Zodiac (1974)

Zodiac was one of several attempts by British television in the late 60s and early 70s to come up with a formula that would successfully add the paranormal or the supernatural to a mystery or action adventure series. ITC had some success with a ghostly private detective in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 1969. Baffled was an Anglo-American attempt that got no further than a pilot episode in 1973 although it actually had considerable potential. Zodiac, which lasted just six episodes in 1974, was Thames Television’s foray into this sub-genre.

Detective-Inspector Gradley (Anton Rodgers) teams up with astrologer Esther Jones (Anouska Hempel) in this series which seems to have aimed mostly for gentle comedy.

Anton Rodgers was better known for situation comedies like Fresh Fields. He was certainly adept at light comedy although he makes a somewhat unlikely policeman. On the other hand Gradley is supposed to be an unconventional policeman. He was all set to be an idle young man living on a fortune he’d inherited until he discovered the rather disturbing terms of his grandfather’s  will - he only gets the fortune as long as he remains a serving police officer. As a result he has a slightly casual and even haphazard approach to the job. He doesn’t really think he’s all that suited to being a police officer but he doesn’t have much choice and he’s the sort of chap who accepts such things philosophically. That all works well enough although he’s still perhaps just a little too gentle and effete and aristocratic and laidback.

Anouska Hempel has the advantage of looking the way you might expect a 1970s astrologer to look, or perhaps she really looks more like a model who might dabble in astrology. 

The first episode, Death of a Crab, introduces the two lead characters. Gradley is investigating the murder of a man found in the bath of a penthouse flat only it wasn’t his fault and how he came to be there is as much a mystery as his death. Esther Jones is a suspect. Gradley is pretty sceptical when he discovers she’s an astrologer although his scepticism soon starts to fade. 

The most difficult problem for this type of series is to get the tone right. It can’t be too jokey and there’s a danger in overdoing the whimsy but on the other hand you don’t want to take things too seriously. Initial impressions suggest that Zodiac doesn’t take itself quite seriously enough. There are other problems. Unless you’re aiming for pure comedy there’s not much point in introducing paranormal elements unless there’s at least some spookiness or some definite sense of the uncanny. There isn’t quite enough of either of these elements in the first episode.

Also if you’re going to have a crime-solving team of a policeman and an astrologer you need to convince the viewer that the policeman really could not solve these cases without the astrologer. I’m not sure that Zodiac entirely succeeds in doing this. The astrology stuff doesn’t seem to be quite central enough to the plot of Death of a Crab.

Zodiac was created by Roger Marshall, one of the best TV writers in the business. This was a change of pace for him which was presumably what attracted him to the idea. Marshall was known for writing clever and witty scripts for series like The Avengers and Zodiac demonstrates a certain amount of exactly the same sort of wit. Marshall had also created the superb Public Eye series and the sympathy and humanity with which he imbued that series is also in evidence in Zodiac.

The good news is that the chemistry between the two leads works surprisingly well and they both handle the witty banter with assurance. 

This is fundamentally a good-natured series. Gradley is an unlikely cop but he’s a nice fellow and while Esther has a few hippie tendencies she’s a pretty nice person as well.

Episode two, The Cool Aquarian, is more interesting and a considerable improvement. It relies a good deal on coincidence but then when you’re dealing with astrology maybe the reliance on coincidence could have been quite intentional. A hard-driving businessman receives a ransom demand after a young woman is kidnapped. Which is very strange since he’s never even heard of the young lady concerned. In this episode the series starts to come together quite nicely. The paranormal/psychic/astrological elements play an important plot function but without dominating too much - good old-fashioned psychology and logical deduction help as well. The banter between the two leads seems more relaxed and more natural and the sparks start to fly between them in a very pleasing way.

