Man Behaving Badly

‘MARTIN Clunes is fixed in most people’s minds as the pizza-guzzling, beer-soaked loser of Men Behaving Badly fame, but tonight he has the chance to play a character that is about as different as it is possible to be.

”Fancy a bath, darlin’?”

A is for Acid (ITV, 9pm) is not, as the title suggests, set in the clubs of the late nineties. Instead, it looks back to a more gentle age, when the most outlandish pop star was Cliff Richard, and acid was used to… er… dispose of murdered corpses.

John Haigh achieved notoriety as the ”acid bath murderer”, who disposed of his victims by immersing them in baths of acid – an idea he got while a prisoner (for fraud) during the second world war, from watching a fellow prisoner dissolve a mouse.

He believed that without a corpse, there would be no proof of murder, and he set about charming his victims, then systematically bumping them off.

Glenn Chandler, of Taggart fame, adapted the story, and it fits in nicely to the great tradition of British murder stories. It’s short on explanation, but strong on atmosphere, and Clunes turns in a good performance as the smooth-talking devil with the neatly-trimmed moustache.

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Posted: 9th, September 2002 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink