Reviews Dead Man's Switch by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s dead now. And stuck on a train. That figures…

When Bilis Manger returns to Torchwood, it always sends a shiver down the spine. Murray Melvin, who’s played Bilis since TV Torchwood Series 1, always invests him with that spiderlike, almost playful quality, weaving hapless humans into one cocoon or another, with the voice and the manners of a sweet older man and the heart of a vicious black hole with teeth.

He’s baaaaaaaaaaa-aaaack!

He’s back in an audio drama from David Llewellyn, in a distinctly Cardiff, distinctly Torchwood and above all distinctly shudderworthy take on the classic Amicus movie Dr Terror’s House of Horrors.

The initial situation is deceptively simple – a train, somewhere in Cardiff. Three people jolt awake as the train stops suddenly – but each of them are firm in their conviction that the train should be going to a different destination. And none of them can remember getting on.

A fourth passenger, one Mr Manger, tries to make sense of their inconsistent beliefs. And then he raises the most peculiar possibility. Maybe they’re all dead, and the train is going nowhere, ever again.

And so, without so much as an evil chuckle, begins Dead Man’s Switch. The characterisation is this story is on absolutely another level to most Torchwood – and indeed, most audio drama – because the set-up is simple and static. Three people, one location, and Bilis Manger, urging them on to remember things about their lives.

Their stories are remembered strictly one by one, like ghost stories round a campfire, which allows the lives of the people on the train to be told mostly fuss-free and in their own voices, usually with only one additional character besides themselves. Both the focus of the narrative and the slightly claustrophobic feel of their lives draw listeners deeply into their histories, and each of them seem, while being entirely different and separate, to be tinged with a loneliness, whether of their own making or not. Their responses to that loneliness mark them out as individuals. Rowena is an older lady determined to fill her life with beautiful things, but also, dammit, determined not to be beaten any more at auction by the dapper older gentleman who’s gazumped her on several recent sales. Piers (well, it would be, wouldn’t it?) is a property moving bully-boy, a smart-suited city git with a contraceptive personality, who’s determined to scare an old man out of his business property so it can be bulldozed and expensive flats built in its place. And Zoe is a poorly-schooled but engaging single mother, whose daughter…is no longer with us. Zoe lives in a building about to be condemned, across a hallway from a nice old duffer who likes classical music and English breakfast tea.

Tale by tale, we hear of creepy goings-on in an empty house with a mysterious mirror, a Hitchcock-meets-Dracula problem with indomitable, small-bodied bats and an unfortunately positioned balcony, and a basement full of the sounds and noises of a baby in distress.

In each case, the passengers take us up to a moment of jump-scare, a moment of seeming tragedy or scream or death – and then they woke up on the train.

To explain what’s actually happened to them and why would be to blow the important plot details on which the whole story hangs. But are they dead? Alive? Trapped forever, Sapphire and Steel style in a limbo of nothingness? Bilis Manger has the answers, and while almost no-one on the train will be happy with what he has to tell them, there are reasons behind his actions, reasons why he too is on this strangest of trains.

Bilis Manger on audio from Big Finish has always had an edge – a cutting edge, if you will – that allows him to be above and beyond the normal toing and froing of Torchwood’s finest. But in 2018 release Deadbeat Escape and here in Dead Man’s Switch, he’s developing something of a theme, a determination to specifically sacrifice others to achieve his own aims. Something seems to be building for Bilis, and it’s building in a scary ladder of traumatic stories, of innocence and evil, action and inaction, all with an inevitable ending that pulls no punches. Torchwood in 2019 has given us some hard, heavy subject matter – everything from Night of the Fendahl and its dabbling with snuff movies, to The Hope, dealing with serial child murder. Dead Man’s Switch is less immediately punchy with horror than either of those releases, but it also gives you much less wiggle-room to look away from its central premise, because the linear nature of the storytelling means there’s nowhere to cut away to, nothing to relieve the pulse after pulse of tension as it builds. Here, the horror creeps up on you, unseen in empty rooms, or lures you, Stephen King-style, to its basement and then locks the door. Your investment in the characters is what’ll make your heart beat faster in this story, your need to know what really happened to them drawing you along until – boom! The answer looks right back at you through your own eyes.