Roger Marshall wrote the first two episodes himself. The third episode, The Strength of Gemini, was penned by Philip Broadley - Marshall was obviously determined to get hold the best possible writers for this series. In this episode a scoundrel is making use of Esther’s astrological skills her his own purposes although exactly how sinister those purposes might be is not clear at first. Either way Esther is outraged and Gradley has to admit that there might be something there that he should look into. It is a clever scam and it’s a good story, helped along by a delightfully oily guest starring turn by Norman Eshley.

Episode four, Saturn's Rewards, was written by Pat Hoddinott and is even better. An MP witnesses a murder but has his own reasons for not wanting to call the police. He will discover that this murder strikes a lot closer to home than he expected while Esther absolutely refuses to believe that a friend’s new boyfriend is not a Scorpio. He has to be a Scorpio. She just won’t give up on this, which turns out to be just as well. This is another episode that neatly combines astrological clues with ordinary police work and it has some neat twists.

Sting Sting Scorpio (written by Roger Marshall) opens with the murder of Madame Lavengro, an elderly astrologer in Brighton. At least Esther is convinced it’s murder although it appeared to be a heart attack. Esther has the bright idea of taking over Madame Lavengro’s shop in the hope of finding a clue although Gradley warns her that playing amateur detective can have consequences. Esther believes she’s uncovered a vital lead when she does a tarot reading for a maid in a leading Brighton hotel. A hotel in which a series of robberies has taken place. it’s another episode that succeeds quite well in integrating the occult and detective story elements.

The Horns of the Moon, written by Peter Yeldham, goes further than any of the other episodes in the direction of pure comedy and with guest appearances by capable comic talents such as Peter Jones, Graham Crowden and Michelle Dotrice it works splendidly. A retired general who runs a merchant bank ends up in the deep freeze. Gradley is sure he has the murderer pegged and Esther is equally convinced that he’s wrong. Although played for comedy the mystery plot is serviceable enough with at least one nice twist. The astrological angle is a little weaker in this episode but it’s still there and still plays a reasonably important part. This is a particularly delightful episode.

I mentioned coincidence earlier. Strange coincidences just keep on turning up in these stories. They’re a feature of just about every episode. Roger Marshall was far too experienced as a writer and producer to allow such basic writing mistakes to keep cropping up. The more I watch of this series the more convinced I am that this is an absolutely deliberate technique intended to give the show a subtly spooky feel and since the series deals with astrology I think it’s probably a quite justifiable technique. It’s a neat way of emphasising that slightly odd things happen around Esther Jones.

Zodiac is a series that has to accepted on its own terms. It’s not a conventional cop show but while there’s a good deal of humour and romance it’s not out-and-out romantic comedy or a full-blooded spoof either. It’s not a supernatural adventure series in the style of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - the paranormal elements are not allowed to dominate too much and in fact they could almost be explained away by coincidence and by Esther’s shrewdness at judging people. Zodiac juggles these different elements with surprising success. With good writing, two charming leads, witty dialogue and a slightly whimsical premise Zodiac ends up being slightly dotty but rather endearing and it’s all so remarkably good-natured it’s hard to dislike this series. Highly recommended.

a 1972 Columbo theatrical double-header

I love murder stories with theatrical or movie studio backgrounds and the second season of Columbo provides two such tales which makes these two episodes a perfect double feature for me.

The fourth season two episode Dagger of the Mind could have been called Columbo Goes to London. Never have I seen so much gratuitous use of travelogue-type footage of the tourist spots of London. This is also a very under-appreciated episode - there are several very important elements that many people seem to overlook in this story.

Everyone’s favourite shabby detective is in London, as a guest of Scotland Yard, to address a police conference. He finds himself caught up in a theatrical murder.

Fading stars Nicholas Frame (Richard Basehart) and his wife Lillian Stanhope (Honor Blackman) are about to open in Macbeth in the West End when the wealthy aristocrat putting up the money for the play is killed. Since this is Columbo and the murderer is always revealed right at the start there’s no harm in revealing that our two has-been actors are involved. The murder has been arranged to look like an accident but Columbo just happens to be on the scene and he’s immediately suspicious.

