The Head of Caesar

Christabel Carstairs has stolen a coin from the family collection to give it to her lover, she is then approached by a bearded figure, that blackmails here for the event, she calls on Father Brown and Flambeau for help.

Another very, very good episode, why on Earth The BBC haven't adapted this story for the Mark Williams series is beyond me, it's such an imaginative plot, it has a little bit of everything, definitely a degree of suspense.

There's acty something of a mild horror vibe here too, that bearded figure is so creepy, that scene where he pops up in the window have me chills.

The Maid, I absolutely loved The Maid, she's not the typical smart, formal secant you see on such shows, scruffy, unkempt, objectional, clumsy, she was certainly different.

I'm a big fan of Rosalind Ayres, she's great as Christabel, what a beauty, I'm sure she would have had fun making this episode, Brian Anthony was great too, quite a striking appearance, he was great for the part.

Kenneth More, Dennis Burgess and John Normington were all on point.

This series is coming to a close in style.

9/10.

I know the other current reviewer really liked this episode. As for me, I wasn't bowled over by it...mostly because although the story is very interesting, too many people in this episode just behave weirdly...for no apparent reason. In particularly, there's a housekeeper who seems almost brain-addled and ALWAYS knocks things off a table as she passes. She did this three time for no apparent reason and didn't bump into anything else. It made me laugh after the first two times...and I expected the third. Additionally, the brothers and sister and even the sister's boyfriend acted oddly...like people from a TV show but no one you'd ever meet in real life.

Much of this episode is a very long flashback sequence, so Father Brown seems in it much less than normal. He meets a woman who is upset about something and she tells him a story about a Roman coin, her odd brothers, a blackmailer and her beau. By the end of the story, the identity of the blackmailer is revealed in a most violent manner!

The story is intriguing. The characters are just bizarre and should have been rewritten to make them more relatable and 'normal'...even by murder mystery TV standards. I give the story idea a 8. The execution a 5. Overall, I think 6 is a reasonable score.