gridoon2024 Review of The Nine Tailors

The Nine Tailors (1974)

Promising beginning, slow middle, clever solution

[6/10 · 18 September 2015]

The least stuffy and stodgy out of the first four "Lord Peter Whimsey" adaptations with Ian Carmichael. Make no mistake, it is still stuffy and stodgy, but it's a more expanded and ambitious production that the others; it even climaxes with a flood! The first episode is promising and somewhat unusual: most of the action takes place in the 1910s, and the (initial) crime is not a murder but the theft of some emeralds - and we know who-done-it! (plus you get the rare chance to see Desmond Llewelyn in a non-Q role!) In the second (especially) and in the third episode the story slows to a crawl, and it requires an uncommon amount of patience on the part of the viewer to stick with it. But the fourth and final episode is more successful, with a couple of well-done red herrings and a clever, memorable resolution. Worth seeing overall, but it should have been far shorter. **1/2 out of 4.