Productions by the Childrens Film Foundation seemed to exists in a perpetual postwar time warp in which nice, clean well-behaved children work hard for their pocket money and foiled crooks; but the title attests to this instalment's endeavours to bring the brand into the sixties, with vivid photography by documentary veteran Jo Jago, a busy percussive score by Harry Robinson and wheezes like a tape recorder hidden in a pram and the use of call-boxes in relay by the kids to stalk villain Derren Nesbitt (probably the scariest adversary the little rascals ever had to deal with) as he bus-hops across North London before inevitably eventually ending up in the water at Regent's Park.
The prosaic use of buses is explained by pompous Mr Big, George Roderick (in the role the late Raymond Rollett would have played a few years earlier) because Nesbitt's car is "too easy to trace".
The prosaic use of buses is explained by pompous Mr Big, George Roderick (in the role the late Raymond Rollett would have played a few years earlier) because Nesbitt's car is "too easy to trace".