What follows is the usual battle of wills as Columbo tries to persuade the killers to make a mistake so he can prove his case.

The first important thing to note is that Frame and his wife are appearing in Macbeth. Just like the protagonists in the play the protagonists of Dagger of the Mind find that ambition has its price and it’s a price that keeps on increasing. There is one plot point that has attracted criticism but once you remember the Macbeth connection it makes sense - once you decide that ambition overrides everything else you have jumped aboard a roller coaster that you can’t get off.

Another point sometimes overlooked relates to Richard Basehart’s performance. He is not supposed to be playing a great Shakespearian actor. He is playing an ageing ham who thinks he is a great Shakespearian actor and thinks he sees his opportunity to prove it, and to prove his critics wrong. In fact both Nicholas and Lillian are well past their prime and this production is their last chance to rekindle their fading careers. With this in mind it’s clear that Basehart knows exactly what he’s doing with his performance and he nails Nicholas Frame’s character superbly. Blackman is equally good and the two of them chew every piece of scenery they can get their teeth into.

Adding to the fun is the great Wilfred Hyde-White as the butler Tanner.

The fifth episode, Requiem for a Falling Star, can be seen as a kind of follow-up to Dagger of the Mind dealing as it does with murder in Hollywood. Another link between the two episodes is that both deal with stars whose careers are on the downslide. 

Fading star Nora Chandler (Anne Baxter) is the murderess but she kills the wrong person. She meant to kill sleazy gossip columnist Jerry Parks (Mel Ferrer) who is blackmailing but by mistake she kills her faithful secretary and friend Jean Davis (Pippa Scott). Lieutenant Columbo happens to be one of Nora’s biggest fans and he hates to think she might be a murderess but the evidence seems to point that way.

This is a rather untypical Columbo episode. As usual it’s an inverted detective story but with several very interesting variations (I won’t spilt the episode by giving any hints as the nature of these variations).

Like all Columbo episodes it’s pretty scrupulously fair play. We see all the same clues that Columbo sees although of course we might not always interpret them correctly.

Anne Baxter gives a spirited performance as the formidable Nora. 

Columbo never pretended to be a realistic cop show and always works best when Columbo is up against formidable adversaries played by actors who are willing to go over-the-top. These two episodes qualify on both counts. Dagger of the Mind is more fun thanks to the extraordinary overacting of Richard Basehart and Honor Blackman but Requiem for a Falling Star is more ambitious and demonstrates what could be achieved when the basic formula of the series was tweaked just a little. Both episodes are fine entertainment.

Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - The Case of the Mirror of Portugal

I posted recently about the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes episode The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds dealing with a delightfully colourful rogue. The series featured a couple of episodes dealing with an even more dastardly rogue and swindler - Horace Dorrington, the hero (or rather anti-hero) of Arthur Morrison’s superb 1897 short story collection The Dorrington Deed-Box. The Case of the Mirror of Portugal (first screened in October 1971) shows Dorrington at his villainous best (or worst).

Horace Dorrington (Peter Vaughan) is a private detective, the principal of the Dorrington and Hicks agency (although we never actually hear anything of Hicks and we suspect he may not exist). An impoverished French charcoal-burner, Jacques Bouvier (Michael Forrest) enlists Dorrington’s help to retrieve an item that was stolen from him by his cousin Leon Bouvier (Oscar Quitak). The item is a diamond. A very large diamond. A very large and very valuable diamond known as the Mirror of Portugal that was once part of the French Crown Jewels. It might seem very unlikely that a humble French charcoal-burner would have possessed this fabulous jewel but Dorrington finds his story to be strangely plausible. In fact Dorrington is convinced that the story is true.

The first order of business for Dorrington is to rid himself of Jacques Bouvier as a client. Dorrington intends to retrieve the diamond but he also intends to keep all the proceeds to himself. Dorrington is a very competent private detective but he is also, alas, a very dishonest one. He is in point of fact a thorough scoundrel.

