Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Louise Jameson, Lisa Bowerman, Victoria Alcock, Christopher Beeny, Mike Grady, Alex Mallinson, Colin Baker.
For many, the idea of terrorism on British soil is a fairly recent state of affairs, something that started in the 1970s when political events close to home spilled out onto the streets of Britain and has carried on into the 21st Century as ideologies clash, sometimes with devastating results.
However, the call by many for more sweeping powers, more surveillance, more restrictions imposed by a terrified nation’s leaders is nothing new and can be traced throughout the history of islands when radical thought butts heads with religious or political fervour. Whether it was the Dutch being, arguably with malice rather than actual proof, being blamed for the destruction of London during the Great Fire, anything that resembled the Jacobean cause, the Fenian Brotherhood movement which was responsible for attacks on London in Victorian London or even on Queen Victoria herself or even in literature in Joseph Conrad’s brilliant 1907 novel The Secret Agent, the act of using another person to carry out your cause is nothing new.
For Jago and Litefoot though, the two intrepid amateur detectives, the very act of terror is more to do with the forces of malevolence using Time as an unwitting accomplice, rather than some political or ideal motive using human hands to do the work in the third of the fourth series of the pair’s adventures, The Lonely Clock.
Following on directly from the previous instalment, Beautiful Things, Matthew Sweet’s The Lonely Clock takes the friends onto the London Underground and in which Time starts to run amuck, as does the ability for a human being to be in two places, whether she is committing murder or indeed the woman whose lifeless body is found in one of the carriages.
The trait of the murderer it seems in London’s seedy dark past was to be a loner, an outsider perhaps with a grudge or even a disadvantaged lost figure. Matthew Sweet’s plays with that idea and asks who mourns for those that commit atrocities, whilst adding to the feeling of abandonment by placing the main bulk of the action in that of the solitary occupation of travelling under the streets, mole like, blind when the lights go out, helpless when dark forces come to play. It is a sense of the unease felt when stuck in a tunnel deep underground and somebody close by decides to show their hand that they mean to destroy life.
The Lonely Clock is dark, arguably bitter in terms of how the feeling of exposure bites at the neck and nibbles at your resolve. It also however gives more needed action to the female side of the Jago and Litefoot series by giving more time to Louise Jameson’s Leela and Lisa Bowerman’s Ellie Higson, the latter especially as she hasn’t really been a major part of the story line since fate played her several cruel hands in a much earlier series.
Whilst it was always going to be a struggle for anyone to match up to the enjoyment of John Dorney’s Beautiful Things, The Lonely Clock is a very enjoyable, if slightly more disturbing, addition to the Jago and Litefoot canon. An insight into a world many would never want to see.
The Lonely Clock is available as part of Jago and Litefoot Series Four. Jago and Litefoot Series Four is available to purchase from Worlds Apart, Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall