Teresa Reviews Cat Among the Pigeons (2022)

Episodes 7-9 of “Checkmate” or, “Min Guo Da Zhen Tan,” “Great Detective of the Republic of China”

The episode title in Chinese means “The Case of the Haunted Girls School”

Source: Ebay listing

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 2 guns

The basic plot remains but with added soap, a wildly different culture, major personality changes, and the first story in The Labours of Hercules!

Quality of film: 2½ guns

The film meandered all over Harbin. Shoving in an entire short story got in the way of the main story, slowing it down and making it more confusing.

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This version, at least The Cat Among the Pigeons part, is so different that only one character carries over relatively similar to her counterpart. That’s Ann Shapland, secretary to the school’s principal, Fan Lihua. Fan Lihua is supposedly in charge of the posh girls’ school, but it’s really the vice-principal, Luo Jinyan who runs the place. That role-reversal was never explained so if you’re trying to figure out which one is Miss Bulstrode and which one is Miss Chadwick, you won’t.

Fan Lihua feared her vice-principal, deferring to her and letting her make the decisions and learning why this power imbalance took place would have been interesting. Blackmail, perhaps? A connection to the larger story arc about corruption across China? Or local power hierarchies and the vice-principal was some very powerful man’s mistress?

I speculate because you’ll never learn the answer, even when Fan Lihua confesses to bashing in Luo Jinyan’s head with a brick. That was the perfect time to admit she was forced to let Luo Jinyan run the school by nefarious outsiders, justifying why she picked up that brick.

Instead of addressing this unneeded complexity, the scriptwriter chose to shoehorn in the plot of “The Nemean Lion,” the first short story in The Labours of Hercules. That’s the one where a browbeaten, getting-old companion with a handicapped sister and a Pekinese dog colluded with other browbeaten, getting-old companions to kidnap rich women’s Pekinese dogs and hold them for ransom, earning money for their otherwise destitute old age.

Does a rich woman show up at Situ Yan’s new detective agency looking for her kidnapped Pekinese? No, his mysterious would-be girlfriend, Zhou Mowan, a teacher at the posh girls’ school, comes to him begging for help with one of her students. The young lady’s daughter was kidnapped in public. An extremely well-connected young lady, the daughter of a banker, yet she’s got an illegitimate child? She doesn’t look old enough, especially if she’s still attending what amounts to a finishing school but that’s what she claims.

Although you won’t learn this detail until the daughter is rescued, Situ Yan was instantly suspicious when he heard the story. Young women of good family do not have illegitimate children. If they do, those kids get disappeared quickly, adopted by distant relatives in the family to save face. There’s nothing public about it and anyway, little kids being dragged off in a public park by a stranger tend to make a fuss. As it turns out, Zhou Mowan (who Situ Yan met in the previous story arc in a café) isn’t the suspicious sort. She’s nonplussed when Situ Yan is unconcerned even though he takes the case. She’s even more nonplussed when the daughter is revealed to be the spoiled girl’s treasured Pekinese.

Meanwhile, Luo Shaochuan investigates the far more important and unrelated case taking place at the same posh girls’ school the Pekinese owner attends. This case is murder, a subject you’d think Situ Yan would take more interest in. I couldn’t figure out why he took the kidnapping case, other than a pretty girl asked him to and it annoyed his friend Luo Shaochuan.

You’ll spot a few other parallels at the haunted girls’ school to Meadowbank. Very few. It’s all female, other than the handyman running around with a paintbrush.

As you’d expect, he turns out to be there for reasons other than maintenance. But is he connected to Chinese intelligence trying to protect the student body from nefarious outsiders? No, he’s some kind of gangster from a nearby city, Fengtian (today called Shenyang), with surprising connections to the students and the teachers at the posh school.

The stolen gems came from Fengtian, innocently transported to Harbin by Ye Zhenzhen inside her violin. Her violin? Yep, no tennis rackets or sports pavilions or sadistic PE teachers here. Instead, you get Lin Jie, a sadistic music teacher who might have connections to Fengtian, but I couldn’t tell. Like Miss Springer, everyone’s glad to see her shot dead over her piano, even if they don’t like the damage to the piano or murder in the school. Ye Zhenzhen has an uncle in Fengtian. He’s the one who hid the gems inside her violin and putting his niece at risk. He’s also dead, but at the hands of rival gangsters? Revolutionaries? Competing businessmen? The criminal conspiracy to undermine the Republic of China? The subtitles weren’t always clear.

Eileen Rich, the teacher who spent the last year on leave, has a very loose parallel as Li Pei, Mandarin teacher. She also spent time in Fengtian, but it wasn’t to have a baby out of wedlock like Eileen. It was to end her affair with a married man.

Xia Ruan, our Ann Shapland analog, also has connections to Fengtian. She was a proofreader for a newspaper (or a magazine?) owned by Ye Zhenzhen’s uncle? At any rate, she knew about the stolen gems and was willing to shoot several people to get them and, when captured, fully justify her actions because she was browbeaten, getting older, and poor.

The major red herring (besides kidnapped Pekinese dogs) is whether or not the murders in the posh girls’ school have anything to do with the suicide seven years earlier by a princess also from Fengtian! She hung herself in the music room and it’s been haunted ever since.

Is her ghost shooting people? This notion is quickly dispensed with. Much, much more time is spent on the princess’ unwanted lover? Hated fiancé? A would-be lover or girlfriend looking for revenge on Lin Jie because she’s from Fengtian and knew about the princess’ tragic suicide? I was confused. Whoever subtitled this didn’t write clearly enough, and they were run by too fast, and made the print mouse-sized.

While Luo Shaochuan investigates, he learns more about the Harbin police department. Sergeant Bao turns out to have connections in high places too (but not, thank God in Fengtian that everyone else seems to). He plays mahjongg with Harbin’s police commissioner. That’s not something a low-level flunky gets to do. Will this lead to something other than Bao telling Luo Shaochuan to watch his step and not irritate the movers and shakers of Harbin? We’ll find out.

We also see more signs of how the class structure works in Harbin. Jin Qiming, cub reporter, knows his place. Situ Yan and Luo Shaochuan routinely boss him around, send him on errands, and tell him to rewrite newspaper articles so he doesn’t release embarrassing details and everyone thinks this is normal. Including, I guess, the boss and staff at Jin Qiming’s newspaper. He doesn’t work for Situ Yan or Luo Shaochuan. He works for the newspaper but you’d never know it.

The more I watch of Checkmate, the greater the feeling I’m glimpsing an alien culture. If you decide to watch it yourself (and you should), don’t be surprised. Harbin isn’t the U.S. or the U.K. That’s why the police can bring in costumed and masked dancers to repel ghosts of suicides and the locals don’t question the decision, other than complain the dancers are annoying and get in the way.