The Sweeney season 3 (1976)

The Sweeney returned for a third season in late 1976. The series has revolutionised the British cop show and was now at the peak of its popularity and about to spawn two feature films. It blended action, toughness and humour in a way that has never since been quite equalled. It can be brutal and it can be dark but it never quite crosses the line into nihilism. Things go wrong, cases go unsolved, people get hurt, but there’s no point in wallowing in self-pity over it. When things do go wrong Regan and Carter get drunk and then the next day they’re back on the job because life goes on and the job still has to be done. And there’s still plenty of booze to be drunk and plenty of skirt to chase so why complain?

The Sweeney’s brutally realistic approach to the police shocked many people the time but audiences found it to be invigorating. Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Detective Sergeant George Carter were cops who seemed believable. They weren’t wholly admirable people but then if you’re a Boy Scout you’re not going to last very long in the Flying Squad, a squad tasked with investigating serious robberies (which generally meant violent robberies) and other crimes of violence. The criminals they deal with are usually pretty vicious.

The Flying Squad was at this time being rocked by corruption scandals and police corruption is a recurring theme. If you want to catch big-time criminals you have to spend a lot of time with those same criminals. You have to drink with them. You have to get to know them. You have to get to know which ones are prepared to act as informers. The people you have to use as informers can be serious low-lifes and thugs. It’s the only way to get the job done but the possibility of being corrupted is ever-present. This kind of honesty was also pretty startling at the time, but again audiences liked it because the series was honest about it.

In the world of The Sweeney there are good cops and bad cops. The bad cops are worse than the criminals, but fortunately there are good cops as well. Regan and Carter are good cops. They bend the rules, sometimes they bend them a great deal, sometimes their methods are questionable, but fundamentally they’re honest. And they get the job done. If they have to bend a few rules and break a few heads, well that’s the way it is.

The Sweeney steadfastly refuses to idealise the police but it certainly isn’t anti-police. It just accepts reality. As Graham Greene once put it, human nature isn’t black and white, it’s black and grey.

The Sweeney also manages to be incredibly stylish without being glamorous. The world of The Sweeney is seedy and sometimes sleazy, and often grimy. The people that Regan and Carter deal with can be heroic, they can be cowardly, they can be petty and vindictive, they can be kind and generous, they can be winners and they can be losers. But they all have an intensity and an immediacy to them. They feel like real people. The fact that this series is not afraid to make characters larger-than-life or absurd or eccentric makes those characters seem more believable. People really can be pretty strange. The situations can be bizarre but real life can be bizarre. This is life on the streets, for good or bad.

The fact that the series was shot almost entirely on location gives it a vibrancy that is a million miles away from the artificial world of the traditional shot-in-the-studio shot-on-video feel of previous British TV cop shows. The pursuit of realism can be a dead end if it’s done the wrong way, but The Sweeney does it the right way.

Episode Guide

Selected Target starts the season in style. Colly Kibber, a big time villain just released from prison, is believed to be planning a big job. A very big job. First he has some some business to attend to with his former cell-mate, Titus Oates. He thinks Oates informed on him. Kibber then gives his wife her marching orders. He has a replacement for her already lined up. Or rather, two replacements, both call girls. Scotland Yard has a mammoth surveillance operation in place to foil Kibber’s plans and this is what worries Regan. He doesn’t like such mammoth operations. He’s not exactly a team player. Which story has all the trademarks of this series - plenty of violence, a bit of sleaze, crisp dialogue and a script that combines deviousness with cynicism. Excellent episode.

In from the Cold involves not just cold-blooded criminals, but very cold criminals (you’ll have to watch this one to know what I mean). Regan spots a villain named Billy Medhurst in a fish and chip shop. Medhurst was involved in a robbery a couple of years earlier in which a policeman was shot and crippled. Now he’s got Medhurst in custody but can he keep him under lock and key? And what is Medhurst’s shady lawyer up to? Not to mention Billy’s wife. It all hinges on steaks. A lot of them. A typical episode but a very good one with the usual mix of humour and violence.

