Just Ask For South By South East: The Book of the TV Serial, Only It Turns Out It's a Bit More Complicated Than That

When we last left my ongoing quest for the missing 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series, I was still reeling from a startling revelation: the TV series was not actually an adaptation of the third Diamond Brothers book, but rather the book was a novelisation of the series. Not only that, but it appeared one of the reasons why nobody had ever realised this in the time since the series fell into obscurity and the book became the far better-known version was because when Walker Books reprinted South by South East in 1997, several sections of the text were significantly rewritten, removing or changing sections from the 1991 version of the book. I strongly suspected that the material only found in the earlier Lion Books printing that coincided with the broadcast of the TV series was originally in the show, was faithfully novelised by Anthony Horowitz when he did the book, but then removed when he did his rewrite a few years later. But without access to the TV episodes, I had no way of knowing for sure.

Except, of course, that the title sequence for the series is on YouTube. Jamie, who uploaded the only footage of the series publicly available, does have access to the full series, but as he is not the license holder he can't upload anything else (so please, please don't pester him about it, least of all on my account -- he's not deliberately withholding the episodes, he just can't share them for legal reasons; he is working on a documentary about the tragically short life of Dursley McLinden, for which he tracked the episodes down in the first place, and may be able to include some more footage from the series in that). But it occurred to me that surely it would be OK to ask him a few questions about the material that's only in the 1991 version of the book and check to see if it was in the TV series?

And it was, and I can tell you that Jamie delivered in spades; I am enormously grateful to him for taking the time to do this. So let's take a second look at the differences between the '91 and '97 versions of the book, with the tremendously helpful addition of the perspective of someone who's seen the TV series. (I would recommend you read my first comparison of the two different editions, linked to above, if you haven't already before going on to this one.)

First of all, the greatly simplified end to Chapter 3, which was the climax of Episode 1 of the series:

We went all the way to the fifth floor and then the door opened again and there were Ed and Ted waiting for us, smiling cold little smiles with lips that must have taken the day off. They'd run down a flight of stairs to head us off and now they simply stepped into the lift. As the door began to close behind them I wondered how many bullets they'd put in us before we reached the ground. Of course, Tim and I wouldn't be stopping at the ground. It looked like we were continuing six feet underneath it. But at the last minute, an umbrella poked itself through the gap in the door. The door slid open automatically and a lady in a fur coat got in. Ted and Ed scowled. It was another witness - just what they didn't need. The lift went down another floor. It stopped again. Tim tapped the lady on a fur-covered shoulder. "You're not getting out here, are you?" he asked. She looked at him as if he was crazy. Myself, I'm not so crazy about fur coats but I was praying she'd stay. She might not have done much for the thirty-odd minks on her back but right now she was saving our skins. With her in the lift there was nothing Ed or Ted could do. She didn't get out. Two Japanese men and a nun got in. They stood between the sunglass twins and us. The door shut again. "It's getting crowded in here," Tim muttered to me. "Not crowded enough," I replied. Tim nodded. "There's still three more floors." It was a busy hotel. By the time the lift reached the reception area, we had been joined by a musician, two American tourists, a rabbi, five airline stewards, a nanny with a screaming baby and an entire German family in short trousers with feathers in their hats. We didn't walk out of the lift. We poured out. And the best thing was we left Ed and Ted struggling in the crowd behind us. We ran across the reception area, dodging suitcases and slipping on the marble. As the double doors leading out loomed up on this, I risked one quick look back. Ed and Ted seemed to have given up the chase. Ted had taken out his radio transmitter again and was talking into it. Somewhere in my mind I knew this was bad news. But I didn't have time to work out why. We shot through the doors and into the forecourt. There were people everywhere, milling round aimlessly in the morning sun. From out of nowhere a black taxi lumbered towards us. I put out a hand. It stopped. "Where are we going?" Tim asked. "Anywhere," I replied. I threw open the door and got in. "Camden Town," Tim said to the driver. I twisted round on my seat and searched through the crowd. And there they were, Ed and Ted. They were standing by the door. They'd seen us get into the cab. But they weren't trying to stop us. There was a nasty feeling in my stomach, and somehow I knew it wasn't car sickness. The driver took a left turn, then a right. Which was funny, because if I'd been driving to Camden Town, I'd have taken a right turn, then a left.

