When school teacher Bavo (or possible Baver, I'm not quite sure) is found murdered in his office his class gets the next morning off. Although the teachers are a bit vague about what happened to their colleague, his body is taken out (covered and on a stretcher) right in front of the children. There is not talk of trauma support for anybody because this was the seventies and people, no matter what their age, were a lot less sissy then. As Inspector Spaans (Steye van Brandenberg) begins his investigation, so do the children (including Spaans' own daughter Akkie). Strangely enough, despite playing substantial parts, none of the child actors are credited by name.
Written as a murder mystery for children, director Bram van Erkel and producer Carl Tewes seem to be testing the water for series length projects in the near future such as 'Q & Q' (which debuted the same year), 'De Kris Pusaka' and 'Duel in de Diepte'. A lot of the performers who would appear in those series are already present here, including the always reliable Bob de Lange and Peter Aryans. Even the idea of a police inspector's daughter named Akkie was re-used in the second Q & Q story. Harrie Geelen writes with his typical wit for both adult and adolescent characters. One funny sequence has three boys comparing themselves to TV detectives Cannon, Columbo and Hank Ramsey - with the third one being scolded for picking a Western character.
The only squabble I would have with this TV mystery is that there are too many characters to keep track off. Aside from at least four suspects, there are six different children (split up into two groups of three) to keep track off. And all of them where fantastic Seventies outfits and hairdos which makes it hard to tell their gender unless they are speaking. You see these are genuinely awful period haircuts, not like the cool retro ones they feature in movies that hearken back to the era. In fact, there are enough red herrings (naturally accompanied by scary music) to have stretched this story into two parts or more. Therefore, this 'TV movie' is best viewed as a 'pilot' for things to come.
8 out of 10