Visiting Fireman throws pretty much everything at Jack Regan. It starts with a known villain being arrested for a robbery but the villain has an alibi and it’s Regan who supplies the alibi. Which causes Jack all sorts of problems, with maybe even his career being on the line. Then Turkish policeman Captain Shebbeq arrives and wants Regan’s help on an investigation he’s conducting into long-distance lorry hijackings in Turkey. Regan and Shebbeq are old mates so you won't be surprised to hear that Shebbeq’s main interests in life are football, booze and birds. There’s a lot more to the truck hijackings than meets the eye, things that ordinary policeman shouldn’t get mixed up in. They could get killed or they could see their career go down the gurgler. This episode really does have everything. It even has Regan and Carter doing a song-and-dance routine. There’s also Helga, the very cute German barmaid at the Turkish Club. This episode is totally over-the-top but enjoyably so.

Tomorrow Man deals with cyber-crime, 1976-style. The Flying Squad think computer whizz-kid Tony Gray (John Hurt), just out of prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter after killing a woman in a traffic accident, is up to something big. They have no idea what it is since they don’t know anything about computers. Regan however finds a charming young lady named Dr Smart (yes really) from the Home Office who does understand such things. Gray’s plan is a good one and he always seems to be a step ahead of Regan and Carter who are meanwhile busily engaged in trying to figure out how to get Dr Smart into bed.

In Taste of Fear a couple of army deserters commit a particularly violent robbery. Catching them should be easy but it isn’t and DI Regan has another problem - a new sergeant on the Flying Squad, named Hargreaves. Regan has serious doubts that the man can be relied on, but he can’t be quite certain whether he’s going to have to get rid of him or not. If he does it will be the end of Hargreaves’ career. Sometimes Jack Regan hates his job.

Bad Apple presents the Squad with an unpleasant case, investigating possible corruption in a divisional CID. Regan goes undercover at the Blue Parrot club which disbelieved top be making payoffs. Haskins and Carter sift through the paperwork, looking for anomalies in prosecutions that could be pointers to the culprits. A good episode.

May helped Regan keep his sanity when his wife left him so he owes her and now May’s son has got himself into a spot of bother with the law. An elderly moneylender has been badly beaten and a witness puts young Davey at the spot and the police find five hundred quid hidden beneath the seat of his motorcycle. And then Davey does a runner so now he’s really in trouble and May wants Jack to get him out of it. It turns out that Davey has managed to get himself into some truly spectacular trouble and not just with the law. A very good episode.

In Sweet Smell of Succession when gang boss Joe Castle goes to his eternal reward there’s a fine collection of villains ready to take over his firm, but they’re all too greedy to coöperate and the wild card is Castle’s son Steven (Hywel Bennett). Steven seems too soft to survive in such a world but what he lacks in muscle he makes up for in low cunning. Joe Castle’s mistress Arleen (Sue Lloyd) is another wild card. She has what could be the key to Steven’s scheme. Another very good episode.

In Down to You, Brother a middle-aged retired villain has a message for Regan, but what exactly is the message? It appears to be related to a big job that was pulled six years earlier but Regan starts to suspect that the message was something quite different. One thing coppers and villains have in common is that their careers play havoc with their personal lives. Especially when a daughter is involved. A clever little story.

In Pay Off George Carter gets involved with a woman named Shirley. Shirley’s feller Eddie disappeared a year earlier and she thinks he’s dead. She persuades George to look into it.  Eddie was a very small-time villain but he may have been involved in an armed robbery which turned into an embarrassing fiasco for the Flying Squad. George’s emotional involvement causes a lot of problems for both himself and the Squad. You really don’t have much chance of having a personal life when you’re on the Squad, a lesson George is about to learn. Another very good episode.

Cowboys are riding the range in Loving Arms. Well, not cowboys, but cowboy guns. Six-shooters, just like in the Old West. They’re not real, but they can shoot and they’re more dangerous than real guns. Regan stumbles across the case when a shopkeeper, an old soldier, swears blind that the Colt .45 he was held up with was real. And sooner or later someone is likely to get killed. It’s the sort of slightly offbeat story that made this series so appealing. Good stuff.

Lady Luck is the name of the episode and Jack thinks that that fickle lady has decided to smile on him. He gets some very good information from an unexpected source - an attractive middle-class housewife. Marcia Edmunds in her forties but well preserved and rather attractive which is just as well since she doesn’t want to be paid in money for the information. She wants to be paid in sex. There are two problems however. Had Jack known who she was he would have declined her kind offer. And the information hinges on an unbreakable alibi that Jack will have to break. The alibi angle is handled very well as is the very awkward situation that Jack is faced with. Much of it depends on how long it would take for Marcia’s souffle to rise. An excellent episode.