The lift carried us all the way down to the ground floor and the moment the doors opened we were out. We crossed the lobby and went through the revolving doors. No sooner were we in the sunlight than a taxi drew up in front of us. Even then I thought it was a little odd. There was a taxi rank to one side with several cabs waiting. But this one had come from nowhere, jumping the queue. "Where to?" the driver asked. I threw open the door and got in. "Camden Town," Tim said. I looked through the back window. There was no sign of Ed or Ted. But as we set off, there was a nasty feeling in my stomach and I knew it wasn't car sickness. The driver took a left turn, then a right. Which was funny, because if I'd been going to Camden Town, I'd have taken a right turn, then a left.

And Jamie's notes on the matter:

Mostly, this is there. Two men, but no sunglasses. We have the fur coat lady, and the two Japanese businessmen. No nun though. We then get on the next stop, a golfer with his golf clubs and a man with his arm in a plaster cast. No "There's three more floors." line - but when it cuts after "Not crowded enough." to them getting out of the lift... sure enough, you have your rabbi, German family, American tourist couple. No nanny with baby or musician. At the very end of everyone coming out the lift, we also get Mr. Hitchcock Lookalike. (He sneaks into all six episodes!)

If I were to offer a bit of unfounded guessing on this variance, I'd wonder if it was perhaps that the book adhered to what was scripted whereas on the day of filming, they may have had to cut a few to cover what was practical and affordable. Given that everyone rushes out of a very jammed lift for the gag, I'd not be surprised if it was decided that it was unsafe to cram a baby in amongst so many people - and that the lift would've struggled to fit any more people.

When they get in the taxi, however, there is no sign of Ed and Ted. And the pair are not really shown to look back for them. Instead, the taxi drives off and we get them sighing with relief. The doors in the taxi then mechanically lock (of course, explaining immediately why they don't jump out!) and Tim then shouts "Hey, this isn't the way to Camden Town!". The two frantically try the doors and windows to no avail. The taxi pulls up to a red light... and the driver turns round with a gun and orders them to sit back peacefully and await their arrival.

Nick's narration to end the last shot - rather similar to what is in the 2005 edition that I have to hand - is; "The driver had locked us in. He had a gun, and he wasn't heading for Camden Town. There was nothing I could do. We were prisoners on a one-way journey to who knows where. But one thing was for certain... we wouldn't be leaving a tip."

(As it happens, Episode Two opens with its own narration too - "The cab driver who'd picked us up was no cab driver at all. He'd kidnapped us. He had a gun, and he wasn't taking us to Camden Town. He took us to a back-street in Soho. The sort of street where you wouldn't want to go back. I didn't know who we'd come to meet or why. And he wasn't in the mood for a chat. He was a man of few words. Then again, 'Thank you' and 'Goodbye' would've been enough words for me.")

[A sidenote that I wish to make here, since it occurs that I've not actually addressed this myself and may as well now since it's on my mind... The reason that the opening to Episode Two is the one that I put up online is actually because Episode One rather frustratingly has the first two or three seconds of the title sequence obscured by the channel presenters - a young woman and a puppeteered dog of some kind. The titles are transitioned to with them being slowly boxed out in the centre of frame by a spinning box (have attached a photo of that, since i can get away with supplying one for that!)... so I opted for the clean open of Episode Two, where the channel presenter that day - an older man - is faded out instead before the titles whir up.]

If you were wondering what the image at the top of this article is, that's the obscured intro to episode 1 as Jamie mentions (the presenters during the first episode were Jeanne Downs and Scally the Dog, coincidentally in the final week of their time on CITV; the older man was probably Tommy Boyd, who we'll be hearing more about later on).

Jamie's theory as to why the book deviates from the TV series with regards to the lift scene seems perfectly sound, but already we are discovering differences between the series and the original version of the novelisation which are harder to explain; the narration Jamie notes, however, appears pretty much verbatim in the 1991 edition, although some of it was cut in 1997 -- with the important exception that in the book they're taken to somewhere in Covent Garden, not Soho.

You might remember from the last article that the original version of Chapter 3 also had an earlier mention of a character called Ernest Lemon, who was deleted entirely from the 1997 version and I presumed at the time was probably in the TV version; we'll get onto him later, for reasons that will become clear.

* * *

The next difference I asked Jamie about is the opening to Chapter 5. In 1991, this chapter opens with Nick regaining consciousness back in the Camden Town office; the 1997 version is rewritten so he and Tim are already awake and fully recovered, midway through a conversation that doesn't even start until two pages into the original chapter, losing Nick's slow return to consciousness in the process.

