Hired for odd jobs, dragged into murder and espionage.
Clients call on Assignments Unlimited to dig a hole, clear a garden or drive a coach of tourists through France, and the job tends to lead its operative into murder, sabotage or espionage. Dry first-person narration and a closing quip keep the cases light, even when a body turns up.
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33 Half Moon Street is a detective drama about Assignments Unlimited, an agency at that address, run on the promise that it will do anything, anywhere, at any time. That premise is what sets it apart. There is no private eye waiting for a corpse here; the series is about hired help, and the mysteries tend to arrive dressed as chores. Two women want a hole dug to the exact size of a grave, and a worker who will keep quiet about where it is. A man who saw the agency's advertisement in the Times wants his garden in East Croydon cleaned up in a hurry. A travel firm on the Old Brompton Road needs someone with an international heavy vehicle license to drive tourists through France and recite passages from a guidebook. Another client wants a strong man who knows the lower reaches of the Thames and will not look out of place dressed as a Viking. Each errand opens onto something darker. The grave-digging job turns up a cleric battered to death, and a silver chalice with precious stones hidden under a layer of lead. The garden job leads to a buried ring and questions about a plane that went down in the Irish Sea. The coach tour ends with foreign agents, a shooting and a time bomb. On a building site in 'The House That Seamus Built', someone has set caged sewer rats to chew through the sealing boards, and the man meant to be watching the site admits a woman called him away to the fence. The cases are treated as agency files, and in 'Ring Of Roses' a closing line comments on whoever titled the file. Much of the storytelling comes as first-person narration from an operative, named Carson in more than one case, who trades banter with an inspector and rarely lets a scene end without a quip. He turns down a reward with a crack about his mother-in-law, and after a spy plot built around a travel book he asks the inspector whether he has read any good books lately. 'The Norse Opera' is the broadest of the lot, pairing a peaceful abduction with a hired man who says the only university he ever attended was a heifer branding in Colorado. Its punchline turns on a costume-shop weapon that was supposed to be wooden and was not. The series can also turn quiet and grave. 'The Man Who Thought Too Much' begins with a frail, tearful woman from Wood Green who fears for her husband and her baby and will not go to the police. Period detail runs throughout, from a sixpence for a phone call to jobs priced in pounds. New listeners get the clearest view of the formula from 'Three For The Omnibus', and the lightest one from 'The Norse Opera'.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys self-contained mysteries with a comic edge, where the crime hides behind an ordinary errand and the narrator keeps a quip in reserve. It also fits anyone drawn to British-set stories full of period detail, from sixpences to adverts in the Times.
What sets it apart: The hero is not a private eye waiting for a murder but hired help taking any job going, so each mystery grows out of something as plain as digging a hole or driving a tour bus. That odd-job premise gives the series an absurd, often funny way into crimes that turn out to be serious.
Airing after the Golden Age of Radio, 33 Half Moon Street, the great Michael Todd played the part of Investigator Aubrey Mason, whose slogan was "We do anything, anywhere, at any time", and also went along guaranteeing success of every case. The name of the show is the address of the detective agency, 33 Half Moon Street.
A Viking costume counts as work here; you might want to check whether the halberd is real.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A French bus tour turns dangerous when a battered travel guide points Crash Carson toward smuggling, blackmail, and murder.
Crash Carson's French bus tour begins as a plain enough job: learn passages from The Tourist Omnibus, guide the passengers, and keep the trip moving.
A Viking pageant turns into a comic abduction caper when the wrong halberd proves real.
A confidential letter pulls a politically ambitious businessman into a neatly odd scheme built around university students, a replica Viking ship, and a daughter on the verge of leaving for Denmark.
A sabotaged building site gives McBride sewer rats, a vacant lot, and flood water to sort through.
Seamus McBride's troubled building site has the shape of a nasty little puzzle: ruined sealing boards, sewer rats, and a penciled map carried by a woman who may not be as incidental as she first seems.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
Seamus McBride hires a watchman for a house site near Boreham Wood after oil, fire, poison, and floodwater keep ruining his materials.
A routine gardening call to 28 Hatfield Lane in East Croydon turns into a mystery when Cannon finds a platinum eternity ring buried in a rose bed with a question mark attached.
A bus driver for Pilkin's Tours is required to memorize passages from The Tourist Omnibus, a battered guidebook that covers France and has stuck-together pages in the back.
Miles Trenchant receives a confidential letter from Dane Connick about a Bergen University Viking-ship stunt on the Thames, complete with a planned “beautiful maiden” to be taken to Denmark.
Crash Carson digs an eight-by-four-by-six-foot hole at 18 Amalia Street, Stepney, because Amy and Prudence Edwards want a tin trunk buried with complete secrecy.
Joanna Weatherby tells Mr.
Aubrey Mason's firm Assignments Unlimited, at 33 Half Moon Street, hires out Marmaduke "Marmy" Bray as escort for Theresa Mandon's balloon trip from Bishop Stortford.
Winnie Leighton goes to a Tanning Row union office to demand the £3 10s weekly sick benefit owed to her father Bert after his accident on E Wharf.
A detective agency is hired to find a pilot willing to fly a dangerous replica of a World War I plane for a movie.
A private investigator takes on a case involving a mysterious drowning at a man-made lake resort.
A distraught woman visits a detective agency, fearing her husband plans to kill himself and their baby.
Investigator Aubrey Mason receives a request from a general to have his associate Cannon model clothes, leading to comedic reluctance.
A woman calls a detective agency after her husband is run over by a lorry, and she visits the office to hire investigator Aubrey Mason.
Detective Aubrey Mason is hired by a mysterious peddler to help a Chinese temple in Lambeth.
A private investigator is hired to escort a valuable animal consignment from South Africa, revealing a mystery involving a zoologist.
Private investigator Aubrey Mason is hired by a Swiss insurance broker to investigate a mysterious threat to his business.