On the Run is a manhunt story which really ramps up the violence level. And the politically incorrectness level as well. A violent psychopath named Cook is sprung from custody by  his former cell-mate Pindar. Pindar is shacked up with his Rich ageing boyfriend who is besotted with him. As the net closes on Cook he becomes increasingly murderous. A violent story that keeps getting more violent but still a fine episode with which to close the third season.

Final Thoughts

This series was riding high in 1976 and it’s easy to see why. The third season has all the ingredients that made The Sweeney the most memorable cop show of its era (and possibly the best British cop show ever). The series then took a break while the two spin-off movies, the not-so-great Sweeney! and the much better Sweeney 2) were shot before returning for the fourth and final season in 1978.

The third season of The Sweeney is highly recommended.

Harry O season one (1974)

I’ve spoken about the genesis of Harry O in my review of the two pilot episodes.

The first season falls into two distinct phases, the San Diego phase (which is superb and quirky) and the Los Angeles phase (which is more conventional but still very good).

In the first thirteen episodes of the first season Harry Orwell is based in San Diego. In mid-season the series was radically revamped.

One of the things I like about Harry Orwell as David Janssen plays him is that he’s not overly likeable. In an odd way that makes him very likeable. He’s not unpleasant but he can be very direct, occasionally in a slightly hurtful way, he can be irritable and he doesn’t go out of the way to ingratiate himself with people. So when Harry does do something considerate it’s likely to be genuine.

This was not the first private eye series to use San Diego as a setting. There was also a 1960 series called Coronado 9. It was not a commercial success but it was quite interesting and really not that bad at all. But San Diego seemed to be the kids of death for TV private eyes. Coronado 9 was a flop and the network demanded that Harry O be relocated to Los Angeles, which was a much more conventional and therefore safe setting. I think it’s rather a pity. San Diego seems like the kind of town that provides an ideal setting for a private eye series.

Harry O - the San Diego episodes

In the first thirteen episodes of the first season Harry Orwell is based in San Diego. In mid-season the series was radically revamped.

The San Diego episodes are similar in feel to the first pilot. They’re slightly darker and slightly more cynical than most private eye series of that era. Harry is grumpy and taciturn and his back troubles him a lot. Underneath he’s a nice guy but he’d hate for anyone to find that out. The stories are sometimes mildly quirky but mostly it’s Harry himself who gives the series its mildly offbeat tone. There’s also the fact that he mostly gets around by bus, with is decidedly unusual for a TV private eye. He has a car, an old British Austin-Healey sports car, but it’s hardly ever running.

A private eye has to have a contact in the police force and Harry’s contact is Lieutenant Manny Quinlan (played by Henry Darrow). Manny thinks Harry is sentimental and quixotic and exasperating. In spite of this there’s an uneasy but real friendship between the two men. It’s pretty typical of the relationships between fictional private eyes and fictional cops but Darrow and Janssen are sufficiently good actors to make it convincing.

The first episode of the Harry O series is Gertrude. It’s written by series creator Howard Rodman and it’s everything that the second pilot isn’t. Gertrude is quirky and the structure is kinda loose and the tone is whimsical with an edge of weirdness. David Janssen who had given a solid but very straightforward performance in Smile Jenny, You're Dead gives a delightfully off-kilter performance in Gertrude. Harry Orwell is bad-tempered and kind-hearted, he’s cynical but sentimental, he’s conscientious and indifferent to his work. He has a bullet in his back and he’s in constant pain but somehow he manages to regard the world with wry amusement. He is immoral but he respects Gertrude’s strict morality.

He doesn’t even know why he took this case, except that Gertrude sounded on the ’phone like an interesting eccentric and her story made no sense so it seemed like it might be interesting. Gertrude’s brother Harold has gone AWOL from the Navy but the Navy seems very very upset about it, which suggests that there’s something about the case that the Navy is keeping to itself. The only concrete clue is Harold’s left shoe. And as Harry explains in his voiceover narration, a clue is also anything that doesn’t happen the way it’s supposed to and that visit from the Shore Patrol certainly didn’t happen the way it was supposed to.

David Janssen in Harry O season one

In this episode a lot depends on the weird chemistry between David Janssen and guest star Julie Sommars (who plays Gertrude). Gertrude could easily have been merely a crazy person but there’s something about her that makes it plausible that Harry feels compelled to pay it absolutely straight with her. This is a great opening episode.

