Van der Valk season 1, 1972

Van der Valk was a British cop show from Thames Television that for three seasons from 1972 to 1977 and was then briefly revived in the early 90s.

While the episodes are original stories the inspiration was Nicolas Freeling’s van der Valk detective novels. And the series captures the offbeat approach and the distinctive character of the detective hero remarkably well. This is a very quirky TV series.

Commissaris van der Valk is a Dutch cop in Amsterdam. He’s a bit of a rough diamond. He’s a bit vulgar. He has a slightly crude sense of humour. He likes a drink or six. He has a definite cynical side. On the other hand he also displays an amused tolerance and a good deal of compassion and while he can be tough he can also be a vey amiable kind of fellow. Barry Foster was born to play Commissaris van der Valk. He nails the part perfectly.

Neither the novels nor the series really explain the Dutch police ranks. Watching the series one assumes that van der Valk holds a rank roughly equivalent to a Chief Inspector in the UK but in fact a Commissaris is a much more senior officer, more closely equivalent to a Chief Superintendent. And while his offsider Inspecteur Johnny Kroon seems to fulfil the duties of a detective sergeant his rank really is equivalent to a British police inspector. All of which explains why van der Valk and Kroon often find themselves on cases involving very important people.

It’s clear that the intention behind this series was to avoid doing a by-the-numbers cop show. The emphasis is on very clever writing that misleads us into thinking we’re going to get straightforward detective stories and then throws in odd genuinely unexpected twists, and unexpected tonal shifts.

The first season is very much in the “shot on videotape in the studio” mould but like the best British TV series of that era (such as Callan and Public Eye) it turns that into a plus rather than a minus. These are stories that just don’t require action sequences or a lot of location shooting. In fact it’s a series that just wouldn’t work if done in the new all-action all-shot-on-location-on-film style that started to dominate British TV in the mid-70s. This is a cop series that is a million miles away in feel from The Sweeney, but it’s every bit as good.

In the first episode, One Herring's Not Enough, a mild-mannered art school teacher confesses to a murder. He found his wife in bed with another man. He killed them both. 

The problem for Commissaris van der Valk and Inspecteur Johnny Kroon is that they cannot find any evidence that a murder was committed.

It’s a clever story and it takes a while for van der Valk to understand the significance of certain odd features of the murderer’s confession.

Destroying Angel begins when a prostitute calls a doctor to the bedside of a dying man. The doctor suspects poisoning. The victim’s identity is a puzzle.

The vital clue is a book of botanical illustrations. A very very rare book indeed. Not what you’d expect to find in the possession of a man living in a seedy boarding house. The whole fingerprint thing is puzzling as well.

Blue Notes begins with death threats (written on blue notepaper) aimed at Jan Servaas, a famed concert violinist. Servaas seems very hostile to the idea of police protection. The threats are so vague that it is difficult to see what exactly the police can do. Van der Valk is not inclined to take them too seriously although Inspecteur Kroon is very uneasy about the matter.

The incident with the violin convinces van der Valk that the threats might be serious. The hotel staff are of course interviewed and they seem curiously evasive.

Elected Silence starts ominously. It appears that the series is going to dabble in politics, always a recipe for tedium. But this really is an unconventional series and this episode does not go where you think it’s going to go. It’s a strictly domestic tragedy. And the very slight hint of politics isn’t developed the way you expect either.

Thicker Than Water starts with a corpse in the canal. The corpse of a very rich well-connected young man, the son of a British Member of Parliament. And a young man who had somewhat exotic tastes when it came to bedroom adventures. The investigation takes Van der Valk and Kroon deep into Amsterdam’s hidden world of sexual exoticism but that’s not the real focus of the story. Another episode that doesn’t develop in quite the way you might expect.

The Adventurer is a fine example of the kind of narrative misdirection that is so characteristic of this series. It seems that someone is out to murder a quiet inoffensive German stonecutter named Gebhart. Gebhart has a secret, a secret from the past, but Michael Chapman’s script does not follow the obvious direction. Not only is Gebhart not what he seejs to be, his secret is not what we suspect it to be. Great guest performance by Paul Eddington.

Van der Valk is unconventional enough to be really interesting but manages to be a fine entertaining engrossing cop series. 

And Commissaris van der Valk is a wonderful character - very likeable in a slightly off-kilter occasionally prickly way but charismatic and fascinating.

The complete series was released on DVD by Network and the boxed set is still available. It’s worth grabbing while it’s still fairly easy to find. 

Van Der Valk is top-notch 70s British television. Highly recommended.

E.C. Tubb’s Space: 1999 Rogue Planet (TV tie-in novel)

E.C. Tubb’s Rogue Planet, published in 1977, was the ninth of the Space: 1999 TV tie-in novels. It is an original novel, not a novelisation of episodes from the TV series. It’s based on Year One of the TV series.

E.C. Tubb was a prolific British science fiction writer. He wrote several Space: 1999 novels.

It’s relaxation time for the crew of Moonbase Alpha. They’re enjoying an amateur performance of Hamlet, but when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears they see and hear something strange, something Shakespeare certainly did not write. It’s a warning that Moonbase Alpha is heading for danger. But every member of the audience saw and heard something different. And every member of the audience agrees that what they saw and heard was terrifying.

Was it some kind of mass delusion? Was it some mysterious message beamed from somewhere in space? Not long afterwards some kind of temporary collective madness afflicts the Alphans. It passes, but again it was terrifying and inexplicable.

Moonbase Alpha’s commander, John Koenig, wants answers. The base’s chief scientist Victor Bergman and chief medical officer Dr Helena Russell cannot provide answers, only speculation. Alpha’s instruments can detect nothing threatening.

Then the brain appears. It can’t be a brain of course, but it looks like one. An enormous brain the size of a planet. And Moonbase Alpha is trapped in a separate miniature universe. There appears to be no escape but some means of escape must be found. One crew member has already died of old age and he was only thirty-two. The same fate may await all of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha.

Space: 1999 was a great series (or at least Year One was great) but you do have to accept the outrageous premise of the series - the Moon being thrown out of orbit and hurtling through space at an absurd speed like a gigantic spaceship. You also have to accept the idea that in the almost unimaginable vastness and emptiness of space they keep encountering countless planets and alien spacecraft. But then the science fiction genre as a whole requires a huge suspension of disbelief. If you love science fiction you learn to accept some wacky science.

The novel captures the feel of the series extremely well. The principal characters - Commander Koenig, Dr Russell, Professor Bergman, chief Eagle pilot Alan Carter etc - behave the way they behave in the TV series. There’s the same mix of space adventure and reasonably cool science fiction concepts.

There’s a reasonable amount of emphasis on Koenig’s responsibilities as commander and the need to be strong and decisive while always bearing in mind that he’s dealing with people not machines. Similarly with Dr Russell there’s emphasis on the awesome responsibilities she has to shoulder alone.

Tubb’s prose is straightforward but pleasing enough.

It’s a very entertaining story with a few serious touches. The crew of Moonbase Alpha have to confront the imminent threats of death (death from accelerated ageing which is certainly a very frightening prospect) and madness. Death is ever-present in this story, in varying forms.

Space: 1999 was not a series that offered spectacular space battles. It offered action, but the action was more likely to be battles against strange unseen alien forces rather than hostile star fleets. This novel follows the same sort of formula. There are narrow escapes from mortal danger but the dangers in this case come from strange force fields and from being trapped in caverns and suchlike things.

This novel also offers us an alien life form that is genuinely alien.

Rogue Planet is a very decent science fiction novel. If you’re a fan of the TV series you’ll enjoy and even if you’ve never seen the series you’ll probably find it entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed one of Tubb’s other Space: 1999 novels, Alien Seed (which is excellent). I’ve also reviewed another Space: 1999 novel, John Rankine’s Android Planet (which is quite good).

Man from Atlantis (TV-movie, 1977)

Man from Atlantis started life as a series of four made-for-TV movies in 1977. They were quite successful and NBC gave the go-ahead for a weekly series which lasted just 13 episodes. I haven’t seen the series but the consensus seems to be that it was nowhere near as good as the TV-movies.

Patrick Duffy starred. He would soon go on to major stardom in Dallas.

The premise is rather silly, but then if you start worrying about the silliness of the premises of science fiction movies and TV series you’ll pretty much have to give up on the genre altogether. I figures that if I can accept impossibilities like faster-than-light travel then I can accept a water-breathing man.

The man (later given the name Mark Harris) is found washed up on a beach. He is taken to hospital but all attempts to resuscitate him seem doomed to failure. Then Dr Elizabeth Merrill figures out the problem. This man breathes water! She insists that he should be thrown back in the ocean, whereupon he immediately revives.

