"Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express" | |
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The Goodies episode | |
Episode no. | Series 6 Episode 3 |
Original air date | 5 October 1976 |
Guest appearance | |
"Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express" is the third episode of the sixth series of the British television comedy series The Goodies . The 53rd episode of the show overall, it was first broadcast at 9 pm on BBC2.
Written by The Goodies, with songs and music by Bill Oddie.
The Goodies have started a bogus holiday service, which is engaged by a Detectives Club for its annual outing. The Goodies arrange a mystery train tour aboard the Orient Express but have no intention of taking the train anywhere. The train is boarded by members of the club dressed as famous detectives. At the station, Bill creates the illusion the train is moving by running along the platform with various props, such as a cow, a tree and deer antlers. Inside the train, Graeme narrates the 'journey', while Tim wears female attire to represent each country the train is supposedly going through. A goat supplies extra verisimilitude.
A real mystery starts when the train starts moving and the detectives begin to disappear. Graeme sniffs a bottle labelled 'Arsenic' and says: "Aha! The characteristic smell of bitter almonds!" Bill asks: "Isn't that cyanide?" to which Graeme replies: "Precisely. This arsenic has been poisoned!"
More detectives disappear or die, prompting Bill to reference the original version of the rhyme from Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None : "Ten little <ahem>s, sitting down to dine, someone cut their cufflinks off, now, there's only nine." He later resumes, commenting: "Nine little <ahem>s, sitting there in state, someone lit the touchpaper, now, there's only eight."
The train keeps moving, not always on the railway. It transpires a group of badly behaved mimes, originally disguised as the Goodies, have stolen the train as part of an attempt to win the legendary "Gold Bore" at the French "Le Boring" competition.
Using wheelchairs, the Goodies and the remaining detectives chase the mimes. The mimes are about to escape on a boat when the goat, also on wheels, butts one of them off a pier and into the boat, which sinks along with them.
The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.61 million from a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.
The Orient Express was a long-distance passenger luxury train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe, with terminal stations in Paris in the northwest and Istanbul in the southeast, and branches extending service to Athens, Brussels, and London.
Mystery is a fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually provided with a credible motive and a reasonable opportunity for committing the crime. The central character is often a detective, who eventually solves the mystery by logical deduction from facts presented to the reader. Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
The Dalton Gang was a group of outlaws in the American Old West during 1890–1892. It was also known as The Dalton Brothers because four of its members were brothers. The gang specialized in bank and train robberies. During an attempted double bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas in 1892, two of the brothers and two other gang members were killed; Emmett Dalton survived, was captured, and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, although he later asserted that he never fired a shot during the robbery. He was paroled after serving 14 years in prison.
A mystery film is a film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction. Mystery films include, but are not limited to, films in the genre of detective fiction.
Notable examples of railways in fiction include:
The moonwalk, or backslide, is a popping dance move in which the performer glides backwards but their body actions suggest forward motion. It became popular around the world when Michael Jackson performed the move during the performance of "Billie Jean" on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which was broadcast in 1983. He included the moonwalk in tours and live performances. Jackson has been credited as renaming the "backslide" to the moonwalk and it became his signature move.
The Goodies is a British television comedy series shown in the 1970s and early 1980s. The series, which combines surreal sketches and situation comedy, was broadcast by the BBC, initially on BBC2 but soon repeated on BBC1, from 1970 to 1980. One seven-episode series was made for ITV company LWT and shown in 1981–82.
"Wacky Wales" is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies.
"U-Friend or UFO?" is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies.
Murder on the Orient Express is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, and based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie.
L.A. Heat is an American action fiction television series starring Wolf Larson and Steven Williams as Los Angeles police detectives. The series aired on TNT for two seasons beginning March 15, 1999.
"Football Crazy" is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies.
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express is a 2006 adventure game developed by AWE Productions and published by The Adventure Company for Microsoft Windows. It is the second installment in The Adventure Company's Agatha Christie series. The setting is five years before the events in Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, with a largely unrelated storyline. The story takes place in 1934 and follows an amateur sleuth, Antoinette Marceau, and her investigation of a murder with twelve possible suspects aboard the Orient Express, which has been blocked by an avalanche in Yugoslavia. She is aided by famous detective Hercule Poirot.
"Robot" is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies.
Thomas Marius Joseph Butler was a Detective Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police in London. He was most notable for leading the team of detectives that investigated the Great Train Robbery in 1963. He never married and lived with his mother. Butler was arguably the most renowned head of the Flying Squad in its history. He became known as "One Day" Tommy for the speed with which he apprehended criminals and the "Grey Fox" for his shrewdness.
In Agatha Christie's mystery novels, several characters cross over different sagas, creating a fictional universe in which most of her stories are set. This article has one table to summarize the novels with characters who occur in other Christie novels; the table is titled Crossovers by Christie. There is brief mention of characters crossing over in adaptations of the novels. Her publications, both novels and short stories, are then listed by main detective, in order of publication. Some stories or novels authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie, using the characters she created, and written long after Agatha Christie died, are included in the lists.
Lists of adaptations of the works of Agatha Christie:
The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief is an episodic point-and-click adventure video game developed by King Art Games.