Actually getting hold of the diamond should be child’s play for Dorrington. He’s up against rank amateurs who have foolish ideas about fair play. Or at least that’s what the villainous private detective thinks.

Julian Bond did a fine job with the adaptation. It’s a wonderfully clever little tale with some very nice plot twists. Mike Vardy’s direction is very competent. 

As I mentioned in my piece on The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds this 1971 series was made in the style of British television of the 60s, in other words shot almost entirely in the studio, although this particular episode does include a very brief sequence shot on location (a very unusual feature for this series). 

Paul Eddington is almost unrecognisable at first as a diamond merchant with very flexible ethics. Eddington is remembered for his roles in sitcoms like The Good Life and Yes, Minister but he was actually quite a versatile actor. He was memorably slimy and sinister as Strand in Special Branch and The Case of the Mirror of Portugal gives him a chance to be rather shady and sneaky, which he does rather well.

Kenneth Colley as Farrish and Petronella Barker as Miss Parrot, Dorrington’s two long-suffering assistants, provide competent support.

It’s Peter Vaughan’s performance however that dominates this episode. Vaughan was a marvelous actor who could really go over-the-top when required to do so. In this episode he does so to spectacular effect. He plays Dorrington as a moustache-twirling villain straight out of Victorian melodrama. It’s absolutely the right approach.

It’s not just Vaughan’s acting that brings to mind classic Victorian melodrama - everything about this episode is done in that style and it works to perfection.

It’s the combination of an excellent adaptation of a terrific story and Peter Vaughan’s epic scenery-chewing as Dorrington that makes this a superbly entertaining piece of television. Highly recommended.

In fact both seasons of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (available on Region 2 DVD from Network) can be very warmly recommended.

The Professionals, season 1 (1977)

The Professionals marked a change of pace for Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell. They had enjoyed enormous success with series like The Avengers and The New Avengers - witty and stylish action adventure series with no pretensions to realism. In 1977 they launched a new series for London Weekend Television - a series that was determinedly and self-consciously in the mould of the increasingly popular Gritty Realism school of television drama. The series was The Professionals which was a major hit, running for five seasons from 1977 to 1983.

The Professionals deals with CI5, an elite (and wholly imaginary) British counter-intelligence agency specialising in anti-terrorist operations. CI5 is run by the hardbitten George Cowley (Gordon Jackson) and the focus of the series is on Cowley and his two top agents, Doyle (Martin Shaw) and Bodie (Lewis Collins)

The Professionals aimed not only to be gritty and realistic but also reflected the increasingly violent and cynical tone of British television in the late 70s. The body counts in some episodes are quite alarmingly high!

Gordon Jackson had been best known for playing a butler in Upstairs, Downstairs so he might have seemed an unlikely choice to play the ruthless Cowley. Jackson was however a versatile actor and he relished the opportunity to play a bit of a heavy.

London Weekend Television had asked Clemens to create a buddy series for them and that’s exactly what he gave them. Doyle and Bodie spend as much time trading wisecracks as they do blowing away terrorists. Fortunately most of the scripts (for the first season at least - I haven’t ventured any further than that so far) provide them with the right sort of dialogue so the formula works.

One of the things that Brian Clemens felt strongly about in regard to this series was that the emphasis should be on action and on the relationship between the three principals. Overt political content of social commentary was to be avoided since such elements would slow down the action and also date the program - there’s nothing more tedious than yesterday’s hot-button political issue.

When Clemens was asked how much background research he did on counter-intelligence and anti-terrorist agencies prior to creating the series he cheerfully replied that he had done none at all. Not that it matters - this is an action adventure TV series not a documentary and Clemens always understood that entertainment was the name of the game.