Nick does indeed wake up first, in his chair. He tries to wake Tim, who's slumped over the desk but doesn't succeed and instead opts to make some tea. And then we cut to them both having just poured out tea and stirred it - and from there, it's the usual "I think Mr. Waverley was hiding something." conversation.

BUT there is a twist to this one for you. They're thrown back out into the taxi and gassed to sleep in that. Why? Well, what leads up to that is shorter and rather different - Waverley orders that they're taken away back out to the taxi because despite Waverley insisting that he is Eighty-Six... Tim replies with his age. Why? Because the scene between the Diamond Bros. and Waverley runs with Waverley believing that they must be the Dutch secret police undercover. He comes in speaking Dutch to them initially, believes that Tim's stupid remarks are just maintaining cover and never once is there the implication at this point that Waverley thinks Tim is a private eye.

This also means that there's no Miss Jones and no drinks, so what extra is in the 1991 edition of Chapter Four there... is not here either. Which means that this is actually a notable difference between TV show and both novel editions!

Curiouser and curiouser. This is a really significant thing that's only in the TV series... but why would it be changed for the book? But now we're getting on to the big one. After this comes Tim's interview at the bank which turns into him being framed for armed robbery by Charon, and then comes the biggest edit of the 1997 edition -- 40 solid pages of substantial revisions and deletions. First is their stay in the guest-house, and then their train journey to Dover where they meet Charlotte. I covered that as one big lump last time round, but I'll split it up into two parts here; you'll see why very soon.

1991 version of the book: Tim and Nick are now wanted criminals after being framed for bank robbery by the international assassin known only as Charon, and make their way across London. They find a decrepit guest-house and spend the night there. Nick sees in the newspaper that Ernest Lemon, the property developer McGuffin had made a note of, has bought the Albert Hall and they decide to go see him the next day. At the same moment they meet him, Lemon is assassinated by Charon, who is disguised as a charity collector, and in the confusion Tim is mistaken for the killer. Tim and Nick return to the guest-house and, remembering the ticket for the Amstel Ijsbaan they found in McGuffin's hotel room, decide to go to Amsterdam next. Nick then senses something is wrong and, overhearing the other residents of the guest house downstairs, realise they know Tim is a wanted criminal. Before they make it out, the other residents ambush them in the stairwell and handcuff them together, but they escape by running back up the stairs (since the police are at the door) and jumping out of a window and make their way to Victoria train station.

1997 version of the book: Tim and Nick are now wanted criminals and make their way across London. They find a decrepit guest-house and intend to spend the night there. Remembering the ticket for the Amstel Ijsbaan they found in McGuffin's hotel room, they decide to go to Amsterdam next, but before they can go to bed they are ambushed in their room by the other residents of the guest house, who handcuff them together, but they escape by jumping out of a window and make their way to Victoria train station.

And now, if you're reading this on your mobile, I must advise you to sit down before this next bit, because thanks to Jamie, here's...

What happens in the TV series: Tim and Nick are now wanted criminals and make their way across London. They find a decrepit guest-house and spend the night there. Nick remembers the ticket for the Amstel Ijsbaan they found in McGuffin's hotel room, and the next day they go to the ticketing agency Young & Innocent to find out what it's for. Speaking to Mr. Innocent, pretending the ticket was a present they've forgotten the nature of, they find out it's for an ice-skating rink in Amsterdam. Tim and Nick return to the guest-house and plan to travel to Amsterdam, but meanwhile, the other residents of the guest-house have spotted a reconstruction sketch of Tim's face on the front page of that day's Daily Telegraph and call the police. Tim and Nick -- unaware at this stage that the guest-house residents know who they are -- try to discreetly leave so they can catch the bus to Victoria train station, but the other residents ambush them in the stairwell and handcuff them together. The Brothers are taken into the living room to wait for the police, but when they do arrive, the other residents are momentarily distracted and Tim and Nick quickly run back up the stairs to the room they were staying in. When the police arrive in the room, they notice it has a fire escape and immediately all bolt through that. However, it then turns out the Brothers were actually hiding in a cupboard; with the police gone, they tip-toe out of the building and make their way to Victoria train station.

(Oh: And one thing that happens in all three versions that seems worth noting is the owner of the guest-house, Mrs Jackson, holding the Brothers at gunpoint when they're handcuffed together, only for Nick to make a break for it when he realises that the gun is actually a novelty cigarette lighter.)

