"Thriller" Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin (1975)

Director:

John Scholz-Conway

Writer:

Brian Clemens (writer)

TV Series:

"Thriller" (1973)

Original Air Date:

10 May 1975 (Season 5, Episode 5)

Genre:

Crime | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Cast

James Maxwell	...	Carter
Kim Darby	...	Helen
Keith Barron	...	Charley Masters
Julian Glover	...	Gifford
Susan Dury	...	Babs Bryant
Gillian Hawser	...	Babs Two
John Abineri	...	Insp. Buff
Bruce Boa	...	Hanley
Janina Faye	...	Wendy Phillips
Martin Read	...	Timothy Bryant
Reg Lye	...	Caretaker
Peter Hill	...	Filing Clerk
Julie Crosthwaite	...	Tall Blonde
Karl Held	...	Security Guard
Norman Chancer	...	Police Driver

Also Known As:

Thriller: Mirror of Deception (#5.5) (USA)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Associated Television (ATV)

Goofs:

Continuity: When Babs Bryant leaves the flat, heading for Carter's car, her suitcases are red: but when she reaches the car, one is brown and the other blue. By the time their journey ends and she is shown into the country house, they are back to being red again.

Too good to be true

The enigmatically titled 'Good Salary - Prospects - Free Coffin' is a solid piece of television that forms part of Thriller's fifth series. The story is more like an episode of The Avengers in that it deals with the murky world of espionage and what follows is quite disturbing.

Three girls share a flat - Wendy, Babs and Helen. Wendy answers a mysterious looking job advert in the paper looking for someone with a 'sense of adventure'. Following an offscreen interview she is successful and is quickly whisked away to a large country house where she meets a girl who is not dissimilar in appearance to herself. The lookalike then shoots her and is commended by her two supervisors, Gifford (played menacingly by Julian Glover) and Carter (James Maxwell). Some weeks later an identical advert appears with Babs and Helen coming to the conclusion that Wendy must have not been able for the job. Babs, like her friend, is brought to the same location and meets a similar fate. It is then left up to Helen to try and uncover what has happened to her two flatmates. A trip to the American Embassy to change her marital status on her passport brings her face to face with another Babs (one who she feels is impersonating her former flatmate). Her unsympathetic and boorish husband Charley is sceptical and of no help.

Babs' brother Timothy returns from South America on a chance visit and immediately is taken into Helen's confidence. He launches an investigation of his own and in a memorable scene confronts Carter.

The remaining scenes are quite dramatic and the conclusion is reasonably neat. Bruce 'Waldorf Salad' Boa makes a fleeting appearance (his second in Thriller) as an Embassy employee. However the motives of the organisation are never clearly defined and this takes from the overall execution. Nevertheless this is an episode which keeps the viewer guessing and bears repeated viewing.