Review Michael J Bird's Dark Side Of The Sun (1983)

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
This is the fourth series in Michael J Bird's quartet of series set in the Mediterranean.
After Lotus Eaters, Who Pays The Ferryman and Aphrodite Inheritance, comes this six parter set in Rhodes.
Patrick Mower plays Don Tierney , a journalist who stumbles on clandestine meetings on Rhodes involving a right wing group who follow the medieval Knights Templar , the order set up to fight the crusades. This almost masonic group in Rhodes has a definite tinge of Nazism about it, and is led by Raoul Lavalliere, a strange character played by Peter Egan.
Mower's character Tierney dies in episode 1 after escaping from the clutches of this right wing group, but we see Mower in subsequent episodes, possibly as a ghost. I say possibly because this is a mindboggling confusing story, as Lavalliere is capable of hypnosis and when Anne Tierney ( Emily Richard) investigates her husband's death she sees her dead husband in various places, back from the dead, or is it Lavalliere hypnotising her to seeing this image. A lot of detail is revealed about the original Knights Templar Order and the possibility arises that Lavalliere is the from the original Knights, having lived 700 years!
Lavalliere also tantalizingly seems capable of teleportation.
This as you can see is a bizarre series, I've watched it twice and am not totally sure what it's about. Available on DVD only at present, but worth a watch.
Appearance also by Michael Sheard, Lawrence Scarman in Dr Who as Colonel Von Reitz, a Nazi sympathising second in command to Lavalliere.

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