Acting
Hancock's Half Hour is a BBC television comedy series of the 1950s and 60s written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock with Sid James. The final series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development.
Professor Norman Wedgwood and his team are planning another rocket mission to the Moon. Once again, Geoff, Valerie and Jimmy are on hand to witness the launch of a new rocket MR1, along with journalist friend Conway Henderson. However, when the automatic supply ship MR2 fails to launch Henderson and the children make a desperate rescue attempt with Jimmy's pet Hamlet.
A secondary mission in a new rocket, MR4, to the Moon takes off from Buchan Island. This time Henderson takes the lead role as pilot accompanied by Professor Wedgwood's oldest son Geoff as radio operator, Professor Mary Meadows, Henderson's niece Margret along with Hamlet. However one of the crew turns out to be science writer named Harcourt Brown who has plans to divert the ship to Mars determined there is life on the planet. Brown succeeds in getting MR4 to Mars, but with the length of the journey, the crew decide that the only way to get home is to find water on Mars.
Two rival gangs are trying to fix horse races and a jockey is attacked and left for dead in a stage-managed car crash. An insurance investigator makes routine enquiries into the "accident" and one of the gang leaders feels threatened by this and takes counter measures.
An ex-con escapes from jail to clear himself about a robbery charge
Charthurst Green, Kent, 1966. Pauline Cox accompanies Mike Robins to a village cricket match in which he is playing, but becomes bored and wanders away. She fetches up at the local railway station, where she is first entertained to tea by the garrulous, hunchbacked station master, then upset by the intrusion of the latter's assistant Ewen, who proceeds to kill a rabbit in her presence. Making her way back to the match, Pauline is waylaid by the simple-minded Ewen as she crosses an apple orchard; when his advances become violent, she tries to fight him off and he strangles her. The station master helps in covering up the murder, burying the corpse in the orchard.