But where does a water-breathing man come from? The Navy’s super-computer has the answer. He must be from Atlantis.

The Navy sees possibilities in this young man, as a weapon. Dr Merrill doesn’t want him used in that way. Mark is also not interested in being used in this way. Mark is eventually persuaded to carry out one mission. The Navy has lost a super-secret deep-sea research submarine. It’s lying at the bottom of the sea, 35,000 feet down. That’s no problem for Mark.

What Mark finds at the bottom of the sea is not what he expected. He finds himself a prisoner of sorts. And mixed up in a terrifying plan for world domination.

It was clearly intended from the start to make this a series of TV-movies so, quite sensibly, lots of questions are left unanswered. They did after all want people to watch the next movie in the hope of getting those answers.

Mark, very conveniently, has amnesia. He has no idea of his own origins. All he knows is that the sea is his home and that he understands the language of whales. Maybe he is an Altantean. If so, does Atlantis still exist? Is he the last surviving Atlantean? Where was Atlantis? Was it really a fabulously ancient highly advanced civilisation? We don’t know and Mark doesn’t know.

He is suspicious of the US Government (this was 1977 so it’s the era of 70s paranoia) but we’re left unsure what plans the Government has for Mark. Those plans might well be somewhat sinister.

His relationship with Dr Merrill remains unclear. She has obviously developed an emotional attachment to him but whether it’s a kind of displaced maternal affection or whether there’s a romantic elements to it, and possibly a physical attraction, is uncertain. Mark may have developed an attachment to her but that is less clear.

All of this offers potential for further development, which is a sound storytelling strategy in this context.

There’s an over-the-top mad scientist/diabolical criminal mastermind involved, which is always a good thing.

Visually it’s reasonably impressive for a TV production.

There’s some action but it probably needed a bit more and it definitely needed a bit more zing.

The biggest weakness is that there are not enough exciting underwater action scenes. Such scenes are pretty much an essential ingredient for such a series. What they really needed to do was to get hold of someone like John Lamb, the man who did the underwater photography for Sea Hunt and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Lamb knew how to do that sort of stuff and make it look good on a tight television budget. As it stands the underwater sequences are OK but just a little disappointing.

The action climax also needed to be a bit more spectacular but there was of course a limit to what you could do on a 1970s TV budget.

Patrick Duffy is OK. He’s supposed to be a kind of alien so his slightly detached performance works well enough. Belinda J. Montgomery as Dr Merrill is an adequate female lead and does the idealistic doctor thing convincingly. Victor Buono makes a fine mad scientist.

The four original TV-movies have been released on DVD in the Warner Archive series and they look quite acceptable. The TV series has also had a DVD release. I believe the first TV-movie is also available on Blu-Ray.

Man from Atlantis isn’t great but it’s fairly entertaining and just interesting enough that I’ll probably watch the second TV-movie.

The Professionals season 3 (1979)

The mid-70s witnessed a revolution in British television. It started with seasons three and four of Special Branch but the series most associated with this revolution was The Sweeney. Shooting on video in the studio was out. Everything had to be shot on location, on 35mm film. The emphasis henceforward was on action, which usually meant violent action. Brian Clemens was not unaware of this trend and had taken his first tentative steps in this new direction with The New Avengers. For his next project Clemens decided to go all-out. He would out-Sweeney The Sweeney. That new project would become The Professionals.

The Professionals certainly attracted attention. And outrage. It wasn’t just the violence. It’s a series about a British counter-terrorist counter-espionage squad, CI5, that quite openly flouts the law.

The Professionals was made in five separate production blocks between 1977 and 1983 and screened as five seasons over the same period, but the production blocks and the seasons do not coincide at all. There was no attempt to screen the episodes in the order in which they were made. The 1979 third season is a mixture of episodes from the second and third production blocks.

The cast remained unchanged from season two - Gordon Jackson as CIA chief George Cowley with Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw as Bodie and Doyle, his two top agents. The characterisations haven’t changed either. Cowley is as ruthless as ever with a fine disregard for everything except getting the job done. Ex-mercenary Bodie is pretty much an ice-cold killer, although with a sense of humour. Doyle is equally tough but more sensitive, and is the only one of the trio with what you might call a fully developed conscience.

The stories haven’t changed a great deal either. CI5 battles spies and international criminals but their main focus is combating terrorism.

There’s enough action and mayhem to ensure that the viewer will overlook any deficiencies in the scripts. And for the most part the scripts are solid and tight.

The Professionals was intended as pure high-octane entertainment so don’t expect any philosophical musing or too much in the way of subtlety. On occasions the series does confront ethical issues but this is not Callan, or even Danger Man. If you’re looking for a series that offers provocative intellectual insights into the morality of espionage this is not that series. The Professionals offers car chases, gun battles and explosions.

But the action is handled with style and energy.

Episode Guide

The Purging of CI5 was a logical enough choice for a season opener, with lots of action, lots of explosions and lots of excitement. Someone is trying to destroy CI5. Their plan seems to be to kill every last CI5 agent, including Cowley. And they seem quite capable of doing so.

This episode is quite reminiscent of the excellent 1969 Callan episode Let's Kill Everybody. In fact the premise is more or less identical. It’s not a bad episode.

In Backtrack CI5 have to stop an arms smuggling operation. They have a witness who might be useful, if they can keep him alive. They have to follow the trail of evidence back to a burglary. That burglar found something crucial. Bodie and Dole have to try out their own skills as burglars.

A typical but very entertaining episode with Cowley being particularly ruthless.

Stopover starts with a British agent who has just escaped from the Khmer Rough. He has some interesting information about a high-level defector. Of course there are twists. A solid enough plot.

In this episode there’s plenty of focus on the tense relationship between Cowley on the one hand and Bodie and Doyle on the other. They feel that Cowley is concealing vital information from them, forcing them to work in the dark. And they’re right. And they resent it, understandably. One of the best episodes of the season.

Dead Reckoning starts with an exchange of agents by the British and the Bulgarians. The British got double-agent Stefan Batak as their part of the deal. The arrangement was that the deal was to be kept secret. There is a complication - Batak’s daughter Anna who lives in London. She was all set to go to Bulgaria to visit her father in prison.

There are the usual betrayals and counter-betrayals and complex plot twists. Cowley is getting plenty of information out of Batak. He thinks the information is accurate, but he still isn’t certain. And then disaster strikes. Could Anna be an assassin? Or is she an innocent pawn?

Doyle takes some film and somebody is very keen to take it away from him. The trouble is that the film doesn’t show anything that could possibly be useful.

A nicely cynical twisted spy thriller plot. A very good episode.

The Madness of Mickey Hamilton starts with an attempted political assassination but the viewer already has reason to suspect that something else is going on. CI5 however are sure it was an attempt to kill an African diplomat. If they’d realised earlier that were barking up the wrong tree disaster might have been averted, but that the theme of this episode - by the time anyone realises there’s a problem it’s too late.

A good episode with Doyle showing an unexpected touch of compassion. To everybody else the villain in this story is just a villain, but to Doyle’s he’s a victim.

A Hiding to Nothing involves the possibility of an assassination attempt on an Arab leader. And CI5 has a leak. There are lots of twists to come.

Again we see a subtle difference between Bodie and Doyle, with Doyle being just as tough but with more of a human side. Excellent episode.

In Runner a gun shop is robbed. Robbed of a variety of very nasty weaponry. CI5 assume it’s the prelude to a major campaign of violence, a campaign of political violence by an outfit referred to as the Organisation (presumably some offshoot of the IRA).

CI5 are being manipulated and Doyle is being manipulated. The Organisation is being manipulated. There’s a dangerous game being played, and the motivations are not clear. CI5 have to find out what those motivations are. They have a number of sources of possible information but those sources are not exactly friendly. A solid episode with a fiendishly complicated plot. Maybe too complicated. You’ll have to concentrate.

In the season finale Servant of Two Masters Bodie and Doyle have to investigate a possible traitor - George Cowley. This is by far the weakest episode of the season. You have to take seriously the idea that Cowley might be corrupt, and I don’t believe that a single viewer would have bought that for a second. If you don’t buy it the story becomes boringly predictable.

Final Thoughts

Overall a strong season with the season finale being the only dud episode. Other than that there’s plenty of excitement and mindless violence. Highly recommended.

Thriller - three 1973 epidodes

A look at three episodes from Brian Clemens’ horror anthology series Thriller, one of the finest series of its type ever made. All three episodes originally aired in 1973.

The Colour of Blood

The Colour of Blood is the fifth episode of the first season of Thriller. Brian Clemens wrote the script, Robert Tronson directed.

