Night Train to Murder (1984)

Directed by

Joseph McGrath

Genre

comedy, thriller

Country

United Kingdom

Rated

PG

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two comedians playing versions of themselves get involved in a mystery when a niece is visited by a family lawyer. Strange deaths happen among relatives and the pair are drawn into solving them. It is a comedy spoof of classic whodunit stories set in the 1940s.

comediclight-heartedold-fashionedquirkymysteriousgentlenostalgicwry

What happens

Night Train to Murder is a one-off 1984 feature-length British TV comedy drama, directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Morecambe and Wise. It was the last work that Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise worked on together before Morecambe's death in 1984; he was in poor health at the time of filming. It was written as a pastiche of the works of writers including Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace and is set in 1946, featuring Morecambe and Wise ostensibly as 1940s versions of themselves. The duo's move from the BBC to Thames in 1978 was a much publicised media event, and one of the main reasons for their move was to make films and move away from the format of The Morecambe & Wise Show that had proved so popular in the previous decade. The film was completed in March 1983, but not screened until after Morecambe's death the following year. It was originally made with a laughter track, but this was absent when broadcast, and again so when later released on both VHS and DVD. The film features a plot of family members dying in strange circumstances and the two leads are drawn into this when Eric's niece Kathy (Lysette Anthony) is visited by the family's lawyer, played by Fulton Mackay. It was made largely on location, produced on videotape and was originally broadcast on ITV on 3 January 1985. The closing moments of the film see Eric and Ernie walking off together, onto the next gig, making it their final screen image together. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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