Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E23, "Back for Christmas"

In a stroke of good luck, we cover this one right at the start of December.

This is another episode that saw Hitchcock himself behind the camera, and it’s a major tonal shift from his previous work on the show. “Revenge” was despairing, and “Breakdown” was a high-concept white-knuckler; “Back for Christmas” is a breezy good time. It’s an episode that captures the spirit of Hitch’s mordantly witty hosting.

Our stars this week are John Williams—last seen on “The Long Shot,” and as I mentioned then, he was a recurring second-tier Hitchcock player; he’s in Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, and The Paradine Case, but I know him best as a Billy Wilder player in Sabrina andWitness for the Prosecution¹—and Isobel Elsom, who, if she doesn’t have quite so many certified hits, still has a deep bench of quality work. I will not miss a chance to mention her Victorian noir Ladies in Retirement. We’ll see both of them again.

Williams plays Herbert Carpenter, long-suffering husband to Elsom’s perfect household manager Hermione. “Back for Christmas” opens as Herbert has decided that really, he’s done suffering. He’s dug up part of his cellar floor—for a wine cellar, or so he says—and he’s going to put Hermione beneath it. He does, and then he goes off on his work trip to sunny California, where all is well … for a while.

This is not an episode about complications and reversals. There’s nothing tricky here. And like I said up top, its ambitions are small. No emotional wallop, no inventiveness. It’s a story with the structure of a joke, and the joke is well-told.

As a bonus, it comes with numerous other jokes twining through it like ivy. My favorites may be Herbert surreptitiously peeking at Hermione’s passport to see her height—is the grave he dug long enough?—and the way one of the Carpenters’ friends reacts to his wife’s fulsome praise of the ever-bustling, ever-efficient Hermione. “Don’t you wish I was like her?” Mrs. Hewitt says to her husband, and Hitchcock, to hilarious effect, keeps Mr. Hewitt off-camera for his answer: “No, not really.”

Hitchcock’s sense of humor takes center stage here, but his ability to create suspense—in a way that’s so offhanded it feels effortless—creeps in around the edges, from the perfect pacing to the handful of post-murder complications that arise: I love that Herbert can’t wash the grave-dirt off his hands right away because Hermione has, of course, already turned off the water. It’s comedy and suspense rooted in character.

That gets at another one of the episode’s lightly handled strong suits. While “Back for Christmas” prioritizes humor over nuance, it does, in its own unobtrusive way, more with Hermione’s characterization than I expected or, for that matter, remembered. Her faults are so well-observed that they take over for me, the way they do for Herbert: it’s impossible to miss that she is, for example, one of those people who uses plural pronouns to speak for everyone. “They” don’t like the way the gardener has been trimming the hedges. And then there’s this exchange:

“Your favorite lunch, Herbert. Shepherd’s pie.”

“It isn’t truly my favorite, you know.”

“Of course it is, Herbert. You know how often we have it, and you always enjoy it.”

She lays his clothes out for him. She says, “You know I always take an interest in your little enterprises.” I’m with Mr. Hewitt: I’m fine with my wife not being more like Hermione.

This kind of caricature of a scolding, babying, too-authoritative wife is something feminist readings often push back against; I’ll admit this kind of comic sketch doesn’t usually bother me too much. But again, I like—and I’ll say more about this in a bit—that there is additional texture for Hermione that’s there if you look for it. While she’s exactly the kind of perfectionist who will go around redoing the maid’s work to get it right, when she has trouble placing a dustcover over a hanging lamp, she admits she’s not doing it that right, and she doesn’t lose her temper at Herbert’s murmured agreement. She’s proud of her organizational skills, and it isn’t false pride; she knows what she’s good at and what she isn’t.

And you can, at least in the vaguest way, see that Herbert really is a bit adrift without her (oppressively) stabilizing influence. Sure, he delights in his solo cross-country drive, munching on a hot dog in the car—there’s practically a thought bubble above his head about how Hermione would have insisted on a proper stop and a more nutritious lunch—but he’s also drinking a breakfast beer at his hotel at the end. That doesn’t concern him, and maybe it doesn’t need to, but there’s the suggestion that it sure may concern his employer. This is an episode made up of strong, deftly deployed details.

Everything here is efficient and effective. There are good shots—check out that slow pan from the wine cellar, recontextualized frame by frame into a grave as we follow Herbert’s line of sight up from it to his wife—but they’re downplayed to where they don’t interrupt the smooth, easygoing nature of it all. The same is true of the performances and the subtler character work. It’s a bit too slick and friction-free to be one of the show’s masterpieces, but it’s certainly charming enough to be one of its delights.

The Twist: Herbert receives an invoice from England: Hermione arranged to have his wine cellar dug out by professionals. Her body will be discovered any minute, if it hasn’t been already. Herbert will indeed be back for Christmas—just not in the way Hermione imagined, and not in any way he would want.

This is a tart black comedy ending with a nice ironic bite to it. Hitchcock adds a bit of flair to it by zooming in on the letter and excerpting “excavating cellar floor,” making the phrase float above the rest with hallucinatory clarity: we see it the way Herbert sees it as it’s being burned into his brain.

This also allows a partial reappraisal of Hermione, who emerges as suffocatingly, sweetly dictatorial as ever—really, there’s no getting around her telling Herbert his own favorite foods—but at least some of her withering impatience about his project was an act, a way to try to keep him from spoiling his own Christmas present. She’s ultimately painted as more human than harpy. And the Swiss watch precision of having Hermione’s overbearing, busybody perfection both drive Herbert to murder and ensure he’s caught for it is the kind of plotting AHP does best. It’s a delightful little poisonous bonbon.

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Written by: John Collier (story), Francis Cockrell (teleplay)

Up Next: “The Perfect Murder”

1. He also starred in my least favorite Twilight Zone episode of all time, “The Bard.” But his performance wasn’t the problem. ↩︎