Thriller - Pigeons from Hell (1961)

Pigeons from Hell was first screened in 1961 as episode 36 from the first season of NBC’s anthology series Thriller which ran from 1960 to 1962. It’s widely considered to be one of the best, if not the very best, episode of the entire series.

It helps that it happens to be based on one of the best short stories of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Two young men, brothers in fact, take shelter in an isolated decaying southern mansion after their car breaks down. The most sinister thing about the mansion, curiously, is the presence of the pigeons. Something seems rather wrong about the birds. 

The two brothers, Timothy (Brandon de Wilde) and Johnny (David Whorf) settle down for the night but one of them will not live until morning. When Sheriff Buckner (Crahan Denton) arrives the surviving brother, Timothy, has a strange tale to tell. Johnny tried to kill him, but Johnny was already dead. This is just the beginning of a night of terror.

There are several things that make this episode notable. The flat lighting for which television in 1961 was renowned is nowhere in evidence here. Lionel Lindon’s superb cinematography is moody and atmospheric with an extraordinarily bold use of shadows.

It also pushes the edge of the envelope as far as gore is concerned. By later standards it’s mild and it’s certainly not gratuitous or excessive but in 1961 it was pretty startling.

Director John Newland had an interesting career in television. He’s best remembered as the host of the paranormal anthology series One Step Beyond (1959-61) and he directed no less than 96 episodes of that series. Pigeons from Hell may well be the best thing he ever did.

Which brings us back to those pigeons. Making pigeons sinister and frightening isn’t easy but Newland manages the trick very effectively. There are moments that anticipate some of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock’s The Birds and while I’m not going to claim that Newland was in the same league as Hitchcock there are scenes in Pigeons from Hell that can quite legitimately be compared to Hitchcock’s film. There are also some definite thematic links to Psycho.

Newland makes masterful use of the setting. There’s a wonderful decaying staircase in the mansion. We know, and the characters know, that as long as they remain on the ground floor they’re safe. Whenever they climb that staircase they’re in danger. But they can’t solve the mystery unless they do climb that staircase. It’s almost like a bridge from the everyday world to a nightmare world and Newland exploits it to the full.

The pacing is leisurely, but deliberately so. We get one big scare early on and after that the atmosphere of menace and evil builds slowly towards further big scares that we know are certainly coming.

It’s interesting to compare this episode to the much-admired episode of The Twilight Zone I wrote about recently - The Invaders. Both episodes show that by the early 60s television was certainly coming of age. Both are ambitious and take risks stylistically. The Invaders was written by Richard Matheson. Pigeons from Hell was based on a Robert E. Howard story. These are two writers who understood the mechanism of terror very well indeed, and understood that the less obvious terrors are the most frightening.

Brandon de Wilde was only 19 at the time but gives a fine performance, ably supported by Crahan Denton. Both actors are willing to go a little over-the-top when it’s necessary.

Pigeons from Hell lives up to its reputation as one of the finest moments of the Thriller series. Great television.

The A-Team, season 1 (1983)

With its over-the-top but very cartoonish violence and its general air of mayhem and craziness The A-Team became one of the legendary cult TV series of the 80s. It ran on NBC from 1983 to 1987.

Mercenaries had figured in several great cult movies of the late 60s and 70s such as Dark of the Sun and The Wild Geese so it was perhaps only a matter of time before they featured in an action adventure TV series. The A-Team is a US Special Forces unit that had served in Vietnam but one of their more spectacular missions went badly wrong. Actually the mission was a success but the officer who ordered the mission got himself killed so the team had no proof that their mission was authorised, and as a result they found themselves facing a court-martial. They escaped from custody before the court-martial could be convened and now they make their living as commandos-for-hire.

The A-Team comprises Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith (George Peppard), mechanical wizard Sergeant B. A. Baracus (Mr T), smooth-talking con-man Lieutenant Templeton "Face" Peck (played by Tim Dunigan in the pilot and by Dirk Benedict in the series) and insane (literally insane) pilot “Howling Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz). 

