The Canary Sedan

The Canary Sedan is a very well plotted tale from the half-hour Hitchcock series, third season. It's set in an exotic locale (Hong Kong), and it features no American characters.

After all the Hitchcock domestic strife and wife murdering episodes this is something completely different. Jessica Tandy plays the lead character, Mrs Bowlby the wife of a British banker in Hong Kong, still a part of the rapidly declining British empire of the time.

Miss Tandy's character has a gift, can guess past and future events, as we learn when she'll still on ship (yes, it's that long ago, though modern feeling for the Fifties); and one wonders what ailment kept her away in England so long. Psych issues? I don't recall this being mentioned.

The plot thickens when, at the urging of her very busy husband she acquires a sedan, and a driver to go with it, wishes that it had been canary yellow instead of a darker color and,--lo!--this was precisely its color before its previous owner sold it, and then it was repainted; there's no reason given for the paint color change; and this gives one pause.

Mysteries abound in this episode, and presented, intriguingly, as little mysteries, some of which make the viewer wonder if Mrs Bowlby is losing her mind. She hears voices when being driven around the city, begins to determine the names of the people she hears.

The story is aided by eerie background music similar to that used in the later TV anthology series One Step Beyond, which dealt with the paranormal, also a feature in this episode. Or is it? Its main character may be hearing messages from Beyond, and yet she could also be having a nervous breakdown.

Tandy is superb in the lead, and she plays her character with dignity and class. Her performance has hints that the character she's portraying may be either confused by the sounds of the city or perhaps a little sick in the head. Or perhaps more than a little.

The ending, which I shall not give away or even hint at, is disturbing in its quietude, possesses a dark calm that does not feel like a conclusion. This is a brilliant entry in the series, and it's not one for the children; nor even, for that matter, teenagers; and not because it's shocking or sensational but because it's so adult