AustLit

A film version of Dion Titheradge's play of the same name, in which a gang of international spies are tracked to a Kentish inn called The Crooked Billet by a retired Scotland Yard detective.

'The Crooked Billet, by Dion Titheradge, which was seen on the television screen on Tuesday, is a gangster-and-sleuth play, in which the cards, or rather the revolvers, are held first by one side and then by the other in bewildering succession until at last even the help of the police is invoked by the chief criminal in a last desperate effort to outwit his opponents, an effort which nearly succeeds.

'The whole action passes in the inn parlour of the Crooked Billet, and doped drinks, a loose brick in the wall hollowed out and containing a secret dossier, bloodstains appearing on the ceiling, and a bomb with a time fuse in the grandfather clock inter alia, are sufficient to keep the mind alert and the heart beating a trifle too fast for comfort. This was good entertainment, well-maintained, and the gentle raillery of master-criminal and Scotland Yard detective, when the situation is discussed over a bottle of brandy before it is clear who is going to win, provided a pleasant interlude. The production by Mr. George More O'Ferrall was straightforward and successful and the use of silence at particular points was very effective. But we should have liked to have got out of the inn parlour now and then during the 75-minute run of the play, and so have escaped from the limitations of the theatre.'

Source:

'Television Drama. "The Crooked Billet".' The Times, 18 March 1938, p.14.