Season 2 • Episode 8
LatestJudge Lobbett mysteriously disappears, Biddy Pagett is kidnapped and Lugg tries to warn Campion off the Simister mob investigation, but he refuses to give in.
Campion is a television show made by the BBC, adapting the Albert Campion mystery novels written by Margery Allingham. Two series were made, in 1989 and 1990, starring Peter Davison as Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant Magersfontein Lugg and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend Stanislaus Oates. A total of eight novels were adapted, four in each series, each of which was originally broadcast as two separate hour-long episodes. Peter Davison sang the title music for the first series himself; in the second series, it was replaced with an instrumental version.
Acting
Davison's playful smugness; Glover's magnificent lug of a Lugg.
Costume
Interwar tweed porn and Campion's deliberately ridiculous spectacles.
Production
BBC at its cozy-location-scout peak—manor houses and village fêtes.
Creator
Margery Allingham
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Peter Davison recorded the jaunty theme song in one take, reportedly mortified; producers kept it anyway.
Allingham invented Campion as a parody of Lord Peter Wimsey, but he evolved into something stranger—less aristocratic fantasy, more existential performance of Englishness.
GB