The Carnation Killer, a crazed sex murderer who has killed at least nine women, has been caught. He has been found guilty but insane and he is now on his way to a hospital for the criminally insane. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately Arthur Page (for that is the Carnation Killer’s real name) never reaches the hospital. The prison van crashes and Page escapes.

Page hopes to lose himself in the crowds at Waterloo Station. But first he must have a red carnation for his button hole. He simply doesn’t feel dressed without it.

He is rather surprised when a young blonde woman carrying an attache case suddenly latches onto him. As luck (in this case bad luck) would have it Julie Marsh is waiting to meet a man she has never set eyes on.

A man named Graham has inherited a large sum of money and a house in the country. Julie’s job is to meet Graham at Waterloo Station, hand over the money and then take him by train to Westerling (the house he has inherited). Julie will recognise Graham by the red carnation in his button-hole.

It’s just very bad luck for Julie that the first man she sees with a red carnation is not Mr Graham, it’s Arthur Page the insane sex murderer. Page might be insane but he can also be very charming and appear very normal, and Julie has no idea that she’s chosen the wrong man and that she’s about to take him out into the country to a very isolated house where she’s going to be quite alone with him.

But there are some major plot twists that are about to kick in and take the story in a rather different direction. There are nasty surprises in store for just about everyone.

Norman Eshley’s chilling performance as Page is what stands out most in this episode. It’s a neat little script, which relies a little on coincidence but the coincidences are entirely plausible. There’s some effective suspense and some creepy moments. All in all an excellent episode.

Murder in Mind

Murder in Mind was scripted by Terence Feely from a story by Brian Clemens. It was directed by Alan Gibson and was broadcast in May 1973.

It starts with a murder that isn’t.

Tom Patterson (Donald Gee) has held the very humble rank of Detective-Constable for all of a week. Like any keen young copper he dreams of solving a major case. And then a major case seems to drop into his lap. A woman wanders into the police station in the middle of the night and confesses to a murder. Since he’s the only detective on duty it’s Tom Patterson’s case.

But it ends disappointingly. Betty Drew (Zena Walker) had had a blow on the head and her confession was all nonsense.

There’s something about the case that keeps niggling at Tom Patterson. He’s not sure what it is but he feels that there’s some connection he should have made but he didn’t and nobody else did either. There wasn’t any murder and it was all Betty Drew’s imagination and it would be better for Tom to forget all about it. But Tom still feels that there is a puzzle here somewhere.

Brian Clemens has come up with a very intricate script this time. There’s a perfectly straightforward explanation for what has happened, the straightforward explanation being that Betty was concussed and confused and imagined a murder that never happened. Everybody accepts the straightforward explanation, apart from Tom. And of course the viewer is likely to agree with Tom - that there is an alternative explanation. But it requires the pieces of the jigsaw to be pieced together in a different way. The alternative explanation is convoluted but it’s clever and it’s plausible.

But if Tom is right then there might be a murder after all.

The acting is solid but for me the highlight is Ronald Radd’s performance as Superintendent Terson. Good episode.

A Place to Die

A Place to Die was scripted by Terence Feely from a story by Brian Clemens. It was directed by Peter Jefferies and went to air in May 1973.


It’s a basic story that has been done countless times and i’s an idea that was very popular at the time - a remote community that seems perfectly normal but in fact follows either paganism or satanism. To be fair, in 1973 the idea was still reasonably fresh.

It’s also another story of innocent city folk who foolishly move to a rural area only to find themselves in a nightmare world of primitive superstition and terror.

Dr Bruce Nelson (Bryan Marshall) has just taken over a practice in a small village. He and his American wife Tessa (Alexandra Hay) are looking forward to getting away from the stresses of city life.

The first sign that something odd is going on comes when they meet their seriously weird housekeeper Beth. Beth reacts with wonder when she sees Tessa. She excitedly informs the other villagers that Tessa is moon-pale and moon-gold and limps with her left leg. The villagers know what that means. Tessa is the Expected One. And it’s almost Lady Day, and this year Lady Day coincides with a full moon. The signs are clear.

What is going on is obvious to the viewer very early on, we know what Bruce and Tessa have wandered into, but they have no idea. That of course sets up the suspense very nicely. The viewer doesn’t know how Bruce and Tessa are going to get out of a terrifying situation. Another fine episode.

Final Thoughts

Three more very solid Thriller episodes. All worth watching.

Nigel Kneale's Beasts (1976)

Beasts is a six-part 1976 British horror anthology TV series made by ATV and created and written by Nigel Kneale. Kneale is best known for his 1950s Quatermass sci-fi/horror TV serials which were later adapted to film by Hammer, with great success although Kneale wasn’t happy with the Hammer versions. Kneale later wrote some very strange, disturbing but fascinating TV plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics and The Stone Tape (both of which I highly recommend).

Kneale had a knack for mixing horror with science fiction in a genuinely original and surprising manner.

Beasts is typical of Kneale's work in that you’re never quite sure if there’s a supernatural element of if the stories are science fiction. Or they might possibly be merely the products of overheated imaginations.

The episodes

Baby is an exercise in folk horror. Peter Gilkes (Simon MacCorkindale) and his wife Jo (Jane Wymark) have just moved to the country. Peter was tired of being a city vet. He wanted to be a real country vet. Jo is a country girl but oddly she seems less happy about the movie. Maybe she’ll feel better when their very rundown cottage is fixed up a bit. Jo is pregnant and she’s anxious since she had a miscarriage a year earlier. Jo’s anxiety will play an important part in the story.

While tearing down a wall Peter and Jo find a huge earthenware jar. It contains a mummified - something. Peter is a vet but he has no idea what it is, although he finds it fascinating. Jo is totally creeped out by it.

Jo hears all sorts of tales, some of which may be true and some of which may be folklore. The tales concern the piece of land on which the cottage stands, and the reason nobody farms this land. She also discovers an interesting fact about the previous tenants. They had no children. This seems significant to Jo.

Jo hears strange noises and sees a few things that disturb her. Her anxiety grows. Nobody takes her fears seriously. The viewer will also wonder just how seriously to take her fears. Most of the things she sees and hears could be described as ambiguous. To find out whether Jo’s fears really are justified you’ll have to watch the episode. Good episode.

Buddyboy is wildly original and quirky. Dave (Martin Shaw) is thinking of buying a broken-down dolphinarium. Not for the dolphins. The dolphins are long gone. Dave wants to turn the place into a cinema to show adult films. That’s the business Dave is in. He already owns an adult cinema. Converting this place into a cinema will be easy because a cinema is what it originally was, before it was turned into a dolphinarium.

The guy selling the place, Hubbard (Wolfe Morris), seems extraordinarily jumpy and anxious to sell. He keeps talking about all the trouble he had with Buddyboy, his star dolphin. Buddyboy was a great performer but difficult to handle.

There’s a strange girl, Lucy (Pamela Moiseiwitsch) who is always hanging around the dolphinarium. She’s obsessed with Buddyboy as well. She thought he was the most wonderful animal that ever lived.

Dave is strangely drawn to the odd waif-like Lucy and they gradually become involved. Then there’s the ending (and I have no intention of revealing any spoilers here) which exasperates a lot of people. They feel cheated because there is no obvious supernatural element and they resort to prosaic interpretations which I feel are probably wrong.

My feeling is that Kneale really wants us to think about this one. There are plausible and satisfying explanations but you have to tease them out and you have to think about what you’ve seen and you have to think about both Lucy and Buddyboy. It’s not that there’s no strangeness here, but it’s not the obvious strangeness people expect from straightforward horror. This episode made me think long and hard about what it could mean, and I think that actually makes it great television.

The Dummy is another indication of the unconventionality of Kneale’s approach. Clyde Boyd (Bernard Horsfall) is an actor falling apart. His last chance is to play the monster known as the Dummy in yet another low-budget horror flick. The trouble really starts when he spots Peter Wager (Simon Oates) in the studio. Wager is the man who stole Boyd’s wife. Boyd falls apart completely but this shooting has to go ahead and harassed producer 'Bunny' Nettleton (Clive Swift) manages to convince Boyd to complete the scene. The result is mayhem, the police have to be called, there’s a dead man lying on the studio floor and Wager is running around with a shotgun threatening to shoot Boyd.

The clue to what has happened is provided by journalist Joan Eastgate (Lillias Walker) who is on set hoping to interview Boyd. She talks about tribesmen who wear masks in religious ceremonies and how it’s the mask that ends up wearing the man rather than the other way around. That’s more or less what happens here. Boyd’s whole personality disintegrates and he becomes the monster, the Dummy. It’s not just his money problems and his wife leaving him, he also has to face the failure of his career as an actor. The only successful roles he’s ever had having been playing the Dummy, playing the entire part encased in a rubber suit. The Dummy is more real than he is.

