George Treet (Nicholas Evans) is an affected, self-proclaimed genius and part of the Treet family’s group of travelling players entertaining in the hostelries of England.
One night, a stranger (Valentine Dyall) visits the head of the family with an important message. It is time for Mr Treet to reveal to George that the boy is not a Treet after all but in fact a nobleman, the son of Baron Dexter.
Quite taken by this thought – which explains a lot to him about his regal manner – George journeys to his new family home only to find a cold and inhospitable mansion and a dying father. Worse still, he finds himself tangled up in an old family feud and faces death somewhere out there in the fog.
While The Devil in the Fog functioned ostensibly as an adventure story, there was also the realisation for George that, while his birthright may have been the noble Dexter seat, his true family were the down-to-earth Treets.
For the Associated-Rediffusion series, the character of George was aged up a good few years from the 14-year-old of Leon Garfield’s Grand Guignol novel of the 18th century (although the novel was actually an ersatz piece of faux Dickensania written just two years earlier. It had won the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction in 1967).
A key filming location was the moated house, Ightham Mote, near Sevenoaks in Kent.
George Treet
Nicholas Evans Salathiel Treet
Martin Dempsey Edward Treet
Keith Skinner Jane Treet
Diana Simpson Hotspur Treet
John Moulder-Brown Rose Treet
Verina Greenlaw Sir John Dexter
Richard Leech Captain Richard Dexter
Gary Watson Lady Dexter
Stephanie Bidmead Joseph
Milton Johns The Stranger
Valentine Dyall Mrs Goater
Peggy Ann Clifford
Episodes
Some Are Born of Greatness… | Some Have Greatness Thrust Upon Them… | O My Prophetic Soul: My Uncle! | That One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain… | Fair Is Foul, and Foul Is Fair… | … This Fell Serjeant, Death …