Torchwood – Dead Man’s Switch is a creepy, contained, claustrophobic listen that takes you into three lonely lives and shows you the consequences of your actions in a social world. It will drag you in and turn you inside out, and, in the way that the best horror stories always do, it will leave you unsettled and thinking long after you’ve stopped listening.

Reviews Torchwood - Deadbeat Escape by Tony J Fyler

Tony checks in. But will he ever leave…

Bilis Manger is an unusual Torchwood villain. He’s not big and stompy and apocalyptic by any means whatsoever – to all intents and purposes he looks and sounds like a harmless, rather sweet old man. But Bilis Manger is a turner of screws, an opener of portals to ultimate chaos, a steel-spined streak of self-interest dipped in poison and chocolate.

And now he’s back.

This, in case you’re getting the wrong idea, is very very good news for Torchwood fans. Bilis has started appearing here and there in the audio Torchwood stories from Big Finish, perhaps most effectively in A Kill To A View from Torchwood: Aliens Among Us, Part 2.

Deadbeat Escape from James Goss though feels like it knocks all previous Bilis stories aside and claims the top spot, because it’s both focused and layered, delivering the horror of a kind of Hell – with Bilis as its maitre d’.

The script is teeming with what seem like influences – imagine Hotel California, just outside of Cardiff – ‘my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had to stop for the night…’

When you stop at this particular bed and breakfast though, you really, truly stop. Not for nothing is it called the Traveller’s Halt. Not Rest – Halt. Strangely depressed people fill the dining room eating Soup of the Day, whatever day that is. A dripping tap in the room next door keeps you permanently awake, and the person in whose room you hear the tap is asleep like an ageing Sleeping Beauty, as though time didn’t stop when she fell asleep.

And then there’s the rain. Torrential, aggressive rain that stops you leaving. Ever.

Billis is there for reasons of his own, which it would churlish to spoil for you, but suffice it to say the story takes the form of a kind of grand tour of the guest house, Bilis showing newbie Gareth Pierce, played with a brusque aplomb by Hywel Roberts, around the physical space, the oddities it encompasses, the hopes, the opportunities – and the ungovernable, inescapable dangers, as though welcoming a fellow prisoner to this guest house of the damned.

It’s never that simple with Bilis Manger. There’s lots of talk about time, about a broken clock and a piece of the regulating clockwork, the Deadbeat Escape of the title. The thing that puts all deviations right. That’s how Bilis claims to see himself in this story – a mender of clocks, a person sensitive to the needs of time. His lectures on time and timekeeping bring a chill of Sapphire and Steel to the audio, with time as the enemy, time as the trap from which there seems to be no escape, while Gareth frets about reaching his father in hospital, who doesn’t have long left.  There’s a poignancy in Gareth’s rush to reach his father – like many of us, he has a need for closure with a parent with whom he’s had a complex relationship. But Bilis and the guesthouse of doom have other ideas.

The story has a deeply satisfying sense of pace – it’s confined, tense, almost Hammer horror stuff, but it feeds you, one clue, one revelation, one shock at a time, making you hungrier and hungrier to reach some sort of conclusion.

‘You can check out any time you like – but you can never leave.’ That’s the darkest line of Hotel California, the final shock, and it’s a line with relevance to Deadbeat Escape too – the notion of autonomy in a house that’s pitted its wits and its time against you is a cruel one, and we hear Gareth come to this startling realisation in a thoroughly vivid way. The ending of the story is perfect and chilling and a testament to the strength of Bilis Manger as a character, and to Murray Melvin’s performance as the man who does whatever is necessary. It will punch you when you finally realise what’s been going on and why – and Goss, directed by the hardcore vision of Scott Handcock, spares not a single nerve in making that punch hurt. Bilis Manger is by no means a serial killer, but his words and his attitude at the end of this story show the patience and the dedication to his own interests that you’d expect of one, as he reveals the trick behind the trap, the fix that exists for the clockwork of the house. It’s horrifying. It’s utterly, utterly horrifying…but in a way you’ll rush to listen to time and time and time again. Although, to be fair, perhaps you won’t re-listen that much – when time is so much the enemy in this story, looping your listening might feel too much like tempting fate.