It’s great to see Clive Swift in a complex ambiguous part and doing it extremely well. Thorley Walters adds fun as the pompous but rather ridiculous Shakepearian actor turning up for a day’s work and a pay cheque.

This is a serious and tragic story. Don’t be misled by the silliness of the monster costume. That was probably a swipe by Nigel Kneale at Doctor Who, a TV series he despised.

Special Offer is a horror story set in a small supermarket. Noreen (Pauline Quirke) is a socially awkward clumsy teenager who seems to make a mess of everything she does, whether it’s packing shelves or working the checkouts. Accidents seem to happen around her. The story manager, the slimy Mr Grimley (Geoffrey Bateman), is exasperated with her. Even worse, Noreen has a crush on him, while Grimley is pursuing the other checkout operator, glamorous dolly bird Linda. Noreen claims it’s an animal causing all the trouble. A small furry animal that looks quite a bit like the company’s cartoon mascot, Briteway Billy.

Nobody believes her but then things start happening that can’t be blamed on her, and the other staff members can hear a small animal scuttling about in the store. Mr Grimley is out of his depth and calls on the grocery chain’s personnel manager, Mr Liversedge (Wensley Pithey), for help. Mr Liversedge thinks they’re dealing with something akin to a poltergeist although in this case it’s more a paranormal than a supernatural phenomenon. He thinks Noreen is unconsciously making these things happen.

This episode starts out rather whimsically although with an edge of pathos. Very gradually the mood shifts to become more menacing. The terror when it comes is still mixed with whimsy which gives the story an interesting flavour. I like the idea of a small supermarket as a setting for horror, with tins of baked beans and boxes of cereal used as engines of destruction. And of course Mr Liversedge’s theory is that the terror’s starting point is Noreen’s hopeless love for Mr Grimley. 17-year-old Pauline Quirke’s performance is extraordinarily good, subtle but emotionally powerful. Quite a good episode.

What Big Eyes begins with a young over-keen RSPCA inspector becoming convinced that an animal trader is up to something shady. He finds it hard to believe that three timber wolves would really have ended up in a tiny pet shop. He discovers that the pet shop’s owner, an elderly eccentric would-be scientist named Leo Raymount (Patrick Magee), really did obtain those wolves. But why? The answer has to do with Raymount’s bizarre theories about lycanthropy. Weird but oddly moving episode.

In During Barty's Party a middle-aged woman is worried that there may be a rat in the cellar. Possibly two rats. Her husband isn’t too worried at first - his wife is rather nervous. Then it becomes obvious that there are more than two rats. A lot more. His wife is even more worried. She thinks these rats are not just ordinary rats. She thinks they have evolved much greater intelligence.

This is a standard “what if nature turned against us” story, although it’s well executed. This is the least weird episode and for that reason I find it the least interesting.

Final Thoughts

Beasts is Kneale pushing the boundaries of the genre and giving us monster stories that defy all our expectations about monster stories. A strange offbeat unsettling series. Highly recommended.

Beasts is available on DVD from Network.

Thriller - Brian Clemens’ favourite episodes

I’ve finally made my way to the end of the 1970s British Brian Clemens anthology series Thriller. It’s taken me eight years to watch all 43 episodes. That might sound a bit ominous. It might suggest that I’m not a big fan of this series. Nothing could be further from the truth. I adored this series when I first saw it many years ago and I adored rewatching it. I’ve watched it slowly because I like to do that with anthology series, especially ones of which I’m particularly fond. I just like to return to them every now and then when I feel the need for reliable spooky entertainment.

And given that each episode is feature length and of course completely standalone it’s a perfectly feasible way to approach such a series.

Having reached the end I’ve decided to revisit the five episodes of which Clemens himself was most proud. Since I haven’t seen these particular episodes for seven or eight years that also seems to me to be a feasible idea.

Thriller occasionally dabbled in the supernatural. It did this very seldom, but it did do it occasionally. Which was actually a rather clever move on Clemens’ part - when you watch a Thriller episode you might be confident that everything will have a rational explanation but you can never discount the possibility that Clemens might unexpectedly throw something supernatural at you.

Someone at the Top of the Stairs

Someone at the Top of the Stairs was the third episode of the first season.

Chrissie Morton (Donna Mills) and Gillian Pemberton (Judy Carne) are two broke art students in London. They think they’ve had a fabulous stroke of good fortune when they find a room in a charming old Victorian rooming house. The rent is ridiculously cheap.

The rooming house of course turns out to be a nightmare.

At first it’s just very subtle creepy things. Odd sounds. One of Chrissie’s bras disappears. The other guests seem to laugh at inappropriate things. Various little things just don’t seem quite right. Then Chrissie discovers the peephole in the bathroom.

Chrissie’s unease grows, as does her frustration that Gillian refuses to take her fears seriously. She does find a boyfriend, Gary, but he doesn’t take her fears seriously either.

The viewer knows that there’s definitely something wrong in this house but we don’t really know much more than the two girls know. Like Chrissie we just slowly grow more uneasy.

Director John Sichel handles things carefully. He avoids anything too obvious. He’s content to let the creepiness develop through hints and through the accumulation of very trivial things, things that taken in isolation would not even be disturbing but they become unsettling when taken together.

Clemens of course wrote the script and it’s a fine effort which builds to a satisfying payoff. It’s satisfying because at the end we have to admit that this really is what all those hints have been pointing towards.

The two lead actresses, Donna Mills and Judy Carne, are effective because they really do come across as two very ordinary girls. Chrissie is the one who gets worried but she’s not hysterical. She’s reacting in a perfectly understandable way. She sees a pattern of little things adding up to something that might be sinister. Gillian’s scepticism is equally plausible. That same pattern of little things seems to her to be very unlikely to be anything to get worried over. They’re not showy performances but they work.

Someone at the Top of the Stairs is pretty effective stuff. Highly recommended.

An Echo of Theresa

An Echo of Theresa is the fourth episode of the first season. American businessman Brad Hunter (Paul Burke) has taken his wife Suzy (Polly Bergen) to London for a second honeymoon. It’s a business trip as well - an English businessman named Trasker wants to negotiate an important deal with him.

Brad starts doing strange things. He calls Suzy Theresa by mistake, and then claims that he’s never met anyone called Theresa. Although he’s never been to London he insists that a cabbie take him to an obscure street to find an old red-brick block of flats. That building was demolished years earlier - how could he possibly know it even existed? He becomes agitated an aggressive. He writes “I love Theresa” on a postcard.

Hardly surprisingly Suzy insists that he sees a psychiatrist pronto.

The psychiatrist discovers that there are two things Brad is sure of. Firstly, that he knows Theresa. Secondly, that he has never met Theresa. He knows her from Vienna, but he has never been to Vienna, in fact he has never been to Europe.

Suzy has a friend at the American Embassy who suggests that this might be a case for Matthew Earp (Dinsdale Landen) . Matthew Earp is a private detective. He claims to be not just a very good a private detective but a magnificent one and he charges accordingly for his services. And he really is as good as he thinks he is.

There are those who find this episode confusing. I have no idea why. Most of what is going on is perfectly obvious very early on. There’s simply no other plausible explanation and there are abundant and very obvious clues. Of course we still don’t know exactly how such an outlandish situation arose and we don’t know how it’s going to be resolved but we know enough for the story to lose much of its punch.

It’s played out rather oddly. Paul Burke and Polly Bergen play it very straight (and Paul Burke is very effective as a man caught in a bewildering situation) while the other main characters are more off-the-wall and seem like they would have been more at home in a different story. And Dinsdale Landen plays Matthew Earp with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Ultimately it’s Dinsdale Landen’s gloriously over-ripe performance that makes this one worth watching.

An Echo of Theresa is interesting and at times very clever, but it’s not a complete success.

One Deadly Owner

One Deadly Owner was the fourth episode of the second season. It went to air in February 1974.

Fashion model Helen Cook (Donna Mills) buts herself a new car - a Rolls-Royce. It has only had one careful owner. Her boyfriend Peter (Jeremy Brett) thinks the car is a foolish extravagance. The odd things is that Helen feel that it rather than her choosing the car, it chose her.

The car seems to have a mind of its own. It takes her places she doesn’t want to go. And then she finds the ear-ring in the boot. She tracks down the previous owner, a very rich man named Jacey (Laurence Payne). She’s sure the ear-ring belonged to Jacey’s wife. His wife left him a few months earlier. Helen becomes convinced that there’s some mystery involving the wife and she feels compelled to solve the mystery.

