"Melissa" has the feel of a stylish whodunit at a Shaftbury Avenue theatre -- with a dash of Cornell Woolrich thrown in. Made in a bygone TV era (1974,) the tantalizing mystery unfolds in three acts, largely set in the trendy flats of its principals with only an occasional saunter (to discover a corpse or a clue) into the countryside. At its center is Peter Barkworth as an ex-Fleet Street journalist, currently at liberty, working on a novel. When he gets a phone call from his pretty young wife, Melissa, pleading with him to take a break and join her at a party on Wimbledon Common, he reluctantly accepts. But the only thing on Wimbledon Common that night is her dead body. Barkworth soon discovers that the address she gave him for the "party" doesn't exist, that a neurologist he never met claims to have been treating him for emotional stress and that his late wife's purse has a nasty habit of vanishing and reappearing at awkward times. The result is a clever, thoroughly entertaining mystery, enlivened by strong scripting, surprising twists and solid support from such first-rate British players as Joan Benham, Ronald Fraser and Phillip Voss.
