User Reviews

Sue Pearson is banned from Highschool, she approaches Jeff Ryder for help. Her father Ray had an accident at work, the locals think the whole family are radioactive, and a danger to the community.

I really did enjoy this one, it's not a typical crime drama, there's not really any mystery as such, but the overall story is great, and I'd say has a huge relevance in today's world.

Ignorance, panic and fear, Fairview really does become a hotspot for gossip. Though Fairview is clearly somewhere in England, the production team did a fair job making it look American, if you squint perhaps.

I liked the mix of characters, caustic neighbour Norma was maybe the most interesting of the lot, clearly a bored and frustrated housewife that needed a few hobbies.

What a cast though, Warren Mitchell, Ewen Solon and Tucker McGuire were all very good, but look out for a young Steven Berkoff and Oliver Reed. Jess Conrad really did have star written all over him.

Such an interesting story.

8/10.

Jeff Ryder is contacted by a distraught Sue Pearson who has been excluded from her law studies on the grounds that her scientist father has become 'radioactive' following an experiment. The local community are up in arms, dreading that they too will be affected, although in fact the dose he received was far too small to be harmful. They descend on the house mob-handed, headed by estimable American born character actress Tucker McGuire and including a young Ollie Reed and Steven Berkoff. It is up to Jeff to attempt to pacify them and persuade them their concerns are based on 'fear and ignorance'. A rather obvious fable given that the producer and at least one of the writers were exiles from the blacklist, but one not entirely lacking in relevance today.

With Ring Lardner Jr credited as one of the writers, although at the time he would had used someone else's identity. He had been blacklisted by the McCarthyite witch-hunts of the 1950s and eeking out a living writing for British television.

This story indicates that the wounds were still raw in 1959. Lardner would later win his second Oscar for writing the film version of MASH.

Here Jeff Ryder goes to a small town where the locals are hysterical. He had been contacted by student Sue Pearson who is upset that she cannot continue with her legal studies because she is radioactive.

Her father is a scientist that might have been exposed to being radioactive after an experiment. However because of gossip by poisonous neighbours, the whole family are shunned.

They are not wanted in the community and the police are not helping. It is left to Ryder to bring some calm and a family in France might be the answer.

It is very much similar ground to Arthur Miller's The Crucible that deals with mob hysteria. Viewers at the time might have been unaware of the subtext beneath the story.

Lookout for a young Oliver Reed and Steven Berkoff as rowdy students. The filming location stands rather unconvingly or small time America.