Old Dog With New Tricks was intended to be the debut episode and it gives us some of the background on CI5 and its peculiar structure (there are no ranks) and its powers (which are in practice virtually unlimited). It’s essentially an anti-terrorist squad and despite  Clemens’ having done no background research it’s a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the kinds of paramilitary anti-terrorist squads that have since become common. We also get a little background on Doyle and Bodie. Doyle is an ex-cop while Bodie is ex-military. The story is somewhat far-fetched. IRA terrorists steal a shipment of arms from an army base only to be hijacked in turn by a criminal gang with spectacular plans to spring a convict from prison.

Private Madness, Public Danger was the first episode to go to air (although this had definitely not been Clemens’ intention). It was a bizarre choice to launch what was intended to be a tough realistic no-nonsense series - this episode has a plot so far-fetched that it could easily have served as an episode of The New Avengers (of course that might have been the reason London Weekend Television picked it as the debut episode). Well-meaning idealists (and there’s nobody George Cowley hates more than well-meaning idealists) have decided to force the British Government to outlaw biological warfare - by launching a campaign of biological warfare. They are going to lace the nation’s drinking waters with hallucinogenic drugs. This is one episode that has not aged well.

Where the Jungle Ends, like Old Dog With New Tricks, is also outrageous enough to have been a New Avengers episode apart from the much higher level of violence. A team of mercenaries is conducting their own private war, in the heart of England. This episode gives us a bit more background on Bodie - it’s implied that he’s not only ex-military but possibly an ex-mercenary himself. These two episodes are quite over-the-top but both were written by Brian Clemens and if you can suspend your disbelief they’re quite fun. It’s amusing seeing David Suchet (Hercule Poirot himself) as a hardbitten and rather psychotic mercenary.

Long Shot (written by Anthony Read)  involves a plan to assassinate a former US Secretary of State, or at least that’s what CI5 thinks they’re dealing with. Roger Lloyd Pack gets to overact outrageously as the suave but ruthless assassin Ramos. Killer with a Long Arm (written by Brian Clemens) also deals with a foreign assassin operating on British soil, an assassin with a very special gun (and a very special target).

I thought the premise of Heroes was a bit unlikely - I can’t imagine the British government deporting a US Senator no matter how much they might disapprove of him. Clearly there are others who disapprove of him a good deal more - they intend to assassinate him. Cowley’s problem is to keep the Senator alive long enough to expel him from the country. One of the slight weaknesses of this series is the overuse of one particular plot element - the bad guys systematically killing all the witnesses to their crime. This episode makes full use of this idea and it becomes just a little predictable.

Everest Was Also Conquered begins with a prologue. It is 1953, the year of the Coronation (and the year Mount Everest was climbed for the first time, hence the title). A woman, a witness under police protection, is murdered by being hurled out of a window. A quarter of a century later a death-bed confession re-opens the case. The trail is well and truly cold but Cowley is determined to get a result. And yes, you guessed it, we again have the bad guys trying to kill all the witnesses!

The Female Factor is much more interesting. A call girl is murdered. She had tried to contact Doyle shortly before her death. Doyle takes this rather personally and involves himself in the case, even though this is certainly not a case for CI5. Cowley is about to give Doyle a dressing-down for wasting time of such a trivial matter when an alarming discovery is made. A sheet of notepaper with a telephone number is found in the dead woman’s flat. The telephone number is the Prime Minister’s direct line. Now this is definitely a CI5 case - only a handful of people have that phone number and all of them are very important people with access to very important secrets. 

The political incorrectness of this series is absolutely off the scale. There’s more political incorrectness packed into one episode than you’ll find in an entire season of The Sweeney.

The extraordinary ruthlessness of CI5 may also come as something of a shock. George Cowley really doesn’t care what methods he has to use to get results. There is nothing that is off limits.

What makes The Professionals interesting is that it tries on the surface to be a hardboiled and brutally realistic crime/espionage series and in many ways it succeeds in being just that but then on occasions some of the story lines really do stretch credibility. That’s not by any means a fatal weakness and even when the stories are a little incredible they’re highly entertaining.