Before we try to figure out what's going on here, you may remember from previous accounts that episode 3 had a transmission error, and since it was around this point things got cut off, Jamie provided some notes on that:

This actually leads me to remark that this is within Episode Three as an aside. Why is this notable? Because something went wrong with Episode Three's broadcast, and it's round about here that it cuts off... thankfully, whatever went wrong, we are saved by the good grace that CITV dealt with the stuff that got cut off the following week before airing Episode Four. So Episode Three technically aired across April 9th and April 16th of 1991. God knows how IMDB will cope with that bombshell.

This puts us in with some oddities - the April 16th portion of Ep Three has a newly added "Episode Three cont'd." title card hastily thrown onto its opening scene... Episode Three has no credits and instead jumps to the presenter and then rapidly back for Episode Four, which has no opening title sequence... I'm even now still trying to piece together any kind of detail to what actually happened...

I was informed by Jonathan Craig, who saw this originally happen, that after the transmission fault occurred there was 20 minutes of CITV presenters Tommy Boyd and Neil Buchanan ad-libbing their way through the dead air whilst they tried, failed, and ultimately determined that they couldn't fix the problem; sadly if unsurprisingly, whoever was making the recording Jamie has didn't feel this was worth capturing for posterity. (A DVD release of South by South East is never going to happen, obviously, but if it did I think including both "as intended" and "as broadcast" versions of episode 3, and getting Boyd and Buchanan to record an audio commentary for the latter, breakdown and all, would make it one of the greatest DVDs ever.)

You may be wondering why CITV spent so long trying to fix the error before giving up, then went for the curious "episode and a half" approach the following week rather than just repeating episode 3 and moving the remaining episodes back a week; certainly I was, especially after hearing from Jamie exactly how they handled it. And then finally, it occurred to me to find out what was on the week after South by South East was scheduled to finish. And that, I think, cracked it: on 7 May 1991, the third series of Steven Moffat's Press Gang, which had recently received both a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society award for Best Children's Programme, began in the slot the Diamond Brothers were occupying. So ITV must have wanted to avoid having to push that back.

But anyway. It turns out that Ernest Lemon isn't in the TV series; he is unique to the 1991 version of the text. And there is a conclusion to be drawn from this and the other differences, which Jamie and I both appear to have reached at around the same time:

The novelisation is actually based on a version of the script several drafts earlier than the one that made it to air.

There are a few more comparisons to make between the various different versions, and then I'll examine that conclusion in a bit more detail.

Oh, and there's a joke that Jamie highlights from when the Brothers first find their bedroom in the guest-house:

Nick: "Which side of the bed do you want?"

Tim: "The inside."

This is in both the TV series and the 1991 book, but was deleted from the 1997 revision.

* * *

After their escape from the guest-house, the Diamond Brothers have a train to catch:

1991 book version: At Victoria train station, Tim accidentally asks a police officer for directions to the ticket office. On the train, Tim and Nick meet a young Dutch crime writer called Charlotte who recognises them, but believes in Tim's innocence. Nick waits outside their compartment whilst Tim and Charlotte talk, but Chief Inspector Snape and Boyle turn up. The train goes into a tunnel before they can get into the compartment and, when they get out, Nick discovers he's no longer handcuffed to Tim, but to Charlotte, who claims to be working for social services and is taking Nick into care. She eventually manages to get Snape and Boyle to believe this story, and they leave at the next stop. Charlotte points out that the handcuffs are trick ones which open at the touch of a hidden button. Tim (who was hiding in the compartment) throws the handcuffs out of the window and they land directly in front of Snape and Boyle, who realise they've been tricked. With Charlotte's help, Tim and Nick jump off the moving train and make the rest of the journey to Dover on foot, where they get a ferry to Amsterdam.

1997 book version: At Victoria train station, Tim accidentally asks a police officer for directions to the ticket office. On the train, Tim and Nick meet a young Dutch crime writer called Charlotte who recognises them, but believes in Tim's innocence. The train suddenly stops between stations and five policemen get on. With Charlotte's help, Tim and Nick jump off the moving train (breaking the handcuffs in the process) and make the rest of the journey to Dover on foot, where they get a ferry to Amsterdam.