Most of the things that happen early on are not really frightening or even particularly disturbing - they’re just puzzling. It’s almost as if Helen is being led on. Led on by the car.

Now I know what you’re thinking - that this haunted car story sounds a bit like John Carpenter’s Christine, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name. But Brian Clemens came up with the idea of a possessed car almost a decade before King. And they are two quite different stories.

In this outing we know from the start that there’s something vaguely supernatural (or paranormal) going on. We also know that a crime has been committed, and there are multiple plausible suspects. It’s both a haunted car story and a whodunit and it works equally well both ways.

One of this episode’s major assets is that Donna Mills and Jeremy Brett work so well together. Their relationship is convincing and both give fine performances.

The fact that it’s a rather low-key story works in its favour. We’re slowly drawn in, just the way Helen Cook is slowly drawn in.

This is an extremely good episode.

A Coffin for the Bride

A Coffin for the Bride opened the third season. We know what is going on right from the start. A ex-merchant seaman (played by Michael Jayston) marries rich middle-aged women and then drowns them in the bathtub (after they have made wills in his favour of course). The murders are successfully passed off as accidents but a lawyer named Mason (Michael Gwynn) is convinced that murder is indeed what they were. Mason is just a very ordinary solicitor but he’s intelligent and once he gets an idea into his head he pursues it grimly. And he does not intend to forget this particular murderer.

The killer, calling himself Mark Walker, has now found himself in a very curious position. He has fallen for a woman. Really fallen for her. A young pretty woman named Stella (Helen Mirren). This time he really wants the woman, and not for the purposes of murder or profit.

But of course he still has a living to make, and murder is his business. He already has his next victim picked out, a rich widow named Angela. I can’t tell you any more without risking spoilers.

The twist ending is outlandish but justly celebrated - there are hints earlier on and when the big reveal comes you realise that of course that had to be the explanation. Which is of course the hallmark of good writing.

It’s not just the ending that makes this one notable. The performances by Helen Mirren and Michael Gwynn are superb but it’s Michael Jayston who really impresses. Mark Walker is a monster but he has odd vulnerabilities. They certainly don’t justify his actions but they do suggest that there are things in his past that have made him into a monster.

Arthur English is a delight as the friendly barman Freddy.

A bravura effort from scriptwriter Clemens and from a fine cast make this deservedly one of the most fondly remembered episodes of the entire series.

I'm the Girl He Wants to Kill

I'm the Girl He Wants to Kill is the second episode of season three. This is a pure suspense episode - we know the killer’s identity right from the start. But the police don’t know. They think they do, but they don’t.

It starts with the murder of a woman. Then there’s a second murder. They’re clearly the work of a serial killer. Ann Rogers, an American working in London, saw the killer. Unfortunately she can’t identify him from the police mug shots file.

She does however fall for Mark (Tony Selby), the Detective-Sergeant in charge of the case, and Mark falls for her. A few weeks later she sees the killer in the street, she recognises him and he recognises her. She realises immediately that he’s going to try to kill her. She returns to her office and as usual she has to work late. There’s nobody else in the building, apart from the security guard. But the killer is inside the building. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game which occupies the whole of the second half of the episode. 

To makes things even more exciting the killer has locked the building so there seems to be no escape for Ann.

Robert Lang plays the killer and he’s a wonderful choice. He’s just one of those scary sinister-looking actors. Julie Sommars is very good as Ann - she’s convincingly terrified but she’s also quick-witted.

A deserted office building proves to be a fine setting for such a suspense story. Everything looks so harmless, except that there’s a psycho running loose.

The tension builds up and up and when you think it’s all over, it isn’t.

This is an effective Brian Clemens script and it’s perfectly executed by director Shaun O’Riordan.

This is a classic woman-in-peril story which works beautifully.

Final Thoughts

I’m not totally sold on An Echo of Theresa but the other four Brian Clemens favourites can certainly be very highly recommended.

The Bionic Woman season one (1976)

The Six Million Dollar Man had been a big success so when writer Kenneth Johnson came up with a story idea for an episode featuring a bionic woman the producers were enthusiastic. After all if a bionic man was super-cool then a bionic woman would be totally awesome. And so the bionic woman, Jaime Sommers, was launched on the small screen with a two-part Six Million Dollar Man episode. The original intention was that this would be a one-off appearance but it didn’t take long to figure out that featuring her in a spin-off series would be an even better idea.

Now there’s one thing I have to say upfront. It’s impossible to discuss The Bionic Woman without discussing the episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man which introduced the character and which preceded The Bionic Woman series. And it’s impossible to say anything about those episodes without revealing some spoilers for those episodes. It probably doesn’t really matter because anyone interested in either series is almost certainly already aware of certain events that happen during those episodes. The very existence of The Bionic Woman series is in some ways a spoiler for those episodes.

But if you’ve never seen those two early two-part episodes and you’re really spoiler-phobic you might want to skip the next section and jump ahead to the episode guide for The Bionic Woman.

The early crossover episodes

Jaime made her first appearance in a two-part episode called The Bionic Woman (written by Kenneth Johnson) which went to air during the second season, in March 1975.

The Bionic Woman

Steve decides he wants to buy a ranch in his home town as a way of getting back to his roots, and to have a refuge from the craziness of his life as a secret agent. It just so happens that this small town has produced two celebrities - Steve Austin the astronaut (obviously) and Jaime Sommers, a rising star on the women’s professional tennis circuit. Steve and Jaime were high school sweethearts years earlier but they both had ambitions that made marriage seem impractical. But Steve soon discovers that he’s still in love with Jaime.

Their newly rekindled romance is just starting to blossom when Jaime has a terrible sky-diving accident. She’s dying but Steve knows that there’s a way to save her - all he has to do is persuade Oscar Goldman that the government really needs a bionic woman. And all Oscar Goldman has to do is persuade the US Government to shell out another six million dollars to rebuild Jaime.

The first instalment of this two-parter takes a long time to get going. There is perhaps too much time spent on the Steve-Jaime romance, and way too much time spent on Steve’s parents doing folksy things. The extended treatment of the romance was I guess necessary in order to make it plausible that Steve would do anything, absolutely anything, to save Jaime.

The transformation of Jaime into the bionic woman is also pretty much travelling ground that was already travelled in the first of the Six Million Dollar Man TV movies. On the other hand Lindsay Wagner is cute and likeable and she and Lee Majors do have some genuine chemistry.

The producers didn’t want Jaime to be an exact clone of Steve Austin so instead of a bionic eye she has a bionic ear.

There is a spy plot mixed in here somewhere but the main focus is very much on the Steve-Jaime love story. It’s not the sort of thing that you would have expected the Six Million Dollar Man target audience to have gone for but in fact the viewers loved it.

This is a very emotion-heavy episode with an ending that was not only daring for network TV in the mid-70s but turned out to be rather rash. The ending does pack a punch.

The Return of The Bionic Woman

The Return of The Bionic Woman was screened during the third season of The Six Million Dollar Man in September 1975.

This episode also introduces the third actor to play the rôle of Dr Rudy Wells, the medical genius responsible for Steve’s bionics.

Steve is badly injured on a mission involving a gangland war. He is rushed to the hospital in which Dr Rudy Wells does his bionic surgery. Steve is only semi-conscious but he is sure he sees Jaime in an adjoining room. But that can’t be. It can’t be her. Oscar assures him that he was delirious. Then he sees her again. Oscar has a lot of explaining to do. There’s also a lot of explaining to do to the audience but writer Kenneth Johnson comes up with an explanation that doesn’t stretch credibility too far (given that this is a science fiction series).

Jaime is alive but not she’s not exactly well. She has lost all her memories. She has no idea who Steve is. Which is a bit of a blow, considering that they were engaged to be married. Steve has other blows to deal with, such as Jaime falling in love with the young genius doctor who saved her.

So, like the earlier two-parter, this is going to be another very emotion-driven episode. It has to be emphasised just how bold a move it was in the mid-70s to have two two-part episodes of an action-adventure-science fiction series devoted almost entirely to romance plots.

It was also quite an acting challenge for Lindsay Wagner. She has to play Jaime as Jaime, but as a slightly different Jaime. Without her memories she is just a little bit child-like and innocent. The whole world is new to her. She has to rediscover the world, and she has to face the most complicated human challenge imaginable - she has to start her emotional life all over again.

The Bionic Woman Episode Guide

The Bionic Woman series kicks off with Welcome Home, Jaime and it’s another daring move - beginning an action/adventure series with a two-part episode focused almost entirely on emotional drama. This was just not done on network TV in 1976. In fact the whole “how Jaime Sommers became the bionic woman and it affected her emotionally” tale is a six-episode story arc (beginning with four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man) and that was most certainly not done at that time. Kenneth Johnson (who wrote all six episodes and created The Bionic Woman) was years ahead of his time. Whether you think multi-episode story arcs are a good thing or a bad thing is another matter (I think that on the whole they’re a bad idea).