I wasn’t a great fan of this series when I first encountered it but revisiting it now I’m finding it to be rather enjoyable indeed. Recommended.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes - The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds

Everyone loves a good villain. The best villains of all (for entertainment value) are either diabolical criminal masterminds or brilliant swindlers. Swindlers are fun because they’re clever and they can appeal to us on two other levels - either as glamorous rebels or as dastardly cads. Guy Boothby (1867-1905) was an Australian writer who created both a memorable diabolical criminal mastermind (Dr Nikola) and an equally memorable swindler (Simon Carne). It is Simon Carne we are concerned with at the moment, or more specifically the 1971 television adaptation of The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds which was the fourth episode of the first season of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, made by Thames Television in Britain between 1971 and 1973, included adaptations of many of the superb stories written by late Victorian and Edwardian authors who were contemporaries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds was adapted by Anthony Stevens and directed by Kim Mills, a reliable and prolific TV director during the 60s and early 70s.

Wealthy socialite Simon Carne (Roy Dotrice) has just returned to England after an extended stay in foreign climes. Simon seems to have everything a man could want - wealth, breeding, education, a ready wit and a good deal of charm. He is a charismatic and fascinating figure with an entrée into the world of fashionable high society. He does however suffer from one slight social disadvantage - he is a hunchback.

You might think that his disfigurement would make him bitter. He is bitter, but for other reasons. Simon Carne is not quite what he appears to be.

He arrives back in England to find that the latest sensation in fashionable circles is a mysterious private detective known as Klimo. There has been a disturbing rash of daring jewel robberies which have baffled all the attempts of Scotland Yard to bring the perpetrator to justice. Klimo has been enjoying great success by solving these crimes. Although he does not exactly solve them, not does he catch the criminals. What he does, for a large fee, is to explain to the wealthy victims precisely how the crimes were carried out. This has caused much humiliation for Scotland Yard since Klimo’s explanations are invariably not merely plausible but quite watertight.

There is much trepidation at the Yard at the approach of the glittering ball about to take place at the home of the Duke and Duchess of Wiltshire. The duchess will be wearing the fabulous, and enormously valuable, Wiltshire Diamonds. It seems almost certain that the daring jewel thief who has caused them so much trouble will try to steal the diamonds. The Duke has decided there is only one way to prevent such a calamity - rather than waiting until after the robbery he will hire Klimo to prevent such an eventuality. This turns out to be not such a simple thing.

What does all this have to do with Simon Carne? You’ll have to watch this episode to find that out. It’s a clever story and it’s extremely well executed.

Roy Dotrice is a fine actor and he gives a suitably mesmerising performance. THe supporting cast is exceptionally strong, with John Nettleton as Carne’s butler Belton being particularly outstanding.

The mid-70s saw a dramatic sea change in British television drama, with the old shot-in-the-studio-on-videotape style giving way to the new shot-on-location-entirely-on-film style. The emphasis was on greater realism and more action. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was made in the older style and it does have that characteristic studio-bound feel. On the other hand the sets and costumes are generally impressive and it was made in colour and on the whole it looks rather splendid.

The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds was not the only episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes to feature a dastardly cad and unmitigated bounder and I’ll be posting a review of some of those other episodes in the near future.

Both seasons of this wonderful show are available on Region 2 DVD from Network. Great viewing and highly recommended.

Dynasty (1981-89)

One of the reasons I enjoy doing this blog is that it inspires me to watch lots and lots of old TV shows. And one of the reasons I enjoy watching so many old TV shows is that I missed  so many of them in the past. I am afraid that when I was younger I took life rather too seriously. In was a bit of a pop culture snob. There were certain types of television shows that I would never have considered watching. Shows like Dynasty and Dallas for example.

Fortunately I have overcome most of my prejudices and as a result I’ve been watching both Dynasty and Dallas recently, and enjoying them both a lot more than I expected to.

