Lord Peter Wimsey

Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of television serial adaptations of five Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers starring Ian Carmichael broadcast on BBC One between 1972 and 1975, beginning with Clouds of Witness in April 1972. Cast Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey Glyn Houston as Mervyn Bunter (Clouds of Witness, The Nine Tailors, Five Red Herrings) Derek Newark as Mervyn Bunter (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club) Mark Eden as Inspector Charles Parker (Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors) Rachel Herbert as Lady Mary Wimsey (Clouds of Witness, Murder Must Advertise) Production The adaptations star Ian Carmichael as aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, the second son of the Duke of Denver. Not wanting for money, charm or intelligence, Wimsey takes up detective work as an amateur pursuit, using his connections and social status to assist the police in their investigations. Carmichael played the role concurrently in a series of BBC Radio 4 adaptations from 1973, which eventually completed the whole sequence of Sayers's novels. In The Radio Detectives (1999), Carmichael recalls that he had hoped to continue with further television adaptations, but acknowledged that by 1975 he was too old to play the part onscreen for the sequence of more romantic novels featuring crime writer Harriet Vane. He felt that as a result of a technician strike, production of the fifth adaptation under a new producer, Bill Sellars, was not as successful, after which the series was not renewed. (Three later television adaptations of the Harriet Vane stories were produced as A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery with Edward Petherbridge as Wimsey in 1987.)