Missing But Not Forgotten: The Last Detective

The Drama Channel have just concluded showing the ITV drama series The Last Detective starring Peter Davison as 'Dangerous' Davies, the undervalued detective whose superiors think of as the 'last detective" in line to be assigned cases of any importance.

The series ran on ITV from 2003 -2007 during which time there were 17 episodes made.  The penultimate episode The Man from Montevideo (broadcast on 24 May 2007) had an unexpected topless scene ("unexpected" because it wasn't the sort of series you'd have expected would have one).

In a subplot to the episode Dangerous Davies' friend and lodger Mod (Sean Hughes) meets an attractive East European barmaid called Katrina (Ksenia Zaitseva) and they start going out.  But she has an insatiable sexual appetite and Mod is soon exhausted and so when she comes knocking on the front door for him late at night he sends Dangerous down to fob her off.  As the door opens Katrina throws back her head and opens her coat revealing herself to be naked and ready - but then screams and turns tail when she opens her eyes and sees it is Dangerous standing there and not Mod.

I didn't issue a "Heads Up" because the way the Drama Channel were showing the series left doubt about whether the scene would survive.  For each episode over the course of a week they were showing them thrice: during the day; early evening (pre-watershed); and in a late night slot.  So knowing they would inevitably have to edit this episode for pre-watershed viewing it was unclear whether they would show it uncut in the late night slot or just lazily show the same cut version in all timeslots - so I erred on the side of caution.

As it turned out they did show a different, more complete version in the late night slot, but unfortunately it was still cut anyway!  The pre-watershed version was 7 minutes shorter which was achieved by cutting out nearly all of the scenes involving Katrina.  So if you watched the early showing then you wouldn't have seen much of her at all other than her initial scene in the pub when she and Mod meet.  The scene at the door with Peter Davison was missing entirely.

The late night version (shown at 23:40) restored all the missing scenes.  However when it got to the moment when she opens her coat at the front door the scene has an abrupt cut.  The front door opens and we see her standing there in her coat and then suddenly in a reverse angle shot she is running away in distress - seemingly simply because she sees Peter Davison standing there.  It must have seemed a rather odd and unexplained overreaction on her part to any viewer who didn't know how the scene was meant to play out.

It seems strange that the channel would restore all the removed footage but still make a tiny cut to this scene - so I wonder if the scene was altered like this on their original source.  Perhaps it is cut on the official DVD release as well - does anyone know?

Cut Sequence

In this collage the top row shows two consecutive frames on the Drama Channel broadcast which bridge the removed part and below that is a run of frames from the original TV broadcast showing what we were meant to see.

Ksenia Zaitseva (as she was originally credited) is now known as Ksenia Kaas.  She is a British/Russian actress who trained and lives in the UK.  The Last Detective was her first British TV work and she has subsequently had roles in Doctors, Trial and Retribution, The Bill, Holby City and Sirens as well as a few UK films.

Mystery Model Identified: Donna Dillingham

Thanks to a blog reader, a query from November 2013 has now been solved.

In the original blog entry "Uncredited Model in Various 1990s Programmes" I proffered my observation of the same unidentified model/actress being seen in a goodly number of TV dramas from the late 1990s.

She has now been identified as Donna Dillingham who was a men's magazine glamour model in the 1980s and 1990s

Donna Dillingham, from her younger modelling days

Although she was never credited in any of the programmes I saw her in, she does have an IMDB entry and was credited in a number of other things that I hadn't seen.

Here are the programmes in which she has appeared topless:-

Uncredited appearance in the 1998 BBC2 one-off drama Touch and Go

Uncredited dancer in a 1999 episode of BBC1 comedy series Roger Roger

In a 1999 episode of The Vice (Sons) she was seen as an uncredited woman on a video that PC Doug Raymond is viewing for evidence.  And in a 2000 episode of the same programme (Walking On Water) she is seen dancing on the floor at the feet of a group of men - seen briefly through an open doorway when undercover detectives Pat Chapel and Cheryl Hutchins are taken to a restricted part of the club they are infiltrating.

Another topless appearance I've just found out about after looking her name up was in a drama-documentary series called Hidden Empire.  In episode 4 A Son Of Africa she is seen washing in a bedroom.  This was shown on BBC2 on 29 Jan 1996 at 7:30pm.

Straight acting roles with no nudity
In a 1994 BBC1 Screen One presentation called Two Golden Balls she was one of six uncredited auditioning starlets hoping to get a part in the blue film being made by the main characters of the drama.  She's the one in the red dress.



She played an uncredited speaking character called "Diane" in The Secret World of Michael Fry, a 2-part C4 drama from 2000.

In a 2000 episode of Holby City entitled Into The Woods she plays a strip-o-gram stripping out of a policewoman's uniform for a patient celebrating his 50th birthday until she is stopped by a nurse (therefore no nudity) - she has a speaking role too and is credited in this.

In episode 3 of C4's 6-part 1999 comedy series about the music industry Boyz Unlimited she plays a make- up lady getting diva-ish boyband member James Corden ready for a photoshoot.  She has a speaking role and is credited.

Her IMDB entry shows she was also two 1993 episodes of Demob playing a dancer; in the final 1998 episode of The Broker's Man, and an episode of The Wilson's from 2000.  She is also listed for a 1995 film called Cynthia Payne's House of Cyn.  It's not known at the moment whether any of these roles involve any nudity or not.




Update: 8th January 2016
Spot the difference.  I see someone has been paying attention.  All but one of the above new "spots" have now been added to IMDB.  All except for Roger Roger, presumably because the exact episode she appeared in is not established.