Of course the two series have a great deal in common. Both are soap operas, albeit big-budget prime-time soap operas. Both deal with oil billionaires. Both focus on the lifestyles of the very wealthy. Both focus not only on the personal and family dramas that are the staple of soap operas but also on the wheeling and dealing behind the scenes in the world of big business. Both feature outrageous over-the-top characters and both feature delightfully outlandish plot lines. Both include unscrupulous conniving characters (J. R. Ewing in Dallas and Alexis Carrington in Dynasty) that the audience loves to hate. Both series wear their trashiness as a badge of pride, which is something I admire tremendously.

There are however some subtle differences. Having now watched quite a bit of both these shows it seems to me that Dallas is a bit more grounded in reality. The characters are more or less believable - even J. R. might be larger than life and over-the-top but he is still just about believable. The other characters are mostly reasonably realistic. The story lines are convoluted and rely to a considerable extent on coincidence and they can get pretty outrageous (all of which is simply to say that it conforms to the conventions of the soap opera genre) but they still maintain at least a modicum of plausibility.

Dynasty on the other hand abandons any pretense at realism. This is pure fantasy stuff. The characters are straight-out melodrama figures, and the villainous characters are pure melodrama villains (or villainesses). The stories make no attempt to remain within the bounds of probability or plausibility. In other words Dynasty conforms to the conventions of melodrama - not the Hollywood style of melodrama but the classic stage melodramas of the 19th century.

None of this is intended as a criticism of Dynasty. The approach the producers decided to run with was a deliberate choice and it’s a perfectly valid choice. And that choice having been made the writers, directors and cast have done a splendid job and the results are ridiculously entertaining (even if at times they’re also entertainingly ridiculous).

On the whole I think I slightly prefer Dallas but I’m certainly not immune to the charms of Dynasty. And it’s Dynasty I’m supposed to be talking about at the moment.

Dynasty tells the story of oil billionaire Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) and the immensely complicated inter-relationships of his ill-assorted and frequently feuding family members. Forsythe wasn’t a bad actor but he knows this is soap opera and he is never tempted to try for subtlety. He knows what is expected of him in this sort of television and he delivers the goods.

Of course Dynasty’s biggest drawcard and its greatest asset is Joan Collins. She is magnificent. She knows it’s her job to be the uber-bitch and she knows just how to go about it. Alexis is appalling and yet she’s so mesmerising and so magnetic and she plays the bitch with so much style that you almost find yourself on her side.

Joan Collins is the sort of actress who is likely to overshadow everyone else but this doesn’t really happen. Everybody else is overacting as hard as they can and for the most part they succeed in not being overshadowed too badly. Pamela Sue Martin as Alexis’s daughter Fallon Carrington is certainly in no danger of that - she holds her own very convincingly. She might not be an uber-bitch but she’s capable of some pretty impressive scheming of her own and she can be frightening formidable when she’s set her mind on something. Young actresses don’t always have the confidence to give outrageously over-the-top performances but Pamela Sue Martin is most definitely not afraid to do so. Blake’s wife Krystle (Linda Evans) is one of the more sympathetic characters but even she has her moments, and to her credit Evans is not intimidated even by Joan Collins in full flight.

When you happen to come across an episode like The Downstairs Bride which features Joan Collins, Pamela Sue Martin and Heather Locklear all competing to see who can be the most deliciously bitchy then you have true trash TV heaven.

And the scenery-chewing and the gloriously excessive viciousness and backbiting are not monopolised by the male characters, with Adam Carrington (Gordon Thomson) being perhaps even more breathtakingly appalling than Alexis.

The acting in this series could not in all honesty be described as good acting in the conventional sense. It’s soap opera acting and (with a few exceptions) it strikes the right notes. You just can’t be too excessive in this kind of television.

