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MERIDIAN UNRAVELS THE MYSTERY OF
A DARK BLUE PERFUME
THE RUTH RENDELL
MYSTERIES: A DARK BLUE PERFUME
Aired Friday 10th January
1997, 9 pm on the ITV network
Filmed
in Hampshire, the one-hour film has been adapted by Peter Ransley from Ruth
Rendell’s short story.
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SYNOPSIS
A DARK BLUE
PERFUME is a love story that centers on Mark
Richardson (John Castle) who returns after twenty years as a stranger with a
new identity to his sleepy hometown of Marchester, which holds the ghosts of
his past. He is hoping for a new beginning when he falls in love with
Liz (Susannah York) his neighbor, after the tries in vain to save her
husbands life when he suffers a heart attack. They begin a love affair
much to the disgust of Liz’s friend and busybody, Sheila Peterson (Rowena
Cooper), and the astonishment of the inhabitants of the town. Mark desperately tries to oust the
ghosts of that awful time, but instead is continually haunted by them. Even
his relationship with Liz, his new love, is threatened by memories of his
ex-wife, Katherine (Charlotte Avery). It seems that everywhere he goes
he sees Katherine. Believing he is slowly going mad, Mark’s grip on
reality begins to loosen. Despite
Liz’s newfound happiness, Sheila is convinced that she recognizes Mark and
makes it her business to find out why. While Liz and Mark visit
Marchester Cathedral they are oblivious to everyone around them. Sheila
is taking publicity pictures for a brochure and uses the opportunity to take
some snaps of the two together. Their happiness is short-lived as,
Sheila, a one-time journalist at the time when Mark was there before, makes
it her business to discover the truth behind his odd behavior. Mark
makes no allowances for Sheila who has not forgotten him and the event that
forced him to leave. After a visit to the Marchester Gazette, she finds
the newspaper headline. Mark has spent nine years in jail for the
attempted murder of his wife.
Sheila can’t wait to tell Liz his
story, but it doesn’t have the effect she had hoped. Instead of dumping
Mark, Liz encourages him to confront his past. She tells him that
Katherine is no longer the beautiful young woman he once knew, she is old
with lines on her face and he must see her himself to finally get rid of the
past. Mark
sets out to visit Katherine. She had betrayed him and he is determined to
make her pay for it. He holds a dark secret. As a young man he met
is one and only true love, Katherine, but his world is ripped apart when she
tells him she is expecting another man’s baby. He is forced the face the
events he has run from for so long. For Mark and Liz this confrontation
will have tragic and horrifying consequences, as Mark battles against the past to try
and survive the present.
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JOHN CASTLE AS MARK
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He says of his screen character
Mark: “I enjoyed playing Mark enormously because he was a very meaty
character and I enjoy this type of role. He’s obviously slightly
off-center. He’s an obsessive character and I suspect he could even be
slightly schizophrenic. “Although Mark is potentially a
murderer, he is also the victim. He is falling in love with Liz, and if
he hadn’t seen someone who looked exactly like his one and only love, their
relationship would probably have proceeded normally. Liz would have
become his escape from his past, as he was for her, but unfortunately for
Mark that wasn’t to be.” A DARK BLUE PERFUME re-united John Castle with his great
friends Susannah York and Rowena Cooper. Susannah and John appeared in
a 1976 film Eliza Frazer, set in Australia. John and Rowena
appeared together in They Voysey Inheritance at The Royal Court.
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SUSANNAH YORK AS LIZ
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She sympathizes with Liz: “Some
people may think it’s strange she jumped so quickly into an affair but I
think life is too short for regrets. It’s a pointless
exercise. I’ve led a completely different life. But I know women,
who get to a certain point in middle age, then something happens to them – it
could be the start of a new relationship or it may be a new direction of
interest – but whatever it is, these people either grab the chance to begin
again or let go.” She describes her character as “very
timid at first, a good wife, a good mother and not much else.” But Mark
brings out a kind of wildness in her that she never knew she had. She’s
suddenly going to take on a new life, learn new things and leave
town. Of course, no-one in Marchester would ever speak to her again
anyway, which is symptomatic of the town,” laughs Susannah. | ||||
ROWENA COOPER AS SHEILA
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She relished the challenge of playing
a nasty character like Sheila: “I couldn’t play a malicious character
like that without believing that what Sheila did was right. She revealed
Mark’s past to Liz because she felt she had a saver her friend. Sheila
was the sort of character who had to know everything that was happening in
the village and she suspected Mark from the moment he moved in. When
Sheila discovered the truth about Mark she had to let her friend Liz know
before it was too late….” | ||||
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