Just Ask For South By South East... Yet Again

You know, it's really quite difficult to find pictures to illustrate an article about a television series from which no footage or still pictures are known to exist.

Way, way back in the mists of time of, erm, six months ago, I went on the trail of an incredibly obscure CITV series based on Anthony Horowitz's Diamond Brothers books, and was soon able to confirm that it did actually exist.

A few months later, on the Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan, I am one of the several people coming up with several thousand ridiculous ideas for episodes of Red Dwarf that are mostly puns on titles of existing episodes. The Diamond Brothers film and television series somehow come up in the course of that, and it turns out forum member bloodteller knows someone who saw it and has quite a lot of interesting information about it! Thanks to them for giving me permission to reproduce what they wrote here (here's a link to their original post).

not really red dwarf-related, but since somebody mentioned the incredibly obscure Diamond Brothers TV series from 1991 on the idea for an episode thread recently, i thought i’d share a bit of trivia on it. a while ago i talked with a bloke who had actually seen it (i think his name was Paul) and he had this to say about it-

“South by South-East was made into a TV series in 1991 by the production company Red Rooster and was a co-production with a Dutch film company, which allowed them to film in Amsterdam and the surrounding area. Written and directed by Anthony himself, it was broadcast in six 30 minute episodes. It was produced by Stephen Bayley, who was responsible for Just Ask For Diamond. It was broadcast on CITV and I recorded every episode. My VHS copy has almost worn out so I recently transferrred it to a DVD – although the picture is showing its age a bit! During transmission of Episode 3 there was a technical problem halfway through that they couldn’t fix. The following week’s episode (4) had the bit we missed of Episode 3 stuck onto the front.

Batman’s former butler, Michael Gough, played My Waverly, Michael Feast played Snape, Gordon Wynter played Boyle and Charon/Charlotte was played by Monique Van Den Ven. There were cameos from Jenny Agutter (as the Bank Manager) and Anna Massey (as Mrs Bodega). As a lot of elements of the book and TV series are homages to Hitchcock (McGuffin, Bodega Birds etc), AH hired a well known Hitchcock impersonator to appear at some point in each episode. The ending was slightly different in that Charon tries to kill Tim and Nick in their office with a gun, rather than the electrocution scene in the book which was, I understand, considered a bit strong for kids at 4.35 in the afternoon! (Very much like Anthony’s screenplay for JAFD which excludes Nick’s explosive escapades at the Hotel Splendide. It also explains why Public Enemy Number 2 is never likely to be filmed – its so violent there’d be nothing left!)

The late Dursley McLinden returned as Tim, as did a very different looking Colin Dale as Nick. He was a bit older by then and boy has he grown up – and his voice had broken too. There are lots of great gags and reminders of the film, such as when McGuffin knocks on the office door and Tim and Nick desperately clear up (as they did with Johnny Naples) and the way the last episode finishes with Nick and Tim walking off, Nick explaining to Tim what’s happened – in much the same way as the film fades out with Nick explaining the plot of Farewell My Lovely. Disappointingly it was never repeated and never got a video or DVD release, which is a shame as it’s actually very good. The cliffhanger to Episode 4 where Tim and Nick are chased by the biplane is brilliant and it’s nice to see Harry Blondini (Lauren Bacardi’s ex) although he’s obviously different to the character mentioned in book of TFM. Oh, and the theme tune is excellent.”

so yeah, there’s a bit of stuff about it in case anyone was interested. the bloke who told me this (he may have been called Pete) went AWOL ages ago so sadly no chance of getting a copy of it off him.

Well, that answers the question of whether or not Horowitz directed it himself; it seems even more odd now that he's got no other directorial credits! And tantalisingly, there must be at least one copy of this show out there, somewhere...