Lamb to the Slaughter
starring Susan George, Brian Blessed
directed by John Davies
Mary Marney (Susan George) comes home from the local market and finds Patrick, her husband, dead. She calls the police. Detective Sergeant Jack Nolan (Brian Blessed) is in charge of the team that shows up.
The team of policemen survey the scene and determine that Patrick Marnie must have been killed by a blow to the head. There is no sign of forced entry and no one's fingerprints are found except Mary's and Patrick's.
Mary tells them what she recalls but she doesn't tell them everything. She leaves out the part where Patrick told her that he was leaving her for another woman and the part where she bashed him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb.
She cooks the leg of lamb while the policemen are working. She invites them to have some. They haven't had a chance to eat dinner and are more than happy to dig in.
Patrick is a cop but that doesn't seem terribly relevant to the story so I didn't bother to mention it in my summary.
I've seen this story done once before, for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). It has been several years since I saw the other version of this story. I recall enjoying that version. It was one of the few episodes of that show which was directed by Hitchcock himself. I wasn't so crazy about this version.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the way the story was told this time around. I didn't think that Susan George's performance was all that great. At some point I will hopefully get around to watching the AHP version of this story.
Notes
This is the first of two episodes of this show in which Susan George appeared. She was also in Straw Dogs (1971).
I know Brian Blessed best for appearing in Flash Gordon (1980) and six episodes of I, Claudius. He was also in Henry V (1989), which I have seen, and a few episodes of Doctor Who (1963), which I have not seen, and a couple episodes of Space: 1999 which I might have seen, decades ago.
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