Thirteen and a half of the fifteen episodes survive – but only two of the eight Further Mysteries of Dr Fu-Manchu from a year later. It’s sod’s law that the wholly missing episode is the first (‘The Scented Envelopes’), which presumably introduces the characters and explains their relationships. As it is, it’s hard to tell what official position the Holmes-and-Watson team of Sir Denis Nayland Smith (Fred Paul) and Dr Petrie (Humbertson Wright) have as they aid Inspector Weymouth (Frank Wilson) of Scotland Yard in the fight against the insidious Dr Fu-Manchu (Harry Agar Lyons). We also come in late on the on-off romance between the somewhat mature Petrie and the slave girl Karamaneh (Joan Clarkson), who shuttles back and forth between both camps throughout.
Early episodes find the villain after something or someone (the inventor of an aerial torpedo in ‘The West Case’, the death of a colonial dignitary who opposes his schemes in far-off Bhutan in ‘The Call of Siva’) but when things get settled, the serial concentrates on a simple feud between the villain and the heroes, with both attacking in turn. Fu-Manchu is blown to pieces half-way through but turns up alive without even a cursory explanation; then again, a particular blackfaced stuntman Dacoit gets shot dead and/or falls from a height at least four times over the course of the serial. Rather more inconveniencing than being exploded is a shot to the head from the treacherous Karamaneh that leaves Fu-Manchu apparently dead again. He spends the next episode as ‘The Man With the Limp’ (a transparent mystery guise), and is then cured by a kidnapped surgeon (and Petrie) in ‘The Queen of Hearts’; the operation leaves a scar seen in the next episode but healed thereafter.
The episodes all feel like anecdotes, built around a gimmick apiece: a cat with poisoned claws, the Fungi Cellars, a fake haunted house, a torture involving a cage contraption of rats (the oft-evoked ‘wire jackets’ must have featured in the first episode), a snake-headed walking stick that conceals a real deadly snake (‘Aaron’s Rod’). A recurring thread involves disguises which fool no one (even the Watson-like Petrie usually sees through them) – with the heroes occasionally getting up as waterfront roughs to patronise opium dens, Karamaneh dressing as a male hunchback and Fu-Manchu donning a long beard to appear as Professor Jenner Monde (and his statue at Mme Tussaud’s). The most interesting aspect of the series is its frequent on-location filming in and around London, with glimpses of authentic street-life; the most spectacular moments come in a waterfront episode as Petrie dangles from a crane to make an escape, trading shots with the Dacoits. Given that later Fu Manchu movies (cf: The Mask of Fu Manchu) let rip with the ‘yellow peril’ racism, it’s interesting that the interracial affair between Petrie and Karamaneh isn’t seen as a problem (the character disappeared from subsequent films, though she’s in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu), only one token mild racial insult is uttered in a dialogue title and it’s made clear in the final episode – after Nayland Smith has rather unheroically shot the unarmed and fleeing masterfiend several times in the back – that the Chinese people are glad to be rid of the villain.
