BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a new Charles Paris mystery, An Amateur Corpse. Episode Two is still available as a streaming broadcast here until until tomorrow (December 19) when Episode Three appears. The fourth and final episode airs on Boxing Day. (Following its terrestrial broadcast in England, each episode lingers online for a full week as a “listen on demand” option.)
No self-disrespecting character actor—or other theater professional—who reads mystery novels backstage should be unaware of the Charles Paris books. The only excuse one might have for ignorance of the series is that Brett, while remaining disarmingly prolific with his other series (Fethering, Mrs. Pargeter, Blotto & Twinks) hasn’t turned out a new Charles Paris book since the late 1990s.
Considering the vintage of the books which started appearing in the mid-1970s, and considering that Simon Brett was a BBC Radio producer before adding novel-writing to his multi-career schedule, it’s strange that it took so long for a Charles Paris radio series to take hold. The first attempt was in the 1980s, with Francis Matthews as Paris in adaptations of the books Cast, In Order of Disappearance and So Much Blood.
Two decades or so later came the current series, starring the great Bill Nighy, who plays Paris somewhat less intensely than he did the similarly washed-up and self-deluding rock star he played in the classic Christmas film Love, Actually.
The Nighy adaptations have encompassed the same two novels that Francis Matthews already did, plus A Series of Murders, Sicken and So Die, Murder Unprompted, The Dead Side of the Mike and now An Amateur Corpse. That still leaves nearly a dozen more of Brett’s novels to go.
Each Charles Paris book is set in a different professional acting situation. In various adventures, Paris does a reality TV series, a one-man Edinburgh Fringe show, a horror flick, touring shows, and of course radio theater. An Amateur Corpse has him doing voiceover work for a college-drinking-buddy-made-good.
As much as I admire Bill Nighy, I never would think of casting him as Charles Paris. Certainly Nighy came up as a consummate character actor, with a diverse acting resume. But I’d always imagined Charles Paris as less distinctive than than the lanky, sonorous Nighy. In the books, he comes off as one of those vaguely attractive leading man types who’s interchangeable with so many other players and must therefore assert himself if he really wants the good roles. Which of course, Charles Paris never does. I’d always thought of Ann-Margret’s husband Roger Smith, or the American beach-party actor John Ashley, as kin to Charles Paris.
Well, good thing this series is on radio then, so Bill Nighy’s looks don’t work against him. The radio series adds a classic-rock score which adds some kind of contemporaneity to Brett’s stories. Suzanne Burden appears as Charles’ oft-estranged wife Frances, Jon Glover as his tiresome agent Maurice and (in this series only) Geraldine McEwan as his ailing mother Joan.
This adventure features a fun subplot, one of my favorite bits from any of the Paris books, in which Charles is asked to critique an overreaching community theater company’s production of Marat/Sade. Told not to pull his punches in his opinions, he doesn’t. I’ve been there. If you’ve ever taken theater seriously, or frivolously, anywhere, there’s a morsel in a Charles Paris mystery novel for you.