Warm Memories of Frost

While we await, with bated breath, the publication of Mike Ripley’s May “Getting Away with Murder” column in Shots, the author-critic delivers a fine appreciation in that same Webzine of his friend and fellow novelist Rodney “R.D.” Wingfield, who died of cancer last August at age 79. Arguably the most interesting part of Ripley’s encomium is his account of the process by which actor David Jason became Wingfield’s Detective Inspector William Edward “Jack” Frost on television, and the novelist’s reaction to that portrayal:

In 1992, there were two undisputed super stars of British television. One was John Thaw, most famously for Inspector Morse, and the other was David Jason who, after a string of comedy dramas could virtually do anything he wanted. Whilst searching for a new vehicle for his talents, Jason, or so the story goes, toyed with the idea of a detective character, not surprisingly as “cop shows” were all the rage.

According to Richard Bates, David Jason went on a scuba-diving holiday with three detective novels in his luggage. In some versions of the story, one of the three was one of my titles, Angel Hunt, but I’ve never really believed that. One of them certainly was A Touch of Frost and it was the one David Jason liked. After radio and novels, Inspector Frost was to become a household name thanks to television.

Although a great popular success, there was one viewer (among the millions) who remained unimpressed--Rodney Wingfield. He once told me: “I have nothing against David Jason as Frost at all, he just isn’t my Frost” and, legend has it, he was ferociously critical of the pilot episode script. After that pilot episode aired in December 1992, Rodney claimed never to have watched another episode and he declined to appear on ITV’s 2006 Super Sleuths, a retrospective appreciation of television detectives. He would say that he would only know that a new series was in the offing by watching TV award shows to see if David Jason had a moustache or not.

For those who don’t know, Wingfield’s last Frost novel, A Killing Frost, was published recently in Britain. I’ve only just started reading the book, so was fascinated to discover Ripley’s history of that series and his recollections of its author.

The Shots tribute can be found here.