Season 1 • Episode 6
LatestThe body of the man Ralph took the RAF uniform from is washed up on the beach, its reported that the body is Ralph. Stimpson and Plumleigh-Bruce head down to Brighton and it looks like the net is closing in on Ralph. Alison has also realised the truth about Gorse leaving Ralph once again resorting to murder. Gorse then tries to run but doesn't get far before the hangman's noose tightens.
The Charmer was a 1987 British television serial set in the 1930s, and starring Nigel Havers as Ralph Ernest Gorse, a seducing conman and murderer, Rosemary Leach as Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, the smitten victim widow and Bernard Hepton as Donald Stimpson, Plumleigh-Bruce's would-be beau, who vengefully pursues Gorse after he has conned her. It was made by London Weekend Television for ITV, and based on the 1953 novel Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse by Patrick Hamilton, the second work in the Gorse Trilogy. The series was repeated in February and March 1990. ITV3 also repeated the series in full at 01:45am from 5 September 2009. Narrative repeats were on Mondays from 7 September 2009 at 10:05am.
Acting
Nigel Havers makes evil so unbearably plausible you'll side-eye every charming man.
Costume
1930s tailoring that weaponizes class signifiers as seduction tools.
Direction
Alan Gibson's restrained lens lets horror live in polite drawing rooms.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Patrick Hamilton wrote this between Rope and Gaslight — he specialized in making audiences complicit in watching evil unfold.
Nigel Havers had just played the decent boyfriend in Chariots of Fire; this role weaponized his established niceness.
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