Deadbeat Escape is a staggering, steel comb down the spine of a listen, that will make you gasp, make you sniff, and make you revel in the darkness of Bilis Manger. It’s a Torchwood story with only one real mention of any of the Torchwood regulars, but it works sublimely in their absence, free from the pressure of any particular goodie. Take a walk on the dark side with Bilis Manger, and dare to check in to the Traveller’s Halt – then see if you can fathom out the Deadbeat Escape.

Articles Murray Melvin aka Bilis Manger

Bilis Manger first appeared on our screens during episode 12 ‘Captain Jack Harkness’, Series One.  Bilis is the caretaker of the old dance hall in Sage Street due to be demolished, reports of strange noises coming from inside, bring Captain Jack Harkness and Toshiko Sato to investigate and soon they find themselves in a temporal time shift which sees them in 1941 at the height of the Blitz, and the upstairs of the dance hall is alive with singing and dancing, and young airmen ready to go off to war.  It’s also when we see Bilis Manger, just as he’s seeing Jack and Toshiko out of the door for the first time, realising that they’ve been taken back to the past. 

Of course Bilis is aware of this, for he too has been able to move through time, in the time it takes to turn a page of a book.  On his way through time however, he’s made a lucrative business in time pieces, but there’s more than just clocks that are keeping Bilis busy. 

When Gwen investigates the dance hall after Jack and Toshiko go missing she enters Bilis’ office, where all manner of occult items are sitting on desks and behind the chair and on the wall.  Also as Ianto discovers, the name of the caretaker is the same name as the man mentioned in the newspaper at that time (1941) it doesn’t take Ianto long to realise that this could be an elaborate trap and instructs Gwen to get out.

We see Bilis again in episode 13 ‘End of Days’ when after Jack and Toshiko are returned to the present day, Bilis begins to make his appearance to Gwen, someone he feels he can manipulate in order to open the rift.  First he sees her in the police cells and after episode 12, Gwen knows who the old ‘timer’ is.  Snapped out of her sudden moment by Jack, she again sees Bilis at the shop when Jack and she decide to bring him in for questioning, but as he disappears again, he re-appears after Jack leaves the shop.  Gwen unable to leave, is given an insight into the future, her future with Rhys, and after being able to leave, runs home to find Rhys very much alive, but needs to get him to safety and takes him to the one place she knows is safe, The Hub.

Bilis unperturbed, and using his time travelling expertise locates Gwen’s partner Rhys in the cells after he trips the security alarms and unlocks the cell doors.  He kills Rhys!

It’s at this point and during the entire final episode that each member of the team are forced to realise that in order to bring back the ones that they love, they have to open the Rift.  Jack is the only one who knows that this is a trap set down by Bilis, but as more and more sick people fall through the Rift bringing every disease known to man, the world starts seeing it as the end of days.

After Jack is shot and killed by Owen who is ‘tired of being doubted’, and all that has happened, the death of Rhys, the creatures in the cells, the death and judgement day are finally erased, a very large threat looks set to erase the human race for ever. 

“All hail Abadon.”

Bilis Manger knew that if by manipulating the Torchwood team he would be able to bring out the ‘Great Devourer’ Abadon, imprisoned beneath the Rift.  How Bilis Manger unleashed Abadon is found in the book Twilight Streets.  But what happened to Bilis after the Great Devourer was defeated after killing Jack Harkness, we may never know.  Perhaps he is still out there...somewhere.

Murray Melvin who plays Bilis was born in the same year that the Ritz Dance Hall was built. 

