Death of an Expert Witness

The first of the Dalgliesh detective series will surely put intelligent viewers off. First, at four and half hours long it is about 300 percent as long as it should have been. What seems like endless scenes of cars arriving, departing, and moving down roads, and of Dalgleish sitting and thinking to himself are just two of the ways the script is padded almost beyond belief. If this is being down in the first two parts of this three part series to establish an air of realism all this is thrown to the winds in part three when the major characters act in a downright silly way. Clichés abound. With a murderer on the loose, a young girl, who hitherto would faint at a frown, decides to take the shortcut home through the dark woods, announcing her reason for doing it to the audience as if the justify so silly a behavior in the mind of the viewer. The final coup de gras in this respect is when Superintendent Dalgliesh and the confessed murderer go for a walk alone in the countryside while the murderer explains the reasons for his criminal behavior. As someone who has just finished teaching the mystery as a part of a course in Modern Drama I count myself among the great fans of the dramatized mystery story. However, I fell asleep more than once trying to get through this one. 'Nuff said. Unless you are ready for your nap skip this one and go to 'The Black Tower' or one of the other later programs in the Dalgliesh series.

I got in a little snooze while waiting for something to happen in this tedious production and woke to find that in the meantime, little had happened. Direction is pretty bad overall and it's not just in comparison to "today's standards." I don't remember any other show from this era dragging like this. Do I finish Part 2 of this DVD or cut my losses?

This series has become one of our most enjoyable to watch with Roy Marsden being the "perfect" Adam Dalgleish. Having not watched these video adaptations in order, we noticed in some episodes of other stories mention made of Dalgleish's wife and child and the fact that they were killed in some vehicle accident. Now in this episode we find Dalgleish bidding his very pregnant wife goodbye as they await a taxi to take her (presumably) to hospital. Nothing more is said of her or her demise except for two very brief statements from Dalgleish referring to his wife's death "a month ago". Surely something better of this traumatic episode could have been made for the viewer! We did find it touching to see Dalgleish toying with his wedding band in several scenes as the story progressed...wonder if this was a little touch that Marsden added on his own. We also cannot quite come to grips with a "new" Dalgleish (Martin Shaw) in the most recent episodes.

This was the first of the adaptations of the P D James books of Adam Dalgliesh, which is unfortunately unavailable to the public in video. If it come again onto your local television station, it is a must see!

Roy Marsden makes a perfect Dalgliesh! Tall, mysterious Dalgliesh is the best man available and is picked by New Scotland Yard to investigate murder and intrigue in a highly sensitive government department.

Jowly Geoffrey Palmer plays a part far different from the relaxed comedy parts of late, and Barry Foster cuts a dash as Dr Maxim Howarth. The plot twists and turns and the viewer will be kept literally guessing 'Who done it' until the last scene! A great night of entertainment for mystery fans. Well worth a look!

Having very much enjoyed "Original Sin" (one of the later P D James adaptations in this series), I was disappointed by "Death of an Expert Witness". The main actors - Roy Marsden, Geoffrey Palmer, Cyril Cusack, Brenda Blethyn, Fiona Walker - are very good, as one would expect, but most of the minor characters are played really badly - sometimes so badly as to be embarrassing or amusing. This may well be in part down to the direction, which is inexplicably poor from the normally excellent Herbert Wise, who must have been going through a bad patch. Also I hated the device of occasionally making Dalgleish's thoughts audible: it simply doesn't work.

A pity the team didn't remake this adaptation in later years.