A Forgotten ‘Clue’ Reboot Cast A Real-Life Murderer as the Killer
The rare family activity to include fatal candlestick beatings, Clue is obviously one of the most iconic board games of all-time. In the decades since it debuted back in 1949, Clue/Cluedo has inspired video games, books and, of course, the beloved 1985 movie.
Now Netflix has announced that they will be producing a Clue "competition series” in which contestants will face “physical and mental challenges to collect clues before stepping into a real-life game of deduction and deception.”
This might sound like a pretty wacky idea, but it’s not the first time that Clue has been turned into a TV game show. Back in 1990, the UK’s ITV-produced Cluedo premiered, a series that challenged players to solve murder mysteries presented in filmed segments by interrogating “suspects.” To win, celebrity contestants had to identify the killer, the murder weapon that was used and which room it occurred in.
But while we’re reasonably sure that Tim Curry has never taken a human life, one Cluedo cast member committed a very real crime.
A Season Four episode ended with the revelation that the killer was Colonel Mustard, in the kitchen, with the… G-string? Yeah, after four seasons, the producers apparently kept things interesting by replacing the traditional weapons, like the revolver and lead pipe, with a G-string, a poisonous snake, a crossbow and a flamethrower!
Surely even the most amateur of detectives would be able to tell the difference between a G-string-induced laceration and a fatal flamethrower attack.
Apart from the fact that no undergarments were included as potential murder weapons in the original Parker Brothers game, the most eyebrow-raising part of this development was the fact that Colonel Mustard was played by EastEnders star Leslie Grantham, who died in 2018. Per The Daily Mail, when Grantham was 18 he joined the Royal Fusiliers, and in 1966, while stationed in Germany, he “made the catastrophic decision to rob taxi driver Felix Reese in the town of Osnabruck.”
After holding the driver at gunpoint, the cabbie fought back and Grantham ended up shooting him in the head during the ensuing scuffle — although Grantham later claimed that “he had not realized the pistol was loaded” and “never intended to harm the driver.” But the jury didn’t buy it, and he was “convicted of murder at a court martial held in Germany.” Grantham served just 10 years of a life sentence.
The fact that Cluedo’s killer had been convicted for murder in real life didn’t go unnoticed by fans, either. Presumably Netflix will vet their new cast members a little more thoroughly.