He is an actor who has had a very busy career in theatre, in films and on television and has also penned two books titled “The Art of Theatre Workshop (2006) and The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building (2009). 

Last year we interviewed Murray about his career and his role as Bilis Manger, which you can read by clicking on this link - http://projecttorchwood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/interview-with-murray-melvin.html

Murray was born on 10^th August 1932 in Hampstead, London.  During an extended lunch break from his job in the Ministry, he applied to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and between 1957 – 1962 was actively involved in many performances and productions.  Over the years he has worked for many directors but its Joan Littlewood for whom Murray mentions during his interview, and the one person he has campaigned for in order to have a statue erected outside the Theatre Royal in Stratford East, a statue that is requiring a considerable amount of fundraising. 

From theatre work where Murray played Geoffrey in A Taste of Honey, that opened in February 1959 at the Wyndham’s Theatre, he went on to play the film version directed by Tony Richardson, a role for which he won the Prix de Cannes as best actor at the Festival in 1962.  He was also nominated for a BAFTA for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ award.

Murray went on to work with Ken Russell and appeared in Diary of a Nobody, his first film with the director.  From there he went on to play Father Mignon in Ken Russell’s the Devils (1971) where he plays the catalyst in the horror film, which also starred Oliver Reed. 

In television Murray appeared in the first episode of the cult series The Avengers in 1960.  In 1998 he appeared in the Christmas Special episode of Jonathan Creek called “The Black Canary.”  In 2007 he became popular and well known in Torchwood circles as the creepy caretaker Bilis Manger, a name that strikes fear in many, because his character was never killed off, and so he might, just might appear anywhere in the Torchwood universe. 

In 2011 Murray played the Professor in a 15 minute short comedy/drama called The Grey Mile.  It was about a couple of ex master criminals who were confined to a care home.  It co-starred the late Paul Shane as Terry ‘the Taxman’ Tempest and Maggie Tulip as Miss Match.  The entire film was shot on location at Wolterton Hall in Norfolk.  

Much of the information on Murray can be found on Wikipedia, and trust me, there is an extensive list of credits to this talented Englishman.  One day I may have the chance of meeting him, and indeed to see the statue outside of the Theatre Royal in Stratford East.

Information source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Melvin

©BBC Torchwood 2006

Interviews Murray Melvin by DJ Forrest

You starred in a role as the Professor in The Grey Mile with the late Paul Shane, a comedy/drama about two ex master criminals, who lived in a care home.    I can imagine with this great northerner it was a barrel of laughs and not a dry eye in the house, do you have any memorable moments you can share with Project: Torchwood about that shoot?

Murray: It was a short film. 15 minutes. Filmed in a week. There was only time to learn lines! Remember comedy is very serious work.

Bilis appears in two episodes of Torchwood, but also in the book Twilight Streets, his face on the front cover, was this photo taken for a separate photo shoot or was this taken from the series you appeared in?

Murray: Must have been taken by the stills photographer on set

When the casting director contacted you over your role as Bilis, had you been involved in any other role similar to that character?

Murray: No. But I suppose its antecedence must have been Father Mignon in Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’

Are you currently working on any new projects?

Murray: In my theatrical voluntary work I have for the last seven years been campaigning for a Memorial statue to Joan Littlewood (my Alma Mater) in the square in front of the Theatre Royal Stratford East.  This has now been sanctioned and I am in the midst of fund raising and hopefully the statue will be unveiled on her birthday this year the 6^th. October.

When you’re not working, what do you do to relax?

Murray: 23 years as the Theatre Royal’s voluntary archivist!! Perhaps an occasional visit to the Opera or Ballet.

What jobs did you take prior to becoming an actor?  And were you ever involved in stage plays if you were in the services? (I’m judging by your age, you may have been in active service?)

Murray: No not active service but National Service. I started as an office boy in a shipping office in the City of London. Then became The Secretary to the Director of Sports at the Air Ministry after National Service, from there to a student at the Theatre Royal Stratford in the Theatre Workshop Company of Joan Littlewood.

