series, the other episodes being When the Spirit Moves You, Never Trust a Ghost and The Man from Nowhere. These episodes were mastered from standard prints and the title sequence was added during mastering by Network DVD to approximate how they would have looked on their original British transmissions. Subsequently this opening sequence was featured on all episode of the series when Network issued Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), restored in High Definition from the original film elements, on Blu-ray in 2017.

• Annette André appears in the opening teaser sequence but is absent from the remainder of the episode with her character Jean Hopkirk having gone down to Sussex to visit her Aunt Matilda. We also learn that she has a second aunt, Cybil. Vendetta for a Dead Man (also scripted by Donald James) reveals that Jean has an aunt in Essex, so it would appear that this is where Cybil lives.

• The robbery is reported by Inspector Large as having taken place on "Tuesday the 23rd". The script further reveals the month to be November. This did not marry up with a real day and date in 1968 or 1969, with the first year after production where this conjunction occurred being 1971. Sadly no ITV regions thought to show the episode on 23rd November 1971!

• This is one of just four episodes in the series which doesn't feature Jeff in a hand-to-hand fight with an adversary. The other episodes that feature this unusual turn of events are All Work and No Pay, The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo and The Ghost Talks.

• Considering that Elizabeth Saxon (Sue Lloyd) is a sophisticated, well-to-do lawyer, her Triumph GT6 sports car could do with one heck of a wash!

Image © ITV Studios, 1969

• Sue Lloyd was of course a familiar ITC face having been a cast regular in The Baron in 1966-67, another series created by Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner. She had worked with this episode's director Ray Austin a short while earlier on Department S: Black Out, and this could also have been a factor in her being cast in Money to Burn.

• Actor Michael Sheard has an unusual claim to fame in Randall and Hopkirk lore, in that he made two appearances in the series, in this episode and Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave, had dialogue but was not heard speaking English at all. Sheard played a supermarket manager who has a verbal set to with Jeff in this episode, but their exchange is seen and not heard as they are inside the supermarket and the camera is outside, capturing their animated exchange from the other side of the shop's glass frontage. And then, in Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave, he was cast as a German commentator at the second leg of the International Cup game between West Germany and England, so he was only heard speaking in German on that occasion.

• Only You, Jeff? Only Jeff can see or sense Marty in this one.

• Ghosts and Ghoulies... Aside from Marty Hopkirk, nothing to see here that no-one else can see, if you know what we mean...

• The Vehicles... Appearing in this episode were the following wonders of transport...

	1968 Vauxhall Victor FD 2000 Registration RXD 996F Driven by Jeff Randall	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - used extensively throughout the series Department S - 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'The Man from X'
	1968 Ford Zephyr 6 MkIV Registration OXE 998F	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'It's Supposed To Be Thicker Than Water', 'The Man from Nowhere', 'Could You Recognise the Man Again?', 'The Ghost Talks' Department S - 'The Man in the Elegant Room', 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'The Double Death of Charlie Crippen'
	1966 Ford Anglia Van Registration HGB 573D Driven by Security Man
	1965 Ford Zodiac Mk III Registration JKX 442C	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'When the Spirit Moves You', 'Could You Recognise the Man Again?' and possibly 'Just for the Record'
	1967 Triumph GT6 Mk I Registration HBK 171E Driven by Elizabeth Saxon
	1968 Vauxhall Ventora 3300 Registration RXD 997F Driven by Kevin O'Malley	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'A Disturbing Case', 'The Ghost Talks' Department S - used extensively in the series (Stewart Sullivan's car)
	1968 Lancia Fulvia Coupé Registration UBY 96F Driven by Angela Kendon	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'Never Trust a Ghost', 'Vendetta for a Dead Man' Department S - used extensively in the series (Annabelle Hurst's car)
	Reims-Cessna F150H Registration G-AWCK Flown by Angela Kendon
	1967 Ford Zephyr 4 MkIV Registration OLR 477E	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'That's How Murder Snowballs', 'All Work and No Pay', 'The Man from Nowhere', 'The Ghost Talks'

• Seen It All Before? As with the previous episode, the 'Galerie Michele' shop front seen earlier in the 1960s in The Baron, and the entrance to Jeff's bank (last seen in Never Trust a Ghost) are front and centre here, with the bank now transformed into a Police Station.

• Among the locations used was Elstree Aerodrome, previously seen - in daylight rather than at night - in the series in A Sentimental Journey.

• The 1968 Lancia Fulvia Coupé driven in this episode (and Never Trust a Ghost) was borrowed from Department S, where it featured on a regular basis as Annabelle Hurst's car.

• Cock-ups... At 11 minutes and 54 seconds into the episode, Jeff reverses into a side road to avoid being seen by an approaching police car. As we cut to the inside of the car, there is a brick wall right behind the car instead of a view down the road.

Image © ITV Studios, 1969

• At 12 minutes and 34 seconds, we see a close up of the police breaking into Jeff's flat. Three uniformed officers pass the camera, followed by Inspector Large. The camera cuts to a wider view as Large closes the door. At this point there are five policeman in the apartment - Large himself, three officers and Sergeant Hinds, who hadn't run in through the open doorway!

• And Finally... The biggest mystery about this episode is just why all of Roy Desmond's lines as Kevin O'Malley are post-dubbed by T. P. McKenna. Was Desmond's Irish accent so atrocious that it was decided to get a genuine Irishman in to obliterate it? Was Desmond simply not available to post-dub some lines so he was replaced in the dub entirely? Did they originally want McKenna for the filming but he wasn't available at that time? We may never know...

Plotline: Scoton Productions / ITC • UK Transmissions by Simon Coward and Alan Hayes
Review by Alan Hayes • Declassified by Alan Hayes
with thanks to David Brunt, Vince Cox, Alys Hayes,
John Holburn, Anthony McKay and Andrew Pixley

All timings given on this page relate to the Blu-ray editions of this episode