User Reviews

The Good Medicine is a lighthearted romp. Another episode where the Saint is on the hustle. Playing the long con.

Denise (Barbara Murray) is an ambitious woman stuck in Beauvais on the outskirts of Paris. I know how she feels as I have been to Beauvais.

She is engaged to the middle aged pharmacist Phillipe Dumont who runs a small chemist and has an elderly domineering mother.

After the mother dies, Denise and Phillipe get married despite her flirting with his assistant. She persuades Phillipe to make some concoctions of cosmetic products.

A few years later thanks to Phillipe's formulas, Denise has a successful cosmetics business. She no longer needs her husband. She can make do with her lovers. She also keeps the business and the money.

Simon Templar comes to the aid of Phillipe whose health is not too good and he needs money to pay for his medical bills.

A new formula for insect repellent could be just the trick. It certainly arouses Denise's greed as she gets a dose of strong medicine.

There is an emphasis on fun and a lot of exposition at the beginning of the episode.

This series tended to vary in quality, perhaps inevitably given the conveyor belt nature of the production, with author Leslie Charteris justifiably complaining about the trite approach to some of his stories and banal dialogue put into his character's mouths. It's difficult to imagine he could have had any grouses about this adaptation though, and American writer Norman Borisoff, who only worked on a handful of episodes has supplied some of the incidental humour found in abundance in the books, but conspicuously absent in too many of these shows.

Some of the best short stories involved the Saint taking an assortment of con men, and the occasional con woman, to the cleaners. Here it is an enterprising but ruthless business woman - Barbara Murray - whom has risen to the top of the cosmetics industry on the back of her supportive ex-husband whom she has dumped and left in poverty. The Saint devises a con trick to help put matters right, but having been taken down a peg or two, she still ends up in the Templar fan club and in his arms at the end.

In addition to the script, it is smartly directed by Roy Ward Baker and the sets and costumes are opulent for a TV series. The whole production has a class and style epitomised by Barbara Murray, utterly believable and looking stunning, who heads a strong supporting cast including Jean Marsh, and John Bennett in a humorous turn as Murray's current boyfriend/hanger-on. His reaction when Marsh bops him on the head in the one moment of violence is priceless. And Roger Moore is at his best; he was The Saint and every other interpreter of the role is likely to remain in his shadow.