FOR THE GIRL WHO HAS EVERYTHING • REVIEW

FOR THE GIRL WHO HAS EVERYTHING • DECLASSIFIED

• Teaser... James McAllister arrives by motorcycle at Jeff's apartment. He has tried the office, but has been redirected to the flat. Jeff, his face still smothered in shaving cream, reveals that he has had a late night and entreats the stranger to explain his reason for looking him up. McAllister confides that he has a strange profession - he is a ghost hunter and he claims that he is able to tell when he is in the presence of a ghost. Marty points out, uncharitably but quite accurately, that he can't be much good as McAllister doesn't notice him standing right beside him. This is quickly forgotten when the visitor makes the private detective an offer he can barely afford to refuse. McAllister has been hired by Kim Wentworth, heir to the Rieskamp fortune, to exorcise ghosts haunting her ancestral home, Crake Castle. McAllister is convinced that there are no ghosts at the castle, and intends to enlist Jeff's help to get to the bottom of the mystery. He will split his £1500 fee 50:50 with Jeff, should he accept. Jeff jumps at the chance and agrees to meet with his new client at the castle the following morning. McAllister hands Jeff an envelope containing a cheque for £750 and departs to take the night's watch at Crake Castle.

• Production Brief... For the Girl Who Has Everything was the debut script by prolific Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) scriptwriter, Donald James, who would go on to pen eleven episodes in total. In the commentary for this episode on the Network DVD edition, director Cyril Frankel remembers Donald James as "one of the exceedingly talented writers that Dennis Spooner selected and commissioned scripts from. If I received one with his name on, I knew I could relax before I read it." Bearing in mind that James was working on other series during the same period, including The Saint (three screenplays), Joe 90 (another three), Department S (two screenplays) and The Avengers (one), it is easy to see the strenuous workload imposed upon writers who could be relied upon to capture the spirit of a series and churn out scripts at a remarkable rate. In the same period, Tony Williamson delivered screenplays for nine Randall and Hopkirk episodes, five Avengers, five for Department S and devised a thriller series for the BBC, Counterstrike, for which he penned one screenplay. Both writers produced twenty scripts in a period of about eighteen months. It is a testament to the abilities of both writers that the quality of their work was always so high.

• Malcolm Christopher, later Production Designer on the series, revealed on the Network DVD commentary for this episode that while he did not fulfil this role on For the Girl Who Has Everything, he scouted and found the locations for the episode.

• From this episode, Sue Long assumed the role of Set Dresser on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), replacing Clifford Robinson who had fulfilled the role on the first two episodes of the series. Long would act as Set Dresser for all episode up to and including Money to Burn.

• The character of Mrs Pleasance clearly owes a considerable debt to a character that featured in Dennis Spooner's original outline for the series, an elderly, eccentric lady able to see and converse with Marty's ghost After watching For the Girl Who Has Everything, it is impossible not to find the following extract uncannily familiar (aside from the fact that in the outline, Jeff cannot see Marty!):

• Carol Cleveland (Monty Python's Flying Circus) appears in this episode as Laura Slade, the mistress of Larry Wentworth (as an aside, she wears the same dress that she wore in the Man in a Suitcase episode The Sitting Pigeon, presumably from her personal wardrobe). However, she was not the original choice for the part. The scene at the cottage in which Laura Slade converses with Jeff Randall (Mike Pratt) was originally filmed with another actress, Judy Huxtable. Huxtable had previously guested in the ITC series Danger Man and would later become the second Mrs Peter Cook, when she married the celebrated comedian in 1973. Whether for performance or technical reasons, the scene was remounted and Carol Cleveland was then engaged to play the part and the sequence appears to have been filmed soon after (not least because the set and dressing is identical across the two versions. It is unclear whether or not Ms. Huxtable was approached for the remount. It is entirely possible that she was not available, although of course there is also the possibility that the director was not happy with her performance in the scene. The footage does not survive.

