Call the Gun Expert

1 9 6 4 (UK)
6 x 30 minute episodes

This police procedural drama from the BBC dealt with famous historical murder cases investigated by ballistics expert Robert Churchill (Wensley Pithey).

Churchill was not always triumphant, and some episodes showed him baffled – when his opinion was a matter of controversy; when his evidence got a known murderer freed; and when he refused to give evidence in the defence of a man who was found innocent.

Episodes tackled the shooting murder of Police Constable Gutteridge of the Essex Constabulary in 1927; the fatal shooting of a famous Chinese magician while performing his dangerous trick “Catching The Bullets” at the Wood Green Empire in 1918; the murder of a factory girl in Lancashire in 1919; the case of a 17-year-old boy shooting his own mother in 1926; the shooting murder of a gamekeeper by a poacher in 1927; and the murder of farmer James Dawson on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1934.

Macdonald Hastings narrated. He also wrote the episodes which were based on the actual cases of the real-life Robert Churchill – Scotland Yard’s pioneer gun expert – with events enacted as they happened and in the actual locations.

For 50 years, in almost every important case involving a shooting, Churchill was called to investigate. He gave expert testimony, often in dramatic circumstances, in many of the most famous and fascinating murder cases of the 20th century.

Wensley Pithey was highly acclaimed for capturing the spirit of Churchill.

Robert Churchill
Wensley Pithe
Narrator
Macdonald Hastings

Episodes

The Jockey Cap Case – 1927 | The Trick That Failed – 1918 | The Green Bicycle Case – 1919 | The Teenage Murderer – 1926 | The Whistling Copse – 1927 | The Perfect Crime – 1934