TV REVIEW : Crude Plot Shifts but Nice Cars on ‘Campion’

Public television launches a new “Mystery!” season tonight, but the results are mixed, even for die-hard fans of British crime fiction.

The mild-mannered snooping of blue-nosed detective Albert Campion, played with twitty charm by English actor Peter Davison, is fetching, and the British 1930s countryside setting is a cozy respite from urban crime zones. But the opening two-parter, “Campion: A Case of the Late Pig” (at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15, with the concluding episode airing next Thursday) is meandering to the point of distraction.

The plot twists are stagy, even crude. More interesting are the nifty roadsters, the manors, the tweeds, the evening wear (people dress for dinner) and the geranium urns. One of those pots is a weapon.

The show anticipates a series in which style and tone seem far superior to content. Having never read a Margery Allingham thriller, four of which were adapted into “Mystery’s” eight weekly installments (two episodes to a story), I can’t guage what justice or injustice was done to the late British novelist. But the debuting two episodes squander their modest pearls on a script (by Jill Hyem) leaden with red herrings.

Seeking the killer of an unbeloved, old school chum aptly known as Pig, Davison’s Campion cuts a Clark Kent-like figure with his round eye glasses and his awkward sex appeal.

An actress with the melodic name of Dilys Laye delivers a bouquet of a performance as a frilly hostess of chirpy sophistication; in fact, she almost steals the hour. Brian Glover is the hero’s pugnacious valet.

During the hokey capture of the murderer and the protagonist’s unabashed explanation of the plot convolutions (concluding the second episode next week), director Robert Chetwyn loses his grip entirely. Even Hitchcock could not have salvaged this amateur ending.