Dynasty began its run in 1981 and at the moment I’m getting close to the end of the third season which takes us up to 1983. As you’d expect there’s a lot of early 80s style to the show but while there’s some amusing and rather delightful expensive bad taste on display by 80s standards the overall look of the series is by no means as ghastly as you might expect (although some of Linda Evans’ costumes are rather frightening). Joan Collins of course could look stylish in anything and always manages to look magnificent.

Dynasty is trashy, no question about it, but it doesn’t care. It’s not afraid to go all the way, and then go even further. You really can’t push high camp much further than this. Its sheer extravagant and shameless outrageousness is intoxicating. It’s a lot of fun. Plus you get Joan Collins at the absolute peak of her form. Recommended.

Burke’s Law, season one (1963)

When a television cop show is centred around a police captain who happens to be a multi-millionaire and who gets driven to crime scenes in his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, I think it’s fair to assume we’re not meant to take the program all that seriously. Such is definitely the case with Burke’s Law, which ran from 1963 to 1965.

Captain Amos Burke (Gene Barry) is the chief of the homicide division but he only turns up at the police headquarters when an actual murder occurs. The rest of the time he spends lazing on the beach with his beautiful girlfriend, chasing other equally beautiful women, attending exclusive parties and hanging out at expensive night-spots. It’s a tough life being a cop.

But don’t let appearances fool you. Amos Burke is actually a very good detective and he takes murder very seriously. Of course if there are two suspects to be questioned, and one is  female and attractive and the other is neither of those things, somehow Captain Burke always ends up interviewing the attractive female. 

Of course a TV cop has to have side-kicks. Burke has two. One is an old-time hard-bitten cop played by Regis Toomey, the other is young ambitious up-and-comer Tim Tilson, played by Gary Conway. Tim is efficient to a fault. No matter what needs to be done, he’s already done it. His superior regards all this with amusement rather than jealousy.

It’s all played with tongue planted firmly in cheek. There are running jokes, there are wisecracks, there are bizarre suspects. What’s pleasant is that everyone is clearly in on the joke, including the guest stars. Elizabeth Montgomery hams it up outrageously in Who Killed Mr X as a ditzy blonde sexpot actress who is obviously a kept woman for a wealthy eccentric.  

In the following episode, Who Killed Cable Roberts, it’s the turn of Lizabeth Scott, still looking remarkably glamorous in one of her last screen appearances before her retirement became final and determined to show she can chew scenery with the best of them. Any scenery still left unchewed is taken care of by Paul Lynde and Zsa Zsa Gabor in supporting roles. When you’ve got Zsa Zsa Gabor cast as a maid you know that this is not exactly going to be a gritty realistic police procedural.

There are three key ingredients in this show - humour, glamour and sexiness. The humour is good-natured and fun, the glamour is over-the-top (it was produced by Aaron Spelling, later responsible for Dynasty), and it’s as sexy as a prime-time network TV show could get away with being in 1963. Amos Burke is a character who could be insufferable but Gene Barry strikes just the right note, making him likable, genuinely charming and extremely witty.

Gritty it may not be, but the tongue-in-cheek approach is combined with reasonably good and well-written whodunit stories.

The guest stars are a mix of movie stars in the twilight of their careers and young up-and-comers, but the witty scripts and the ample opportunities to overact inspire them all and the show benefits from some truly glorious and outrageous performances. Anne Francis’s guest performance landed her her own spin-off series as glamorous private eye Honey West. Carolyn Jones (better known as Morticia Addams from The Addams Family) makes a couple of guest appearances, in one episode playing no less than four parts. Yvonne de Carlo, Ida Lupino, Tina Louise and Annette Funicello are among other guest stars.

If you think this sounds like a delightful frothy concoction then you’re spot on. It’s a hugely enjoyable romp.

Burke’s Law ran for two seasons, followed by a third season with a new title (Amos Burke Secret Agent) and a revamped formula, the new formula sadly being much less successful than the original.

I have the season 1 boxed set and I will definitely be buying the season 2 set as well, assuming that it finally gets released (which unfortunately seems increasingly unlikely).