Jaime has had yet another operation, the hope being to regenerate some of her brain cells so that she can get her memory back. It works, up to a point. She now remembers a lot more. But she still doesn’t remember being engaged to marry Steve Austin. She is however about to find out.

In the second part we finally start to see Jaime doing some serious secret agent stuff, and showing off her bionic abilities. The big difference between Steve Austin and Jaime is that she has a bionic ear instead of a bionic eye and his story makes plenty of use of that bionic ear. It’s what keeps her one step ahead of the bad guys.

This two-parter is still basically part of the introductory story arc, giving us Jaime’s backstory and establishing her character and also establishing the vital fact that much of her past has been lost to her. She’s not just going to be battling bad guys but presumably also trying to re-establish her own identity.

So in some ways you could argue that the first season proper started with episode three by which time the format of the show had been more or less finalised.

There’s a definite Clark Kent vibe to the series - on the surface Jaime is a mild-mannered bubbly pretty young schoolteacher but she has a hidden identity as a secret agent with super-powers. This gives the series an interestingly different vibe to The Six Million Dollar Man. There never was anything ordinary about Steve Austin. Before he became the bionic man he was already a hero - a test pilot and world-famous astronaut. Being a hero comes naturally to him. Becoming the bionic man hasn’t changed his life all that much. He was already doing extraordinary things that no ordinary person could ever hope to do. But before becoming the bionic woman Jaime Sommers really was just an ordinary girl. Being a super-heroine does not come naturally to her.

Also interesting is that Steve Austin had to be coerced into becoming a secret agent and he was initially very resentful. Even though he’s a born hero there’s a part of him that would like to return to the small town in which he was born and become ordinary. Jaime on the other hand is not only a volunteer - she was the one who pressured Oscar Goldman into letting her become a secret agent. She’s the complete opposite of Steve Austin - she’s an ordinary girl who yearns to be extraordinary.

The series itself has a slightly different feel compared to The Six Million Dollar Man. In a lot of the stories Jaime isn’t doing the secret agent thing, she just gets involved in situations in which her bionic power happen to come in handy. The Bionic Woman at times feels more like a family-oriented adventure series while The Six Million Dollar Man was more overtly a sci-fi/spy series.

While The Six Million Dollar Man has Steve dealing with missions involving national security a lot of the stories in The Bionic Woman involve Jaime personally, or involve people she knows personally.

There was an intention to continue doing crossover episodes and in fact Steve Austin makes his reappearance as early as the fourth episode.

Angel of Mercy takes Jaime to the South American republic of Costa Bravo where the American ambassador is trapped in the middle of a civil war. Jaime has to get him out, with the help of hardbitten helicopter pilot Jack Starkey (played surprisingly by Andy Griffith). Her cover is that she’s a nurse. Maybe that wasn’t one of Oscar’s brightest ideas - she knows nothing about nursing and can’t stand the sight of blood (which adds some amusing moments). This one is rather similar to one of the first season episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Little Orphan Airplane, with this time Jaime using her bionic powers to rebuild a broken-down aircraft. Jaime gets to use her bionic powers a lot in this episode.This episode works, largely because Lindsay Wagner is so charming and amusing. She really was starting to settle into the role.

A Thing of the Past takes Jaime back to her day-to-day life as a schoolteacher. The only excitement is that the school bus crashes but no-one is hurt thanks to the quick-thinking bus driver. And then the world of gangsters starts to intrude into Jaime’s small-town everyday life. That bus driver had a past and it’s caught up to him and Jaime is caught in the middle. It’s an OK episode. Lee Majors makes a totally unnecessary brief appearance but given that The Bionic Woman hadn’t yet established itself it made sense from a promotional point of view. It is however Jaime who does all the heroic stuff.

In Claws Jaime has to mind a wild animal farm for her friend Susan Victor (played by Tippi Hedren who in real-life was involved in caring for big cats). One of Susan’s animals is a ridiculously tame pet lion but the local ranchers are convinced that the lion has been killing their steers. If Jaime can’t discover what’s really going on then the future looks grim for the lion. This is an episode that veers dangerously close to heart-warming territory.

In The Deadly Missiles a ballistic missile with a de-activated warhead lands in a reservoir near Los Angeles. It appears to have been fired from the ranch of wealthy industrialist J.T. Connors (Forrest Tucker), an old friend of Jaime’s. Jaime refuses to believe that J.T. could actually be involved. But her job is to find out. And she has to find out before somebody fires another missile with a live warhead. Jaime is torn between her duty and her loyalty to a friend. A pretty decent episode.

In Bionic Beauty Oscar orders Jaime to enter a beauty pageant. The pageant is a threat to national security but he doesn’t know why. Jaime has to find that out. This episode is mostly filler with the beauty pageant stuff distracting from the actual plot. But since the plot isn’t particularly good maybe it was a good idea after all to focus on the beautiful girls. Not a very impressive episode.

In Jaime's Mother Jaime thinks she’s seen her mother. Which is disturbing, since her mother died in 1966. Jaime fears she’s going mad. Oscar isn’t happy. But Jaime still thinks her mother may be alive. This is another episode more focused on Jaime personally and on her emotional state than on secret agent missions although there’s more to the reappearance of Jaime’s mother than one might think. It’s all a bit contrived and with a bit too much emotional angst.

In Winning Is Everything Jaime has to enter a desert car race in a south-west Asian country. Oscar has hired failed Grand Prix driver Tim Sanders to drive with Jaime as navigator. Her real mission is to pick up a tape hidden by an American spy. Almost the entire episode is taken up with the car race (which I guess is exciting) and the very feeble plot gets largely forgotten. Not much of an episode really.

Canyon of Death is another episode in which Jaime gets personally involved. One of her pupils, John Little Bear, wanders off into a restricted area in the desert and discovers something very dangerous. It relates to the testing of a top-secret atomic-powered jetpack flying suit. This is definitely an episode aimed squarely at a very young audience. The idea of an atomic-powered flying suit is amusingly retro for 1976. Not a very good episode.

Fly Jaime is basically a rehash of the Six Million Dollar Man episode Survival of the Fittest. Rudy Wells has to fly to South America, on a charter flight, to pick up a secret formula. Jaime goes along as his bodyguard (masquerading as stewardess Miss Winters). The plane crashes and the survivors are stranded on a deserted island and among the passengers are killers after that secret formula. It’s OK but if you’ve seen the Six Million Dollar Man episode referred to then you’ve seen this one.

The Jailing of Jaime starts out with Jaime getting a straightforward assignment - to deliver a top-secret code-breaking device to a military base. It turns out no to be so straightforward and Jaime winds up in jail, suspected of treason. Of course no prison can hold the bionic woman for very long. She breaks out, determined to clear her name. Her ability to break out of impossible places will come in handy again later. A routine but entertaining episode and we do get to see just how strong she really is.

It was an ironclad rule in the 60s and 70s that every action-adventure series had to have at least one episode in which an evil double of the hero or heroine was running around causing mayhem. And so we get Mirror Image. Yes, the bad guys have surgically altered a woman to make her look exactly like Jaime and her mission is to kill Oscar Goldman. The idea is hackneyed but it’s executed reasonably well with Lindsay Wagner varying her performance subtly when she’s playing the double. A good episode.

The Bionic Woman goes spooky in The Ghosthunter, with Jaime up against witches, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. A top government scientist and his daughter have been troubled by what appear to be ghostly visitations. The scientist’s wife, now deceased, had been the descendant of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1692. Jaime soon discovers that weird things really are going on. The episode does a good job of keeping us uncertain as to whether these are genuinely supernatural happenings. There’s a possibility it maybe be an elaborate espionage conspiracy, or it could be something paranormal or overtly supernatural. We’re also kept in doubt not just about the nature of these happenings but also the source. A pretty good way to end the first season.

Final Thoughts

The scripts are sometimes a little on the weak side but the coolness of the concept and Lindsay Wagner’s performances carry the show through a few less than brilliant episodes. On the whole it’s a fun series and it’s worth a look.

Charlie’s Angels season 3

After facing what looked like imminent disaster when Farrah Fawcett quit after the first season Charlie’s Angels had bounced back amazingly well in its second season. In fact the ratings for the second season were marginally higher than for the first. But there were more storm clouds on the horizon for Charlie’s Angels. Those storm clouds were centred over Kate Jackson. Jackson had always seen herself as the star of the series and had been somewhat miffed when Farrah Fawcett got all the attention in season one. And in season two the nightmare continued, this time with Jackson being totally overshadowed by the awesomeness that was Cheryl Ladd.

