Reviews & Ratings for
"Murder in Mind" Mercy (2001)

Deadly Doctor!!, 5 September 2011

Author: kidboots from Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This series seems to occasionally have some really stellar players - and they make their particular episodes stand out. David Suchet in "Teacher" and now Timothy West in "Mercy". We have just watched him in "Bleak House" and he is a magnificent Lord Deadlock!!

"Mercy" starts out as a very black comedy (to me) - an elderly village doctor has become a bit of a folk hero when he helps his wife to die when she is facing a terminal brain illness. He is on a talk show and as he quietly talks about her civic mindedness, a scene comes on that shows his wife as a screaming harpy tearing strips off a helpless delivery driver because he has dared to park near the village green. In another scene she bluntly tells her husband "Well you can return to all your young girls" he looks shocked but it starts to make you (the viewer) think. He comes across as defeated and he makes a promise to his wife not to tell their daughter anything about the illness but as the show comes to an end events show he has been in complete control from the start.

Judy Parfitt (the wife) was always at her best playing haughty, disagreeable types. It was said she had the pair of iciest blue eyes in the business, all the better to play indomitable characters in "Little Dorrit" and "Funland". I don't know whether Veronica Lang (the mistress) was Australian but she was definitely in some popular Aussie dramas including "A Country Practice", "Halifax fp" and "Heartbreak High".

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