The Cheaters - The Complete Series

Following almost immediately in the footsteps of 'Saber of London' the enterprising Danziger Brothers gave us THE CHEATERS. This series from the early 1960s was the perfect vehicle for then popular Canadian actor John Ireland - here playing John Hunter, an insurance claims investigator working for the fictitious Eastman Insurance Company… Just don’t expect the cases to be straightforward!

Death! Destruction! Fire! Robbery! The words splash across the screen at the beginning of each episode with appropriate archive footage shots. Did you know just how many false insurance claims are made every year to any given company? Well, 'The Cheaters' is about to open your mind! Together with his boss Walter Allen (played by Danziger favourite Robert Ayres) the pair succeed admirably in establishing a very feasible double act. Presumably the Eastman Insurance Company must be doing quite well with an office at 3 Belgrave Square (as can be seen from the location work), a seriously posh part of London. Heck, the company must be doing well with handling claims of up to a hundred grand. The interior looks suspiciously like Mark Saber's office (supposedly in Parliament Square) and eagle-eyed viewers will recognise not only the same interiors but also many of the same faces from that detective series… not that this should put you off, far from it.

In ‘The Cheaters’ we have quite a bit more scope and the conclusions don’t always feel as rushed or contrived as in some of the Saber episodes. We are off to a rollicking start with one of the oldest scams in the business – that is to say a dodgy insurance advisor (one part of a scam company) is selling life insurance policies to those naïve enough not to bother with reading the small print. This is precisely what happens in 'The Fine Print' (an M.M. McCormack script) as we witness a couple of cold hearted rogues operating a nasty insurance number. The small print in their policies clearly states that no money will be paid out until a period of ten years has elapsed. Does anyone aged 70-plus expect to get a policy with a low premium and no health certificate? Dodgy insurance policy advisor Ben (Derek Blomfield) gets a taste of his own medicine when he attempts to sell this no-good policy to wily Mrs. Little (Nora Nicholson). Unfortunately for Ben, the crafty old lady is far from senile and knows all the tricks in the book…demanding a slice of the action and blackmailing Ben into a scam which would see her sharing the profits with him. During a heated argument with Ben she ends up dead and our Mr. Hunter is soon on the case. You guessed it: now we have an insurance investigator investigating a dodgy insurance company and Hunter and his boss come up with an ingenious idea to trap the rotters with the help of the old lady's brother John (Ian Fleming – another Danziger favourite).

'The Man with the Ticking Head' features a hilarious performance by Graham Stark as a suspected burglar who supplies Eastman Insurance with a most surprising alibi and besides, he's far too nice a bloke to do anything really bad. 'A Question of Murder' features Jennifer Jayne as a daughter who wants to get her hands on a share of the insurance money eight years after her famous writer father had apparently disappeared. Meanwhile, her mother and uncle claim the man hasn’t disappeared but is simply abroad. This just isn't good enough and Hunter and Allen are called in. John Carson is on board playing a disgruntled out of work actor and the lady's fiancé while Richard Vernon is the 'kindly' uncle. Mind you, the denouement here comes as a bit of a surprise. It is a moot point and we realise after a while that with insurance scams there are endless variations on the theme. For example, in 'Requiem For A Champion' (a John Roeburt script) the body of a champion boxer is found by a lake. The man in question was due to take part in a big fight with much money at stake and thus he was obviously insured (yes, with Eastman Insurance) for a considerable amount of money. Now that he’s ‘brown bread’ his management are demanding a mega pay out. If you know anything about the fight game you will probably be able to work this one out.

'The Hands of Adrian' has a similar motive (i.e. loss of earnings) although here we are not encountering murder but a third rate violinist with a guilty secret. 'Flash In The Sky' (a Mark Grantham script) features William Fox as a ruthless old swine who plants a bomb in his wife's bag after filling out an insurance claim at an insurance machine in the airport (this you could actually do up until the early 70's). When the plane goes up it doesn’t take long before it blows up - killing everyone on board. Time for our top team to investigate!
'Time to Kill' has Peter Barkworth as a village copper who calls in our duo to investigate the murder of a man found by a lake (exactly the same opening footage as 'Requiem for a Champion') - it turns out that a rather nasty couple are setting up old men and polishing them off before stealing their lolly - the young attractive wife picks up the prey in hotels, pretending to be irresistibly drawn to men old enough to their grandfathers. In ‘Carnival Case’, Hunter goes undercover to investigate a series of thefts at a fairground – the management are stealing punters’ jewellery and claim the insurance to pay them out. The 'bent' boss Simpson (Paul Eddington doing a pretty good Sydney Tafler impression) takes a liking to Hunter and gives him a job straightaway as a pitcher. This must have been quite interesting for actor John Ireland as he had worked in this very area as a young man.

There's plenty of location work on offer. Jazz hipster Bill LeSage composed the opening soundtrack and the incidental music (which will appeal to some and perhaps less to others…). Plaudits must go the two leads and despite shortcuts due to limited budget the series succeeds in achieving a high standard (particularly in view of it's time).
This 4-Disc set (available on DVD and Blu-ray) offers all 39 episodes transferred in HD from original film elements.