The Maple Drive 3
Solicitor Henry Farr (Robert Lindsay) has had enough, no sooner has he woken up the nagging starts as his wife Elinor (Alison Steadman) seems to fill her days with moaning and belittling him in anyway possible. It is why he decides to do what Everett Maltby, the Wimbledon Poisoner, did and poison his wife. After managing to acquire some deadly poison he laces a chicken with it with a plan of serving it for dinner. Things go wrong when family friend Dr. Donald (Larry Lamb) shows up and ends up eating a huge amount of chicken with a tragic consequence. But as Henry tries to poison Elinor again at the wake other close friends start to fall victim whilst Henry has to contend with Inspector Rush (Philip Jackson) who is a friend of Elinors and believes that they have a serial killer in Maple Drive.
Slap Reggie Perrin in a stage play where he wants to murder his wife and what you have is the black comedy "The Wimbledon Poisoner". As such what we have is Henry Farr having been pushed to the brink by his nagging wife not only fantasises about killing her he decides to do it and like Reggie Perrin we hear his inner thoughts and mumblings as he sets about on his nefarious plans. Although considering they are nefarious it is thanks to Robert Lindsay's comically commanding performance and delivery of the witty dialogue that you find yourself championing him in his quest to kill.
But "The Wimbledon Poisoner" is very much a comedy of errors and one failed attempt to kill has a knock on effect and before Henry knows it he is not only delivering an expletive filled eulogy at a funeral but ending up knocking off others all the time the one person he wants to kill keeps accidentally evading him. And then that leads to some squeaky bottom comedy thanks to the dry nature of Inspector Rush prying in to Henry's affairs. I will stop there but will say that tha if you are a fan of daft British black comedy then you are going to love this especially those who enjoy Robert Lindsay playing a sarcastic put upon husband, a role which he brilliantly played later on in "My Family".
What this all boils down to is that "The Wimbledon Poisoner" is a lot of daft fun, a wonderful black comedy full of recognizable British stars having fun with daft lines which can't not fail to make you smile.
