Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
As it’s a day before my birthday today, it’s good timing to do a quick review on a birthday present I gave my Mum in March this year! My parents and I have finished watching the complete series of ‘Campion’ starring Peter Davison. I’ve enjoyed watching this crime drama TV series with my parents!
Peter Davison of course is well-known for playing the Fifth Doctor in ‘Doctor Who’ and Tristan Farnon in ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. It was nice to watch Peter in another TV series he did from 1989 to 1990. In 2018, my parents and I watched Peter in ‘Sink or Swim’ with Robert Glenister.
‘Campion’ is of course a crime drama series based on the books by Margery Allingham. I’ve never come across Margery Alingham as a crime author before, but I like the atmosphere of the stories featured in the series especially with it set in 1930s England, almost feeling ‘Jeeves & Wooster’-like.
Peter Davison plays Albert Campion, who is like an aspiring young gentleman of the 1930s with a vein of Bertie Wooster in him solving crime mysteries. From what I’ve read, Campion was originally envisaged as this parody of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey before he developed and matured.
I greatly enjoyed Peter Davison’s talents as an actor playing Campion in the series. It was interesting to see how Campion solved the murder mysteries of 1930 compared to how other crime detectives do it such as Poriot; Miss Marple and the aforementioned Lord Peter Wimsey who I’ve also enjoyed.
The series also stars Brian Glover as Campion’s manservant, Magersfontein Lugg. I’ve seen Brain Glover in the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ with Colin Baker. The relationship between Campion and Lugg is pretty different to how I’ve seen Bertie Wooster and Jeeves together.
There’s also Andrew Burt as Stanislaus Oates, who is Campion’s policeman friend in some of the stories of the series. Andrew Burt worked with Peter Davison in the ‘Doctor Who’ story called ‘Terminus’. Andrew Burt is pretty different playing Oates compared to his role in ‘Doctor Who’.
The TV series lasted for two seasons from 1989 to 1990. I’m surprised they didn’t do more episodes after the series ended. There are four stories in each of the two seasons, with each story divided into two episodes lasting for about 55 minutes each. Peter Davison ‘sang’ the theme song for Series 1. 😀
There are quite a number of good guest stars featured in the episodes of ‘Campion’ my parents and I saw. These include the likes of Timothy West, Mary Morris, Michael Gough, Moray Watson, Adrian Lukis, Milton Johns, David Haig, Michael Melia, Neil Daglish, Geoffrey Bayldon, Roger Hammond, etc.
Some of these actors are people that Peter Davison has worked with before either in ‘Doctor Who’ or something else and he would re-work with again in future productions such as the Big Finish audios of ‘Doctor Who’. I enjoyed the wide variety of talent featured in the ‘Campion’ TV episodes.
I enjoyed many of the murder mysteries featured in the TV series. There were some I got rather confused by in terms of how the reveal of the murderer got resolved. But for the most part, they’ve all been enjoyable and I’m certain I’ll enjoy revisiting them when it comes to seeing the series again.
So yeah, ‘Campion’ is a great TV series starring Peter Davison in the main role. I’m glad I purchased the TV series on DVD for my Mum’s birthday and I’m glad she enjoyed the series overall. The 1930s atmosphere of the series was good and it does make you feel like you want to go back to the period.
But without the murders of course! 😀
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim. 🙂
Bradley's Basement 
I managed to find the first series at a book fair, a few days ago. I’m only through the first two stories, but Campion has a strikingly different feeling to most sleuthing series of its era.
Peter Davison has always struck me as a great actor to play a spook. I think this might be the closest he gets outside of a one-off appearance in another programme. Campion is implied to be an agent of His Majesty’s government, solving crimes as part of his duties to the Crown (or as compelled by his own personal scruples).
Albert Campion isn’t the Doctor with a few bells and whistles, he’s a lot more… focussed. Sharp. There’s a sense of danger to the fellow that doesn’t exist with the Fifth Doctor.
Campion feels like a charming nobody who could kill a man with a two rounds to the chest and frame the neighbour, but needn’t never. His “justice” angle in the pilot rings of Simon Templar’s crusade against the Ungodly. Campion’s dynamic with Lugg is charming and, I wonder, if it was the prototype for Strax in Doctor Who. The ever helpful manservant with the questionable past and cherub-faced interest in (delete as applicable) crime / war.
Where I’ve struggled so far has been in the story structure, which is decidedly oddball. The first story feels like a string of random events held together by pure virtue of coincidence. Fun. Engaging. But bewildering to the audience. The second feels far more cohesive and hinges on a devilishly clever inversion of our murder-mystery expectations.
Campion is a series that, so far, I don’t quite know what to make of. The components are enjoyable. As a whole, I’m not sure where I fall yet. It’s inoffensive light entertainment. No more, no less.
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Hi Wolfie,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on ‘Campion’ as a series so far, especially in the first two stories. It’s been a while since I’ve seen ‘Campion’. I need to check it out again sometime. I greatly enjoyed seeing it with Peter Davison in the title role as well as Brian Glover as Lugg and Andrew Burt as Oates. There are some interesting mysteries going on in the series and it’s fascinating how complex they can be, as is often the case with crime dramas. You need to revisit them more to get over the complexities of plot and characters, especially to understand how it all fits together. I hope you’ll enjoy more of the series as you go through it. I found it fun to see Peter Davison and Brian Glover interact off each other as master and manservant, and how they solved mysteries together.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂
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