User Reviews

Ralph Standing has just passed away, leaving behind his wife and son Paul. It had been a happy marriage, Mrs Standing is perplexed to receive a letter from two book dealers, claiming Ralph owes them a great deal of money, unpaid fees for curious books. Paul calls into the book shop to challenge the two book dealers about the transactions, he discovers that they were telephone orders.

I love the tone of this episode, it's so grim and moody, the death at the start sets the tone, it's overly sombre. The scam is a good one, I wonder if it has been done by anyone.

Everyone in it performs particularly well, Richard Pearson and David Webb make a brilliant double act, Evelyn Laye and Hugh Fraser are both fantastic too, Fraser is deadpan from start to finish, completely at odds to the lovable Arthur Hastings we'd come to love.

It's a very fine episode, it's emotionally engaging somehow, even though it's very short each character you feel something for, be it pity or anger. The ending is just brilliant.

An out an out classic, even if Hugh Fraser does have that huge moustache! 8/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, the stern serious music (Purcell?) heralds the tale of a pair of middle-aged brothers who run a bookshop and practice an apparently fool-proof scam involving false invoices - for the supposed purchase of illicit material - sent to the families of the recently departed great and good..

At first, the son, Paul, appears to doubt the character of his recently deceased father, an outwardly respectable doctor and there is a hint of ambiguity. Gradually, however, the cunning scheme practiced by the dodgy booksellers is revealed in detail. What makes this episode memorable is the characterization & acting; it is a double act; one brother (Richard Preston) comes across as nervous and a worrier - his horoscope does not seem to bode well on the day of their eventual meeting with Paul; the second, (David Webb), is the complete opposite, smug and over-confident, practically bordering on hubris. The two of them are reminiscent of the Dukes in 'Trading Places'. What makes them such a delightful pair of conniving rogues is that they appear so outwardly respectable.

Paul (Hugh Fraser) tries to brazen things out with them but eventually relents to the brothers' demands out of fear of distressing his widowed mother (Evelyn Laye, in a dignified role). Under this pretext, he invites the brothers round to the family home to settle matters...

I enjoyed the twist and let's just say a shotgun features strongly in this episode for a number of reasons. There is a sense of menace, with Paul the exterminating angel, and of wrongs being righted, but it all ends in a satisfyingly plausible manner without any over the top melodrama.

Tales of the Unexpected: Clerical Error starts as Paul Standing (Hugh Fraser) is coming to terms with the death of his father Ralph. He gets a letter in the post from Carey Bros. Curious Books who has sent a bill for £1100 for an outstanding payment for an order of porn books brought by his father, it's a scheme run by Michael (Richard Pearson) & Ronnie Carey (David Webb) to con money out of relatives of rich gentlemen who will just pay the money to prevent news of their loved ones being implicated in reading porn & keep their good names intact. However this time Michael & Ronnie didn't check their facts & are about to come unstuck...

Episode 4 from season 6 this Tales of the Unexpected story originally aired here in the UK during April 1983, the eighth of twelve Tales of the Unexpected episodes to be directed by Graham Evans this is a decent enough way to pass 25 minutes. The story by James Gould Cozzens & Richard Huggett was dramatised by Peter Ransley & is saved completely by the reasonably satisfying twist ending, take the ending away & Clerical Error is absolutely worthless. It's a dull, extremely padded (the two old geezers breaking down for instance) & gives the plot away far too early on. The ending saves it somewhat & as a one time watch it's fine I suppose, I didn't love it but I didn't hate it, if your a fan of the show you'll probably like it otherwise it's nothing to write home about.

Like just about every other Tales of the Unexpected episode Clerical Error has no style or visual flair, it's shot in the most boring way you can imagine. It's competent but bland & totally forgettable. The acting is alright, no big names in the cast here.

Clerical Error is an OK Tales of the Unexpected story, the twist ending totally saved it from the realms of banality. Fans of the show should like it.

A pair of con-men brothers get their comeuppance in this episode, and they get just what they deserve. You would think they would have done a little homework on their blackmail victims before sending out dunning letters for books that their clients never received. You can understand why Paul Standing was more than a bit agitated over the demand for eleven hundred pounds from the book sellers. It would have equated to about twenty eight hundred dollars back in the Eighties, but only about half that today with inflation over the years. In any event, Friday the Thirteenth turned out to be a more unlucky day than most for the Carey's (Richard Pearson, David Webb), what with their car breaking down and all. Being held at bay with a shotgun was just the icing on the cake for the swindlers, who in this case, made much more than a simple clerical error.