This one is mercifully simple: Going by Jamie's notes, the TV series closely, if not exactly, matches the 1991 version of the text. (Jamie notes that the cliffhanger to episode 3 is Snape and Boyle about to enter the compartment, so whilst I was correct with my "Strangers on a Chain" hypothesis in the last article, that doesn't actually happen until episode 4!)

There are just a few other differences I asked Jamie about:

• When Nick is getting his bullet wound treated by the doctor, the 1991 version of the book has some extra dialogue which appears to also be in the TV series, but was cut down for the 1997 rewrite
• The description of the Winter House in the '91 book, which was removed for the '97 edition, does not at all match how it looks in the TV series
• Tim accidentally stabbing one of the MI6 agents with what he believes is a trick magician's knife -- this is in both the TV series and the 1991 version of the book, but not the 1997 version. Jamie notes: It happens about three and a half minutes into the episode, after it's clarified that Nick is unharmed. Tim proudly proclaims that "Of course he's not. They're trick knives.", and then stabs the agent next to him. He rather quickly apologises! The 1991 book's version of the scene seems to be identical.

* * *

So now we try to make sense of this. I think the 1991 novelisation must be based on an earlier version of the script, chiefly because of Ernest Lemon; I can't think of any reason for him to be there if he wasn't in some version of the TV series, especially once you compare the other sections where the two different versions of the book, uh, differ. It's only a theory, but I'm guessing he got deleted because somebody suggested there needed to be a stronger reason for Tim and Nick to make the link between the ticket and Agent Eighty-Six (who they know from Mr Waverly -- in all versions -- works for the Dutch Secret Service), they added the scene at the ticketing company and Lemon was the obvious thing to go to make room for that. (Lemon adds to the North by Northwest homage -- as Roger was wrongly accused of murder and fled to the USA, Tim is wrongly accused of murder and flees to the Netherlands, and Lemon's name is also a reference to the screenwriter of NBNW, Ernest Lehman -- but isn't hugely important to the plot. Note that his replacement in the TV series, Young & Innocent, is a reference to another Hitchcock movie.)

The 1991 book being based on an earlier draft also provides yet another perspective on the climax at the funfair (Horowitz didn't reinstate it for the novelisation, it was still in the script at that point), and we also now know that in the TV series Tim and Nick's escape from the guest-house was simplified, presumably because the "jumping out the window" version was, similarly to the originally planned conclusion, deemed unfilmable.

So, here is my guess as to the exact sequence of events:

1. At some point in 1990, Horowitz writes the screenplay for the TV series.
2. Shortly, if not immediately, after that, he writes a novelisation based on that version of the screenplay, so it can be released at the same time as the series.
3. At some point between that and filming on the TV series starting, the script is rewritten, mostly to remove a few set-pieces that are unfilmable or not adding enough to the plot (Ernest Lemon, the original escape from the guest-house, the original climax at the funfair), but for whatever reason the novelisation is left alone (maybe Horowitz didn't have time, maybe he felt there was no need if a lot of the changes were because they couldn't be realised onscreen, maybe he just preferred the original).
4. Finally, in 1997, the book is rewritten for republication by Walker Books. The TV series was already well into obscurity by this point, so I doubt the changes were to bring it in line with that; more likely it was a mixture of dissatisfaction with the original and trying to bring it in line with the other two books in the series (the '97 revision does seem to remove or change some bits that feel like they were faithfully adapted from the script in '91 but don't really work in print -- although, that being said, it is a shame that the scene on the train gets simplified so much in the '97 version, because whilst I can understand Horowitz feeling it didn't work in print, the rewrite does feel like Charlotte is missing some fairly important character development). Maybe Horowitz decided Ernest Lemon was redundant in retrospect but couldn't remember what he'd done on the TV series by that point and just deleted him entirely.

So that's that. The only change I haven't really covered is Mr Waverley believing Tim is a secret agent in the TV series; this sounds like a funnier change, so maybe someone decided the MI6 scenes needed gagging up. (As against that: North by Northwest is all about an innocent man mistaken for a spy, so the homage makes all the more sense with that detail. The alternative version still works as a homage, though -- Tim is a non-existent agent used in a plan to thwart the killer, it's just that rather than the intelligence agency realising their mistake, they know right from the start.) But I'd be surprised if that timeline was too far from the truth.

Oh: And I have been sent some information by our old friend Giles Leigh about the series' transmission in the Netherlands, which I was originally going to include here, but after writing all that I decided it would be a shame to overshadow someone else's hard work, so that'll get a post of its own, hopefully to appear at some point in the near future.