• For the Girl Who Has Everything is interesting in that it shares not only a location with sister series Department S, the Buckinghamshire village of Latimer, but also a fictional public house, The Duke of Cumberland. Clearly an arrangement of convenience and not an intentional narrative link between the series, it is interesting nonetheless to contemplate that the pub where Jeff stays in For the Girl Who Has Everything, The Duke of Cumberland, is the same establishment where Jason King, Stewart Sullivan and Annabelle Hurst base themselves to unravel the mystery of The Pied Piper of Hambledown in Department S. Both episodes were filmed during the summer of 1968, and two of the three shots of Latimer that appear in For the Girl Who Has Everything are replicated in the Department S episode, suggesting that the footage was shared between the two productions. Most likely this footage for Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) was all shot by the Department S team.

• The Duke of Cumberland would appear again in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) when the crew returned some six months later for a more extensive shoot on The Man from Nowhere, and in Department S for a second time in Who Plays the Dummy? (although the latter was reduced to an establishing shot only). Considering all these filming sessions, it is surprising that the 'public house' was actually the village Post Office (now a residential property) and the pub signage was a prop taken to the location. One wonders why the same pub sign was retained on each occasion.

Image © ITV Studios
Digital manipulation: Alan Hayes

• With so much location work carried out for the episode in Denham, it is strange that the For the Girl Who Has Everything crew chose not to shoot establishing shots of a public house there, perhaps The Swan Inn, which appears in the episode in any case. We will probably never know the answers to these questions, so in happy ignorance, we can dream that Jeff and Marty operated in the same fictional world as Jason, Stewart and Annabelle and Jeff often popped out for a pint with Stewart Sullivan and the gang. Perhaps Marty was Jason King's ghost writer? (Sorry!) If the two series did exist in one fictional world, one question that just has to be asked is why Jeff never seems to have noticed that a number of the villains under investigation by Jason, Stewart and Annabelle kept driving around in his Vauxhall Victor!

• Annette Andre makes a small but important contribution to this episode in terms of her character development as Jean Hopkirk. While she has precious little to do in the narrative, she is now seen for the first time to be working in an administrative capacity at the Randall and Hopkirk offices.

• As in the opening two episodes, Kenneth Cope's wig is on back to front with its parting on the left-hand side in some scenes in For the Girl Who Has Everything. The soles of his shoes are dark once again, after they had been whitened for But What A Sweet Little Room.

• Despite the difficulties of setting up the transparent 'Pepper's Ghost' technique, it is used again here, first when Marty walks through the bookcase in Kim Wentworth's bedroom at Crake Castle, and then again when he tries to press the release button on the bookcase, hoping to release Jeff from the priesthole behind it. His hand simply goes through the button.

• Stock film of an owl at night was used in this episode and the footage will be very familiar to anyone who has watched other ITC series over the years!

• Filming of this episode took place in June to July 1968. Post production work was completed in late October 1968. It would, however, not receive its first UK broadcast until a year later on Friday 28th November 1969, when it was transmitted by the Westward and Channel ITV regions.

• On Location... Again, some great location work in this episode, taking in the exclusive and striking Hilfield Castle in Bushey and the picturesque Denham village, always a very popular filming location for British film and television, as well as the customary London and Harrow locations establishing Jeff's apartment and the Randall and Hopkirk offices respectively. The footage of Latimer was borrowed from the crew shooting Department S. More details in Locations: For the Girl Who Has Everything.

• Trivia... Ghost-hunter James McAllister is seen arriving first at Jeff's apartment and then at The Buttery in Denham Village on his motorbike. In actual fact, there were two bikes used, each of the same Triumph Tiger Cub T20 model, but with different registration numbers. As the St John's Wood and Denham locations are some distance apart, it is most likely that the sequences were filmed on different days and the bikes supplied without particular importance being given to the registration. Neither registration is seen clearly on screen, so not really a candidate for our 'cock-up' section.

• Everything in the afterlife is free, or so Marty says!

