OVERLOOKED TELEVISION: COLONEL MARCH OF SCOTLAND YARD: THE SORCEROR (OCTOBER 1, 1955*)

In this locked room mystery, a psychologist is found dead in a sealed room.  Colonel Marxh has to find out who wanted him dead and how the murder was committed. 

Colonel March of Scotland Yard was a British program which aired first in America from December 1954 to the spring of 1955 before premiering in England that September.  In, 1952, Karloff had filmed three different pilot episodes to show to television executives; those episodes were compbined into a film,Colonel March Investigates, which was released in 1953, before the television show aired.  There were 26 episodes in all.  Boris Karloff starred in the title role.  Regularly featured were Ewan Roberts as Inspector Ames and Eric Pohlmann as Surete Inspector Goron; Pohlmann did not appeared in the premiere episode.

"The Sorceror" was the first episode in the series.  In addition to Karloff and Roberts, it featured actors Phil Brown, Gerard Heinz, Robert Adair, Eileen Erskine, and Loly Kann.  The episode was directed by Bernard Knowles, whose television credits include numerous episodes of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Dial 999, and The New Adventures of Martin Kane.  the script was by Carr and Paul Monesh (All Quiet on the Western Front, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, 514 [!] episodes of Peyton Place).

John Dickson Carr was the master of the locked room mystery.  Colonel March was attached to the so-called "Department of Queer Complaints" of Scotland Yard.  The ten Colonel March stories, written under the pseudonym "Carter Dcikson," were first published between 1938 and 1941; seven of the stories were included in the 1940 collection The Department of Queer Complaints. 

Carr based his character on Major John Street, who was a popular and prolific writer of mystery novels under the names "John Rhode" (79 novels) and "Miles Burton" (63 novels), and with whom Carr collabored on one novel, Drop to His Death (1939, as by Carter Dickson and John Rhoide; also published as Fatal Descent); the pair had planned on a further collaborated but it never happened.   Carr often based his characters on real-life people -- Gideon Fell was modeled on G. K. Chesterton, and Sir Henry Merrivale was modeled on Winston Churchill.)

Have fun matching wits with Colonel March:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GuZv31e4LY&list=PLJwIFLur634xFQEkYAAF3fTZ7Wh-V7M-d&index=19

* The date reflected the first air on British television.