The Murderer

Thirteen Against Fate (TV Series)

Directed by Alan Bridges
Writer: Clive Exton (writer), Georges Simenon (novel)

Episode aired 28 August 1966
Repeated: 14 September 1967

  • Frank Finlay . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Hans Kuperus
    Michael Goodliffe . . . . . . . . . . Franz van Malderen
    Annette Crosbie . . . . . . . . . . Nell
    Lyndon Brook . . . . . . . . . . Police Superintendent
    Jeremy Spenser . . . . . . . . . . Karl Vorberg
    Denis Holmes . . . . . . . . . . Schutter
    Robert Sansom . . . . . . . . . . Kees
    John Moore . . . . . . . . . . Waiter
    Peter Jesson Peter Jesson . . . . . . . . . . Policeman
    Harry Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . Old man by canal
    Charles Maunsell . . . . . . . . . . Old man in surgery
    Norman Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . Loos
    Stephanie Bidmead . . . . . . . . . . Jane van Malderen
    John Gill . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Greef



  • Produced by Irene Shubik, based on 13 non-Maigret stories by Georges Simenon.

    In mid-September 2010 the Library of Congress discovered some 68 rare British TV recordings in the Library's National Educational Television Collection. They handed over digital copies of all of these to a very grateful British Film Institute (BFI).

    Thankfully these included the series Thirteen Against Fate which was long considered 'missing, believed wiped'. Now, along with the few surviving episodes held by the BFI, the discovery of the rest of the series (ten additional episodes from the Library of Congress) makes this, finally, a complete series.


  • The original story was particularly interesting, concentrating as it did upon the mind and motive of a murderer who was never finally charged, and [Clive] Exton built a powerful play upon it.

    It was set in a respectable little Dutch town where Dr. Kuperus shot his wife and her lover and the story follows his gradual disintegration as he becomes the object of suspicion.

    The Guardian 29 August 1966

    TONIGHT'S Simenon story concentrates not on how or by whom a murder was done, but on why it was done. Dr. Hans Kuperus practises medicine in a small, eminently respectable Dutch town. His wife has taken a lover, and so one day the Doctor commits murder. To all appearances it is just another rather common place crime passional. But there is more to this killing: it is not just jealous vengeance. Rather it is a gesture of defiance, a grandiose gesture, by a small man.

    'The Murderer' has been dramatised from Simenon's novel by the television playwright Clive Exton. Frank Finlay - currently to be seen as Iago in the film version of Olivier's Othello - plays Dr, Kuperus.

    Radio Times August 27 - September 2 1966