• Only You, Jeff? Marty is surprised to discover that Mrs Pleasance, the do-it-yourself enthusiast who runs The Buttery tea rooms, can see and hear him without any effort on his part. She tells Marty that she's had psychic abilities going right back to the time that she was a little girl. Mrs Pleasance claims that this gift is something she believes she inherited from her mother's side of the family. This proves very useful when Jeff becomes imprisoned in the priesthole at Crake Castle and Marty is unable to extricate him from his predicament. First, he tries to summon the police sergeant by blowing a piece of paper from his desk, but the vicar's niece, who is walking her dog, helpfully retrieves it for the officer. Marty tries a different tack and attempts to bring the girl to the castle by spooking her dog into leading her there. Finally, he remembers Mrs Pleasance and the fact that she can see him, enlists her help and leads her to Crake Castle, where she effects a rescue. The possibility of Mrs Pleasance being a useful earthly contact for Marty is short-lived, as is Mrs Pleasance, who dies trying to fix the electrics at The Buttery with a screwdriver. Marty learns this when Mrs Pleasance turns up at the Randall and Hopkirk offices dressed all in white and Jeff can't see her...

• Marty is also able to influence the pet poodle belonging to the vicar's young niece. Unfortunately, he can do little more than annoy it.

• Ghosts and Ghoulies... Aside from Marty, the ghosts appearing in For the Girl Who Has Everything are fakes... until Mrs Pleasance becomes the first ghost to appear in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) outside of the celebrated Mr Hopkirk.

• The Vehicles... Appearing in this episode were the following wonders of transport...

	1963 Triumph Tiger Cub T20 Registration FTC96B Driven by James McAllister
	1963 Triumph Tiger Cub T20 Registration HYV528C Driven by James McAllister
	1968 Vauxhall Victor FD 2000 Registration RXD 996F Driven by Jeff Randall	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - used extensively throughout the series Department S - 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'The Man from X'
	1967 Mercedes-Benz W108 Registration TGT 920F Driven by Larry Wentworth
	1961 Bentley S2 Registration 738 AYW Driven by Kim Wentworth's chauffeur

• Seen It All Before? The entrance hall of Crake Castle is a redressed version of the set used for the interior of Julia Fenwick's well-to-do residence in But What A Sweet Little Room. Kim Wentworth's bedroom is the study, again redressed, used for the first two episodes, and the lounge of Laura Slade's cottage utilised components of the 'sweet little room' from the previous episode.

• Cock-ups... The first cock-up in this episode is a set dressing error which results in Jeff's apartment being number 14 instead of the correct 41 when he is visited by McAllister in the teaser.

• The second is a location to studio issue. When Larry Wentworth (a reasonable double for a change!) is seen going to his Mercedes-Benz on location in the Crake Castle grounds, we clearly see outbuildings to the rear of the car. When we cut to the studio, the car has foliage to the side and rear, absent on location. Just to make matters worse, when he arrives at Laura Slade's cottage, he gets out of the car and he has exactly the same background behind him, only slightly reframed!

• When Jeff returns from witnessing Larry's assignation with Laura, he knocks at the door of Crake Castle. He receives no response, so knocks again, whereupon the door opens. From the outside, it is clear that the inside is unlit, but when we cut to the interior, the lights are on.

• Finally, when Marty gets talking to Mrs Pleasance for the first time, he follows her into the kitchen and in order to pass through the curtains that hang in the doorway, he visibly parts them. This makes a bit of a nonsense of his being unable to press the button on Kim Wentworth's bookcase later in the episode, where his hand just goes through it. Obviously, this was a practical necessity, but the sensible thing to do was to have the curtains tied back for that scene?

• And Finally... This is one of those rare episodes where Jeff Randall actually gets paid for his trouble - and quite handsomely, too - and this is despite the fact that his client, James McAllister, dies shortly after the cheque is banked! A similar situation had occurred in the previous episode, But What A Sweet Little Room, when Anne Fenwick, who had hired him, was killed before she could pay. Jeff continued that particular investigation because he didn't want her murderers to get away with it. Here he stays on as he has been paid, but ever the moralist, he refuses a hefty bonus offered by Kim Wentworth on the condition that he leaves, because he feels that something isn't quite right - a suspicion that is borne out and which almost costs him his life.

Plotline: Scoton Productions / ITC • UK Transmissions by Simon Coward and Alan Hayes
Review by Alan Hayes • Declassified by Alan Hayes with thanks to Vince Cox and Andrew Pixley

All timings given on this page relate to the Blu-ray edition of this episode