Jackson was also unhappy that the series didn’t turn out to be the very serious very feminist-centred series that she’d wanted it to be. And then Jackson was offered the lead role in Kramer vs Kramer (which she thought would have made her the biggest star in Hollywood) and the producers of Charlie’s Angels made it clear that if she tried to do a Farrah and break her contract they’d see her in court.

So the atmosphere on-set during the making of the third season was tense to say the least, with Jackson frequently refusing to talk to anybody. Finally by the end of the season producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg had had enough and Jackson was fired.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like Kate Jackson in Charlie’s Angels, and I like Sabrina. And I think that the third season lineup of Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd was superb. The three stars balanced each other perfectly. Each actress, and each character, had her own strengths and the combination was, at its best, television magic.

The third season saw Farrah Fawcett back in the series as a guest star in several episodes. Farrah had broken her contract and walked on the series after the first season (to pursue what she fondly imagined would be a glittering Hollywood film career) which led to much legal wrangling. Part of the deal finally struck was that Farrah would return for several guest appearances in the third season. The problem is that by the time she did return her star was already beginning to wane and that glittering film career was turning into a total washout. The sad truth is that by season three Charlie’s Angels no longer needed Farrah Fawcett. Her replacement, Cheryl Ladd, had become hugely popular and to be brutally honest Ladd had more star quality than Farrah. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Farrah in the first season, it’s just that Cheryl Ladd was even better.

Charlie’s Angels was still riding high in the ratings during the third season. As for the scripts, let’s just say that they’re kinda variable in quality but the highs do outnumber the lows by a comfortable margin.

In fact the season starts very strongly indeed. The early to mid season episodes are generally excellent. The formula was working pretty smoothly. Whatever tensions there may have been on the set there’s no question that the lineup of Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd was a formidable one. The latter part of the season has some major ups and downs but it includes a few great episodes. By the end of the season the future looked bright for the series.

One minor factor which needs to be mentioned is the notoriously penny-pinching approach of Spelling and Goldberg to budgeting. These guys liked saving money when they could. The problem with this approach is that the Charlie’s Angels formula is all about glamour. A series about three hot lady PIs needs an atmosphere of wealth, luxury and glamour and to achieve that you do need to spend at least some money. At this stage the series was still fresh and exciting and the stories were mostly very entertaining and it didn’t matter too much but there are times when the series looks just a little cheap.

Episode Guide

The third season kicks off with the two-part story Angels in Vegas. Casino owner Frank Howell (Dean Martin) hires the Angels after two of his employees are killed in what he considers to be very suspicious circumstances. It quickly becomes obvious that somebody is out to get at Frank, but why?

Sabrina goes undercover as Frank’s personal assistant and pretty soon romance is blossoming between them. Dean Martin at 61 does not look in good shape - he doesn’t just look 30 years older than her, he looks 40 years older at least. There are still brief glimpses of the Dean Martin charm. Kris’s cover is as a backup singer for fading singing legend Marty Cole (Dick Sargent). Kelly poses as a dancer.

Suspicion falls on rival casino operator Mark Haines (Vic Morrow). There’s a subplot about a professor using a computer (OK, it’s just a pocket calculator) to wipe Frank out at the craps table.

It’s typical Charlie’s Angels stuff. The Angels have no idea what they’re doing and all three manage to hopelessly blow their covers. They basically just muddle through the case but they do so charmingly and the Las Vegas setting provides plenty of glamour.

Angel Come Home saw the first of Farrah Fawcett’s guest appearances in season 3. Jill has become a racing car driver(!) and she’s engaged to be married to another racing car driver. There’s also yet another driver with whom she’s been romantically involved and she’s going to be driving his car in the Grand Prix. It’s a brand-new super-high tech car that is going to revolutionise the whole automobile industry but someone is trying to sabotage it.

So Jill turns detective again and we have four Angels working on this case. It’s a reasonably OK story.

Farrah Fawcett is quite OK in this episode although you’re never for one minute going to buy her as a Formula 1 driver. And somehow Farrah has lost just a little of her sparkle.

Angel on High seems at first to be just another recycling of a very hackneyed idea - a young man (in this case a stunt flyer) who may or may not be the long-list son of a tycoon. But there’s a twist - he may or may not be the heir to two entirely separate fortunes. One of the joys of Charlie’s Angels is the way the Angels keep on doing wildly unprofessional things, like falling in love with people they’re supposed to be investigating and then entirely forgetting to do their job properly. In this case it’s Kelly who falls for the stunt flyer. While Kelly is busy falling in love Kris is busy pursuing another guy and totally forgets all her professional training as well. The most interesting thing about this episode is the ending, which is not the kind of ending you expect in a 70s network TV show. Overall it’s an enjoyable episode.

Angels in Springtime takes the Angels to a ritzy women-only health spa. Famous ageing actress Eve le Deux died there in a freak accident but her niece is sure it was murder and Charlie is inclined to agree. The Angels go undercover - Sabrina as a dietician, Kris as an exercise director and Kelly as a client. They quickly discover that this spa is more like a prison. They also notice an overwhelming lesbian vibe. It’s so obvious that I don’t think any viewer, in 1978 or today, could possibly miss it. Kelly certainly very obviously notices it when the staff physician examines her. As usual the Angels fail to take even the most elementary precautions to preserve either their covers or their skins.

This episode really does have a delightfully bizarre atmosphere. It’s more like a women-in-prison exploitation movie. There’s a wheelchair chase. There are cool murder and attempted murder methods. There’s another ageing actress, Norma Powers, at the spa who is worried about the missing manuscript of Eve le Deux’s autobiography which apparently includes a lengthy description of Norma’s many and varied perversion. Including foot fetishism! This episode is just so much weird twisted kinky fun.

Winning Is for Losers is another female sports star in peril story. This time it’s up-and-coming golfer Linda Frye (Jamie Lee Curtis). There are some pretty obvious suspects. Kris gets to chase a suspect in a golf cart and she gets to wrassle gators. Yes, gators. Is she awesome or what?

Haunted Angels has the Angels coming up against ghosts. Claire Rossmore has been funding a psychic research institute run by Dr Douglas Holden. She is hoping to make contact with her deceased nephew Martin whom she had raised as her own child. Bosley, who plays bridge regularly with Claire, is convinced that the whole setup is a scam. Naturally the Angels have to infiltrate the institute, with Sabrina posing as a psychic and Kris as a graduate student in parapsychology. Kelly will meanwhile be finding out all she can about Martin. It’s not just a possible scam - there has been a murder at the institute.

The paranormal and the occult were huge fads in the 70s and if there was one thing that Charlie’s Angels did really well it was satirising those kinds of cults and fads. And in this episode the show really goes to town, with thunder crashing as attempts are made to contact the dead in the world beyond and every ghost movie cliché you can name. And it works because the tone is just right - it’s outrageous but it doesn’t go too far over the top. There’s a real murder to solve and the mystery is not bad and it’s taken fairly seriously. A very good episode.

Pom Pom Angels is about cheerleaders. Someone has decided that cheerleaders are wanton hussies who must be eliminated. The Angels have to save the cheerleaders. Seriously, can there be anything more Charlie’s Angels than a Charlie’s Angels episode about cheerleaders? Of course I know you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking. Which of the Angels will have to go undercover as a cheerleader? Will it be Kris or Kelly? Obviously it won’t be Sabrina. Well today the gods who watch over cult TV fans are really smiling on us. We quickly learn that we’re going to get to see both Kris and Kelly as cheerleaders. How awesome is that?

The most notable thing about this episode is how competent the Angels are. The follow the obvious leads. They spot the obvious clues immediately. They don’t make any dumb mistakes. When Kris doesn’t show up to a meeting Sabrina and Kelly realise immediately that she’s in trouble and swing into action. When Sabrina is descending a staircase and is faced by a bad guy further down the stairs who is an imminent threat she doesn’t try to punch him out or wrestle with him, which just wouldn’t work. But a well-placed kick to the head works just fine. It’s the sort of thing a sensible lady detective would do.

Of course the real reason to watch this episode is to see Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd jumping about in their cute cheerleader outfits, demonstrating why Charlie’s Angels got labelled Jiggle TV.

The Angels are all at sea in Angels Ahoy. A woman was murdered on a cruise ship shortly after claiming to have seen a murderer on board. Charlie thinks it’s connected with a racket that smuggles criminals out of the country. The Angels will have to be aboard the ship on its next cruise and one of them will have to pose as a hardboiled ruthless lady gangster. Sabrina is unanimously elected. The cruise liner setting is used well and there’s a decent plot. We get a masquerade party so we get to see to Kris looking adorable again as Little Bo Peep, Sabrina in an unflattering clown costume but later looking great as a gunslinger and Kelly in a tutu. Bosley falls in love again. The Angels are back to making egregious basic mistakes such as Kelly walking straight into a trap without any backup. On the whole it’s pretty enjoyable.