Their nemesis is military policeman Colonel Lynch (William Lucking) who is obsessed with tracking them down and forcing them to face that court-martial.

The pilot episode, Mexican Slayride, gives us much of the background. Nobody is really sure the A-Team even exists but feisty girl reporter Amy Allen (Melinda Culea) believes that they do. And she just happens to need a team of commandos. Fellow reporter Al Massey (William Windom) has been kidnapped by a gang of Mexican bandits. Amy is determined to free him. Massey had discovered something big, something that was more than just a simple gang of bandits.

The A-Team is willing to help her although they do expect to receive a token payment - of $150,000. Transportation to Mexico won’t be a problem. They will just “borrow” a Gulfstream executive jet. The big problem will be persuading B. A. Baracus to board the jet. He is terrified of flying and their usual method is to forcibly drug him and then strap him down to his seat (he needs to be strapped down so he won’t kill them when he regains consciousness). Getting the other equipment they will need involves conning the Mexican Film Commission into thinking they’re big time Hollywood film-makers and they need a few simple props for their movie - just little things like a crop-dusting aircraft, some armour plate and perhaps an artillery piece or two. 

Mexican Slayride is a non-stop roller coaster ride of craziness and mayhem involving the expenditure of thousands of rounds of ammunition and countless explosions and wrecked vehicles. It establishes one of the this show’s trademarks - despite all the shooting and all the stuff getting blown up nobody ever seems to get seriously hurt. There’s an immense amount of violence but no blood. 

This first season covers many of the favourite obsessions of its time period. In Children of Jamestown it’s a religious cult. In Pros and Cons it’s the ever-popular Evil Redneck Cops in the Deep South and in A Small and Deadly War it’s corrupt cops (although the series goes to extraordinary lengths to assure us over and over again but it’s just a Few Bad Apples). 

Breaking someone out of captivity is a trope that the series did tend to over-use just a little (although having said that I have to admit that The A-Team usually does this with style) so A Small and Deadly War is all the more refreshing for avoiding that particular concept.

Black Day at Bad Rock (a nod to the 1950s Spencer Tracy movie Bad Day at Black Rock) covers another obsession of the day - biker gangs. B. A. has been shot up in an operation and the team stops at a small California town to get medical help for him but the doctor thinks it’s a bit strange that his friends claim it was a hunting accident - what kind of game do you hunt with a .50 cal machine-gun? She calls the cops and Hannibal and Face get themselves arrested just as a biker gang is about to descend upon the town. Much mayhem naturally ensues.

The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas sees the A-Team up against gambling racketeers. A brilliant mathematician has invented a fool-proof method for beating the odds at the gambling tables and not surprisingly the gambling bosses take a very dim view of this. The A-Team have to rescue the mathematician.

The Out-of-Towners is basically another retelling of The Seven Samurai with frightened storekeepers in Manhattan employing the A-Team to protect them against the oppression of extortion racketeers. West Coast Turnaround sees the team helping out a farmer who can’t get his produce to market. Not much of a story this time and this is definitely a lesser episode. 

A mission in Guatemala goes badly wrong for the A-Team in Holiday in the Hills. Murdock manages to get them out but their aircraft crashes. Maybe stealing an aircraft that was due for repair was not such a great idea? They crash in South Carolina only to find themselves hunted by hillbillies. Murdock has a plan for getting them out. He’s seen the movie Flight of the Phoenix and he figures that if survivors of a plane crash in a movie can build a new one out of the wreckage then they should be able to do the same thing.

In One More Time we’re back to the breaking out of captivity thing again although this time instead of having to worry about being pursued by the US Government they’re working for the government. Which can be even worse. Till Death Do Us Part looks like being yet another retread of the same basic trope but there’s end up being more to the story. And the helicopter chase is pretty cool. 

The first season of The A-Team works because it starts out being an outlandish cartoonish adventure romp series and that’s what it remains. The temptation to take itself even moderately seriously is valiantly resisted. It’s unashamedly and defiantly silly.

