Repent at Leisure - Episode 5 (Tuesday 2nd February 1971)

The story...

Isabel – a wealthy, glamorous, middle-aged widow – is on a cruise to the Caribbean and strikes up a romantic relationship with Harry, a ship steward. They marry soon after returning home but their relationship soon runs into difficulties because of their very different backgrounds and outlooks on life. Isabel notes his warm relationship with an apparently single woman called Jenny and is particularly worried when she finds a picture of them kissing at an event. However what Harry hasn’t told her is that Jenny is actually his sister and she is married to a Jamaican man, a fact not revealed because they fear isabel will be prejudiced.

Isabel has deeper worries about Harry. She wonders about whether he has simply married her for her money, concerns that her businessman brother Peter helps to fuel. She is angry when Harry takes sleeping pills from her medicine cabinet and tells her he has flushed them away because she doesn’t need them. However she then searches Harry’s suitcase and finds pills there. He doesn’t need them and she becomes scared that he is planning to kill her, either by poison or some other means…

Isabel and Harry in happier times on the Caribbean cruise

Review

Another very fine story. Once again it shows how the series could take a story about tensions in a relationship and infuse it with suspense and fear, although the suspense here is more in terms of trepidation about what will happen rather than generated by tropes such as sinister characters, darkness and gloom, threats, creaking doors, odd noises and spooky music (all which occurred to some degree in the other stories). The characters and places on show are all essentially “normal” but normal people have their weaknesses, flaws, insecurities - and temptations – which can lead them to fear or exploit each other. Even an apparently normal, safe – even luxurious - place can be a place of fear in the wrong circumstances. Indeed it is Isabel's wealth and affluent lifestyle which causes her to distrust her husband. Harry and Isabel are a newly married couple who are free of money worries, have a lovely home and are free of responsibilities – and yet they still end up not just frustrated and unhappy but heading for danger. Fear can emerge from any environment when circumstances conspire towards it.

The core story by Roger Marshall could have been good material for a play in a very different genre or series. The class tensions and suspicions that develop between the couple are very well delineated but it also raises broader issues. The couple met on holiday but making such a relationship work when back to everyday life can be a different matter. Couplings where the partners are from very different backgrounds are at particular risk of conflict and distrust. The wealthier or more advantaged person can suspect the motives of their partner while the latter can resent such suspicions and wonder exactly why they have been sought out. As the story shows it’s not just the couple who help to make a relationship succeed or fail but also their families and friends. Isabel and Harry have very different social circles. Peter helps to unsettle Isabel about her new husband while Harry’s embarrassment about his sister leads him into deceiving his wife.

Isabel feels that Harry hasn’t really left the ship and sea-life behind. She tires of him talking about it and there is a telling little scene when she shows unease when noticing the tattoo on his arm – tattoos in those days were much less common and with much more of a deviant image than now. She and Peter wonder if Harry is just content to take things easy and live off her wealth. They would like him to get a job but, as Harry states, the only things he is qualified to do are things they would consider to be too lowly. Jenny perceptively realises that they are right that Harry needs a job but chiefly because it would mean he and Isabel wouldn’t be spending so much time together, needling each other. Many couples (or indeed friends) will have experienced how familiarity can breed contempt and sometimes it’s better to ration time together to keep the relationship fresh.

However Isabel perceives something much worse than a clash of cultures or boredom setting in from Harry. She starts to fear for her life. As she becomes increasingly scared simple acts take on a sinister meaning. Is this paranoia or is Harry really out to kill her? It isn’t unknown for husbands or wives to kill their spouse for money – or even sometimes just out of boredom or malice. All this leads up to a harrowing and moving climax and some striking end titles.

Isabel's suspicions of Harry grow while he becomes increasing frustrated by her treatment of him

The cast is typically small with only four characters with Isabel and Harry the central figures on screen. George Sewell and Elizabeth Sellars give excellent performances in these roles and are very well supported by Alethea Charlton and Peter Cellier as Jenny and Peter. The episode isn’t as (literally) dark and suspenseful as many of its counterparts but the mood of foreboding is still present throughout. Kim Mills had directed many episodes by Roger Marshall as well as being the central director on this series and he does a typically good job, particularly in the deeply unsettling final few minutes. Music is sparingly heard but a Ravel piece is used and plays over the poignant end titles. It’s testimony to the strength of Shadows of Fear that such a strong story is topped by many others in the series.   

Notes

The piece of classical music briefly heard in the episode and which then plays over the end titles is "Lever Du Jour" from the start of the third part of Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloe.

George Sewell played another man (again called Harry!) in a relationship with an older, wealthy woman in an episode of Public Eye called Come into the Garden, Rose and which aired only a few months after this one (although it was produced before Repent at Leisure was broadcast). Although both were Thames shows, writers and directors on the two episodes were different and the Public Eye story generally has a lighter tone. George was a prolific actor and the story similarities are probably coincidence although it's possible him playing such a part in Shadows of Fear encouraged his casting in the later episode.

Peter Cellier and Alethea Charlton both appeared in unquestionably sinister roles in one of the first Thriller episodes - Someone at the Top of the Stairs.