Identify a public television program about a bad father in law?

June 14, 2005 9:03 AM

Help me identify a program I saw on television many years ago about widower with a wealthy and nasty father-in-law who humiliates his friends in exchange for gifts?

It's been years so I may misremember some of the details. I believe I saw this on public television. As I recall, the story is a man's wife dies in an accident. He falls in with his father-in-law, who is very wealthy and has a group of "friends" who he subjects to bizarre humiliations... in return for which they receive lavish gifts from him. I recall one scene where they are invited to dinner and fed almost inedible porridge. In the final scene he presents the group with a selection of christmas crackers (i.e. those British christmas pull-toys) which, he informs them, all but one have a large sum of money in them... but the one contains an explosive charge. It was a bizarre story and it stuck with me all these years. Bonus points if anyone can identify whether it came from a story or play.

posted by nanojath to media & arts (6 answers total)

Isn't this Graham Greene - Dr. Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party? I didn't know it had been filmed.
posted by TimothyMason at 9:44 AM on June 14, 2005

Is it Dr. Fischer of Geneva?
posted by Floydd at 9:45 AM on June 14, 2005

That's it. You guys never cease to amaze me. Thanks.
posted by nanojath at 10:56 AM on June 14, 2005

Good lord, what a cast: James Mason, Alan Bates, Greta Scacchi, Cyril Cusack... I'll have to look for this.
posted by languagehat at 11:19 AM on June 14, 2005

Sounds like a pretty big rip off of The Magic Christian.
posted by squant at 11:35 AM on June 14, 2005

Different Strokes?
posted by dial-tone at 11:42 AM on June 14, 2005