The acting is perfect. OK, maybe Dwight Schultz pushes the crazy thing a bit too hard at times but he manages to be genuinely amusing. Dirk Benedict is delightfully smooth and charming. Mr T is superb. B. A. Baracus is a big scary intimidating guy and he’s plenty tough when he needs to be but underneath he’s a big softie. Mr T gets this across without ever crossing the line into over-sentimentality. George Peppard chews every piece of scenery he can get his hands on. This is very different to his earlier TV hit Banacek although Peppard's trademark self-confidence is equally apparent in both series. All the characters are caricatures but they’re meant to be. They’re cartoon characters and all the cast members understand this and play it accordingly.

The stunts are nothing if not spectacular. They must have wrecked hundreds of cars and other assorted vehicles making this series. No episode is complete without its full complement of explosions and cars flying through the air. The stunts, like everything else, are deliberately exaggerated and cartoonish and that’s why they work.

The A-Team is a roller-coaster ride of non-stop mayhem all done with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Terrific fun and as long as you don’t take it the slightest bit seriously it’s highly recommended.

The Twilight Zone - The Invaders (1961)

I’m not the most enthusiastic fan of The Twilight Zone but I do have fond memories of some of the episodes written by Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. I’m particularly fond of Matheson’s episodes so I figured I’d revisit some of his more memorable contributions.

First cab off the rank will be The Invaders, episode 15 of season 2. It’s generally considered to be one of the best Twilight Zone episodes ever. We’ll see how well it stands up.

The story takes place in an isolated farmhouse where a woman, played by Agnes Moorehead, lives alone. She hears some strange noises and upon investigating discovers a flying saucer on her roof. A very small flying saucer. With two very small crew members. They might be robots or they might be aliens. Either way they’re about six inches high. Somehow this episode has to make such an absurd situation terrifying. And it succeeds. These two small crew members are well armed. Against creatures their own size their weapons would be devastating. Even against a woman so much huger than themselves they can still be pretty nasty.

Adding to the terror is of course the impossibility of communication. She has no idea what these creatures want. All she is sure of is that they seem pretty hostile. Of course she, in her fear and confusion, has done things that might seem pretty hostile to them. In any case it now seems to be a fight for survival, with the odds very uncertain.

There is of course a plot twist, a very famous plot twist, but rest assured I do not intend to reveal it.

This was a remarkably bold piece of television for 1961. There is only one cast member, and she has no dialogue at all. The entire story has to be told visually, and everything we learn about Agnes Moorehead’s character and her emotional reactions we have to learn without the benefit of dialogue. Fortunately, thanks to a powerhouse performance by Moorehead, a great script by Matheson and inspired work by director Douglas Heyes, it all works superbly.

Playing the entire episode without dialogue was no doubt made easier for Moorehead by the fact that she had studied mime under Marcel Marceau.

The look of this episode is just as bold as the concept. It has a feel more typical of film noir or gothic horror than science fiction, all shadows and very dimly lit. Much of the action is shot so as to appear to be taking place by candlelight. In 1961 flat lighting was the norm in television, partly because broadcast quality in those days was rather poor. It was a brave television director of photography who attempted moody atmospheric lighting and most were terrified of shadows because of the risk that viewers would end up seeing nothing but darkness. George T. Clemens was clearly not afraid to take such risks and his daring pays off.

The flying saucer is in fact the spacecraft model used in the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. The tiny aliens/robots were designed by Douglas Heyes and built, strangely enough, by the make-up department. They were, obviously, puppets and they were worked by Douglas Heyes himself.

It all looks splendid today on Blu-Ray and the Blu-Ray presentation includes no less than four audio commentary tracks! It’s a half-hour episode so expecting the viewer to spend a further two hours listening to four commentaries might seem rather optimistic but this is (quite rightly) regarded as one of the all-time great television science fiction episodes so such an expectation is probably justified. The Invaders really is good enough to make such an effort worthwhile.

This episode not only stands up remarkably well it also remains as boldly unconventional and quirky (both in content and style) as it was in 1961. For all my reservations about The Twilight Zone I have to say that The Invaders is superb television.

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.