Mother Angel features another Farrah Fawcett guest appearance. A 12-year-old girl, Samantha, claims to have witnessed a murder. Charlie, Bosley and the Angels don’t really believe her story until Jill finds some evidence that suggests it may be true. The audience knows the identity of both killer and victim from the start but we have no idea why the murder was committed. The Angels know even less. There’s some dialogue, a well-constructed plot and a good chase scene at the end. Another very good episode.

Angel on My Mind is odd because there’s really not much plot at all, and no surprise twists. Kris witnesses an assault then gets knocked out and loses her memory. She wanders off and nobody can find her. And being a witness to that crime means there is now someone out to get her. There could have been some real suspense here but it falls flat because Kris just never seems to be in much danger. Cheryl Ladd gives an effectively subtle low-key performance. She really does seem like a lost little girl, retreating into childhood memories. Ladd’s wonderful performance makes this a surprisingly good episode, even though it’s a very hackneyed idea. Against the odds this one really works.

Angels Belong in Heaven has the makings of a fine suspense story. A man is killed while in the process of telephoning the Townsend Detective Agency with important information. There’s a professional contract out on one of the Angels. It’s more interesting than most such stories because the Angels don’t know which one of them is the killer’s target, and the viewer doesn’t know either. It plays out as a taut and pretty effective thriller episode.

For those who like to look for subtexts there’s Kelly’s houseguest Sally, an old friend from summer camp. Does she have a girlcrush on Kelly? Or is there some lingering resentment? We know of course that Kelly would have been the most beautiful and most popular girl at the summer camp, the sort of girl obviously destined for perfect success in life and romance while Sally would have been (and still is) the slightly awkward, slightly socially inept not-quite-pretty girl destined to always lose out in the game of love to the perfect girls like Kelly. And one can’t help notice that Kelly’s fondness for Sally is just a little tinged with pity. Overall a very strong episode.

At this stage of the season Charlie’s Angels is most definitely on a roll.

Which makes the next episode, Angels in the Stretch, such a disappointment. There’s dirty work afoot at the racetrack, including murder. It’s not awful, it’s just terribly routine and uninspired. Nobody seems very interested. In most episodes at least one of the Angels gets to shine but here they’re just phoning it in.

Angels on Vacation takes the Angels to a tiny town in Arizona where Kris’s uncle is sheriff. They start to notice that everybody is terribly nervous and eventually they figure out that something really bad is going down. The problem here is that the viewer already knows exactly what’s going on, and this sort of story really only works when the viewer is as mystified as the protagonists. The way the Angels finally deal with the problem isn’t too bad. And the Angels actually get to kill bad guys. An OK episode which should have been better.

It had to happen. We had to have an episode with fake Angels. Evil doubles taking the place of the hero or heroine was a staple of TV in this era. So we get Counterfeit Angels. Three phoney Angels have been staging daring robberies. There are a couple of nice touches - having the real Angels having to impersonate the women who are impersonating them is a cute idea. The Angels get a good action scene at the end where they have to react with lightning speed to save themselves. Overall it’s a mixed bag but there is some fun to be had.

In Disco Angels a series of murders of old men seem to be linked to a disco. The Angels investigate, and pretty much blow their covers right away. There’s lots of craziness in this episode, there’s Zalman King (one of the great bad actors) as the most unhinged DJ in history, there’s a cool catfight between Kris and the disco owner’s mistress, there’s a surprisingly high sleaze factor (Kelly is posing as a record company flak promoting new discs and is flatly told by the DJ that he won’t play them unless she sleeps with him). It all adds up to wonderful entertainment.

Terror on Skis is a two-part episode and I’ve never been convinced that two-parters were a great idea. TV writers (in this case Edward J. Lakso) who were quite competent at writing 48-minute TV dramas sometimes struggled when trying to write a story at feature-film length, and having a story split over two screenings a week apart did tend to dissipate the tension. We’re into spy thriller/Bond movie territory here. Enemy spies are planning to kidnap a rising young politician. A government agent is onto them but they’e onto him as well, and they deal with the problem by killing him. Since they obviously have a security leak the Feds call in outside help - the Angels. The Angels as usual have enormous difficult maintaining their covers and the bad guys know straight away what the Angels are up to. The good guys and the bad guys are equally incompetent so it all evens out.

The ski country setting is used well and the action scenes are pretty good (by 1970s TV standards they’re very good). There is some genuine excitement. It’s an OK episode.

Angel in a Box features one of Farrah Fawcett’s guest appearances. Kris is kidnapped but the kidnappers seemed to think they were snatching Jill. The trail leads Bosley (along with Sabrina, Kelly and Jill) to a resort hotel but that trail may have been deliberately laid. Which is obvious to everyone but the Angels. A fairly weak episode.

Teen Angels sounds like guaranteed fun. Kris goes undercover as a schoolgirl at an exclusive school for rich girls, where there’s been a murder. You might think Kris would stick out like a sore thumb as the world’s oldest schoolgirl but luckily all the other schoolgirls there look like they’re pushing thirty as well so no-one notices. Kris is going to be up against a trio of mean girls, and these are really mean girls. With a blonde named Donna as the queen bee uber-bitch. And there’s also a black-gloved killer. Someone tries to barbeque the Angels, there’s a cool motorcycle chase with Kris doing an Annie Oakley bit from the sidecar. This one is so silly and goofy that it works. And Audrey Landers as Donna is a delightful evil bitch. I liked it.

In Marathon Angels a female marathon runner is kidnapped by two guys in Halloween masks. Her friend and running partner Helga (with the thickest phoney Swedish accent you’ve ever heard) calls in the Angels. Helga runs a health spa. She and her friend were about to compete in a women’s marathon organised by a ladies’ sportswear manufacturer. Charlie’s Angels was always particularly awesome when it dealt with 70s California craziness so this sounds like a promising setup.

But first things first. Kris’s pigtails. This is two episodes in a row in which she’s sported pigtails. In the previous episode the pigtails were combined with a baby doll nightie which was…interesting.

Anyway, this episode offers women in skimpy costumes, beautiful girls bound and gagged in very fetishistic poses, snakes, oil sheikhs, a female reporter who wants to expose the race as patriarchal oppression and marathon runners performing impromptu song-and-dance routines in the middle of the race. You have no idea what the story is all about or what craziness it will throw at you next so you just have to keep watching. It’s very very bad and at the same time engagingly goofy and weirdly fascinating. I think I liked it.

Angels in Waiting has a remarkably silly premise. Bosley wants to romance some woman he’s just met in a restaurant and he’s ticked off that the Angels think he’s predictable. And they all have a stack of paperwork to do. He challenges them to a game. He’ll go off somewhere and every two hours he’ll phone them with a clue. If they figure out where he is he’ll do all the paperwork. Yes, he’s challenging them to a game of hide-and-seek. This may be the lamest idea ever for a Charlie’s Angels episode. And some guy is trying to kill Bosley but the would-be killer’s identity is obvious so that part is lame as well. It’s just a terrible episode.

Rosemary for Remembrance takes the series into more serious emotional territory. Prohibition-era gangster Jake Garfield has just been released after forty years in prison. Someone is trying to kill him, but what Jake really wants is to re-open a 44-year-old murder case - the murder of his wife Rosemary. Kris is assigned to act as Jake’s bodyguard and it turns it that she is the spitting image of Jake’s deceased wife.

Where things get interesting is when Kris starts to get drawn into Jake’s memories of the past. It’s not just that Jake starts to think that she’s his dead wife - in a spooky kind of way Kris is getting drawn into the past as well. This one has a reasonably OK mystery plot but it’s the sense of the past and the present bleeding into each other, and the identities of Rosemary and Kris bleeding into each other, that makes this an excellent episode. Plus Cheryl Ladd looks terrific in slinky 1930s dresses and hairstyles and she does some pretty decent acting as well.

Angels Remembered is a clip episode, one of those cheapskate money-saving episodes made up almost entirely of clips from earlier episodes. Even by the standards of clip episodes this one is feeble. A terrible terrible way to end the season.

Final Thoughts

On the whole this is a strong season despite a few dud episodes towards the end. And the good episodes are classic Charlie’s Angels stuff and they’re very good indeed. If you loved the first two seasons you’ll definitely want to see this season. Highly recommended.

I did a brief review of season one and a much more in-depth review of season two.