What was the last book you read?

Murray: Richard Dawkins.  The Magic of Reality. Wonderful. Full of the most amazing facts and figures

You have worked with a lot of people over the years, who have been your favourite actors and actresses you’ve worked beside, and who has been the best director?

Murray: Impossible. If you have read my Wikipedia entry you will realise there have been so many. Impossible to chose from that list. The best Director has to be Joan Littlewood. Who gave me my theatrical training plus dance education in the Laban technique

Have you ever written, produced or directed any films for television or cinema? (quite a few actors seem to do that these days, I wondered if you’d had the opportunity in your long career)

Murray: Refer to Wikipedia

Doctor Who celebrates its 50^th Anniversary this year, do you have a favourite memory of the show, or remember what you were doing when the series launched back in November 1963?

Murray: In 1963 I was in the stage musical of ‘Oh What A Lovely War’ so could not watch television

Fans Questions

Mel Purplemonkeydishwasher Bennett: Bilis Manger appears to be a rather complex character. He's evil and manipulative, with the ability to both see and move through time, yet he doesn't express much emotion. What were the challenges with playing a character like this, and what did you enjoy about playing him?

Murray: One cannot play emotion. That is for the audience to feel. Challenges were to expand him from a one dimensional character

Kirsty Price: Does he do any preparation for his role on Torchwood as Bilis?

Murray: The same preparation any actor does in approaching a new part

Christine Oswin Liddle: What happened to Bilis? They just let him get away. Where did he go?

Murray: Good question. He was the one ‘evil’ character that didn’t get killed off. Thought they were saving him for a comeback ! but it didn’t happen. I remember at one time there was a ‘Bring back Billis’ campaign.

Annika Gabriella Brink: Does he prefer to play good guy or bad guy? And has he got a dream-role yet to play?

Murray: These days it’s the bad guys. They usually stand still. It’s the goodies who run around (see Torchwood)

Mickie Newton: What was it that drew you to the character of Bilis Manger?

Murray: What actor wouldn’t be interested in such a character ?

Nikki Forrest: Why is he so scary?

Murray: Perhaps because he is so unpredictable

Hazel Stanton: Do you have any advice for aspiring actors and actresses?

Murray: Would not presume to give advice at my stage!  If you really want you just keep going. Perhaps a tip would be if you are not working then you study everything related. Dance. Movement, Voice, Music, Art. Read as many plays as you can. The more strings to your elbow the more useful you will be. Best of Luck.

Special thanks to Murray Melvin for the interview and signed photo. 

Wikipedia for the links and Google for the photographs.

If you would like to help raise money for the Joan Littlewood Statue, please keep reading

Articles Murray Melvin aka Bilis Manger by DJ Forrest

Murray Melvin aka Bilis Manger

Bilis Manger first appeared on our screens during episode 12 ‘Captain Jack Harkness’, Series One.  Bilis is the caretaker of the old dance hall in Sage Street due to be demolished, reports of strange noises coming from inside, bring Captain Jack Harkness and Toshiko Sato to investigate and soon they find themselves in a temporal time shift which sees them in 1941 at the height of the Blitz, and the upstairs of the dance hall is alive with singing and dancing, and young airmen ready to go off to war.  It’s also when we see Bilis Manger, just as he’s seeing Jack and Toshiko out of the door for the first time, realising that they’ve been taken back to the past. 

Of course Bilis is aware of this, for he too has been able to move through time, in the time it takes to turn a page of a book.  On his way through time however, he’s made a lucrative business in time pieces, but there’s more than just clocks that are keeping Bilis busy. 

When Gwen investigates the dance hall after Jack and Toshiko go missing she enters Bilis’ office, where all manner of occult items are sitting on desks and behind the chair and on the wall.  Also as Ianto discovers, the name of the caretaker is the same name as the man mentioned in the newspaper at that time (1941) and as Gwen describes the large photograph of Bilis wearing a cravat it doesn’t take Ianto long to realise that this could be an elaborate trap and instructs Gwen to get out.

We see Bilis again in episode 13 ‘End of Days’ when after Jack and Toshiko are returned to the present day, Bilis begins to make his appearance to Gwen, someone he feels he can manipulate in order to open the rift. 

First he sees her in the police cells and after episode 12, Gwen knows who the old ‘timer’ is. Snapped out of her sudden moment by Jack, she again sees Bilis at the shop when Jack and she decide to bring him in for questioning, but as he disappears again, he re-appears after Jack leaves the shop. 

Gwen unable to leave, is given an insight into the future, her future with Rhys, and after being able to leave, runs home to find Rhys very much alive, but needs to get him to safety and takes him to the one place she knows is safe, The Hub.

Bilis unperturbed, and using his time travelling expertise locates Gwen’s partner Rhys in the cells after he trips the security alarms and unlocks the cell doors.  He kills Rhys!

It’s at this point and during the entire final episode that each member of the team are forced to realise that in order to bring back the ones that they love, they have to open the Rift.  Jack is the only one who knows that this is a trap set down by Bilis, but as more and more sick people fall through the Rift bringing every disease known to man, the world starts seeing it as the end of days.

After Jack is shot and killed by Owen who is ‘tired of being doubted’, and all that has happened, the death of Rhys, the creatures in the cells, the death and judgement day are finally erased, a very large threat looks set to erase the human race for ever. 

“All hail Abadon.”

Bilis Manger knew that if by manipulating the Torchwood team he would be able to bring out the ‘Great Devourer’ Abadon, imprisoned beneath the Rift.  How Bilis Manger unleashed Abadon is found in the book Twilight Streets.  But what happened to Bilis after the Great Devourer was defeated after killing Jack Harkness, we may never know.  Perhaps he is still out there...somewhere.

Murray Melvin who plays Bilis was born in the same year that the Ritz Dance Hall was built. 

He is an actor who has had a very busy career in theatre, in films and on television and has also penned two books titled “The Art of Theatre Workshop (2006) and The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building (2009). 

Murray was born on 10^th August 1932 in Hampstead, London.  During an extended lunch break from his job in the Ministry, he applied to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and between 1957 – 1962 was actively involved in many performances and productions.  

Over the years he has worked for many directors but its Joan Littlewood for whom Murray mentions during his interview, and the one person he has campaigned for in order to have a statue erected outside the Theatre Royal in Stratford East, a statue that is requiring a considerable amount of fundraising. 

From theatre work where Murray played Geoffrey in A Taste of Honey, that opened in February 1959 at the Wyndham’s Theatre, he went on to play the film version directed by Tony Richardson, a role for which he won the Prix de Cannes as best actor at the Festival in 1962.  He was also nominated for a BAFTA for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ award.

Murray went on to work with Ken Russell and appeared in Diary of a Nobody, his first film with the director.  From there he went on to play Father Mignon in Ken Russell’s the Devils (1971) where he plays the catalyst in the horror film, which also starred Oliver Reed. 

In television Murray appeared in the first episode of the cult series The Avengers in 1960.  In 1998 he appeared in the Christmas Special episode of Jonathan Creek called “The Black Canary.”  In 2007 he became popular and well known in Torchwood circles as the creepy caretaker Bilis Manger, a name that strikes fear in many, because his character was never killed off, and so he might, just might appear anywhere in the Torchwood universe. 

In 2011 Murray played the Professor in a 15 minute short comedy/drama called The Grey Mile.  It was about a couple of ex master criminals who were confined to a care home.  It co-starred the late Paul Shane as Terry ‘the Taxman’ Tempest and Maggie Tulip as Miss Match.  The entire film was shot on location at Wolterton Hall in Norfolk.   

Much of the information on Murray can be found on Wikipedia, and trust me, there is an extensive list of credits to this talented Englishman.  One day I may have the chance of meeting him, and indeed to see the statue outside of the Theatre Royal in Stratford East.

Information source –  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Melvin