The Admiral's Lady is the wife of a retired U.S. Navy admiral and she was out on her yacht alone and is now missing presumed drowned. The admiral won’t believe that she could be dead and he hires Harry to find her. What Harry finds is another dead woman and some dirty little secrets regarding quite a few respectable wealthy married women.

There’s also the admiral to deal with. He’s a stubborn cantankerous old devil but he’s a fundamentally decent sort and Harry takes a liking to him. Harry is not sure what the truth is about the admiral’s wife but he has a fair idea the admiral’s not going to take it well.

It’s a straightforward but solid private eye plot made much more interesting by the fact that it’s about characters who are flawed and complicated but they’re people who are doing their best and they feel real. A good episode.

In Guardian at the Gates Harry gets the most obnoxious client who could possibly be imagined. Paul Sawyer is an architect and supposedly a genius. Someone has tried to poison his dog. The suspicion is that next time they might go after Sawyer himself. Who would want to kill Paul Sawyer? Every single human being who has ever met him. It seems like it’s going to be a thankless job for Harry but on the other hand Sawyer does have a pretty blonde daughter (played by Linda Evans). The plot is OK but it’s the character interactions involving the miserable old curmudgeon Sawyer, the daughter (who’s a bit weird and a bit all over the place) and Harry that make things interesting. Harry finds out what genius really means and he’s pretty happy not to be a genius. It’s a good episode.

Mortal Sin presents Harry with a tricky problem. He has this friend who’s a Catholic priest. A man confessed to murder, to the priest. The priest cannot break the Seal of the Confessional. But what about Harry? He can try to find the murderer but he’s not going to get much help from his friend the priest. The idea of the priest being unable to reveal the identity of a murderer because of his vows is not original but originality is not that important. What matters is how well the idea is handled. Here it’s handled pretty well and the main focus is Harry’s search for the killer starting out with virtually nothing to go on. It’s a pretty successful episode.

Coinage of the Realm has Harry looking for a guy called Yorkfield. Yorkfield has never been of any use to anyone in his life but now he can be of a lot of use to his daughter who needs a kidney transplant. Only problem is that a couple of hitmen are also looking for Yorkfield. In this episode Harry does the curmudgeon with a heart of gold thing but David Janssen makes it believable and does it without any phoney sentimentality. Harry’s entrance to Yorkfield’s apartment, with a fire-axe, is a nice very Harry O touch. A very good episode.

In Eyewitness Harry is hired to find out if a black kid is guilty of murder or if he’s been set up as a patsy by a rather nasty ghetto pimp. It would help if Harry could find an eyewitness. There is no eyewitness, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Not a bad episode.

In Shadows at Noon Harry is committed to a mental hospital. It was his idea. He’s trying to find out about a girl named Marilyn who turned up at his house with a story about wrongly committed to the hospital. Harry discovers that getting out of a mental hospital is a whole lot harder than getting in. And he discovers that there’s a lot more to Marilyn's story. There might even be murder. It’s a very good episode with a kid of bitter-sweet feel to it.

Ballinger's Choice has Harry hired by Margaret Ballinger women her husband Philip goes missing. It sounds to Harry like there’s another woman but Margaret is sure it’s not that. Philip turns up again but several people have turned up dead. There’s a series of nasty little emotional entanglements behind all this. There’s some pretty decent misdirection in this tale, and an interesting clue (a character reacting slightly oddly to a certain situation). There’s a chase at the end but this is Harry O so it’s not your regular car chase, it’s a boat chase. A good episode about human frailties.

Second Sight presents Harry with an apparently paranormal case. A psychiatrist tries to hire Harry as a bodyguard but the psychiatric then vanishes. A blind author with an uncanny ability to predict murders before they happen tells police where the body can be found. People involved with this author seem to either disappear or get murdered quite often. This not surprisingly makes the police rather suspicious of her and there’s also the vexed question of the nature of her blindness. It’s quite a clever if convoluted mystery plot. A good episode.

There’s nothing Harry hates more than bodyguard work and he doesn't like it any better when it’s a bodyguard job for the police which is what he’s landed with in Material Witness. He has to protect a doctor who witnessed a gangland execution and she hates cops and she’s determined to be difficult. It’s an OK plot but as always it’s David Janssen’s performance that makes it something special. A good episode.

Forty Reasons to Kill is a two-parter. A hippie gets beaten to death and a large amount of cocaine is found on the body. Lieutenant Quinlan figures, reasonably enough, that dead hippies with drugs on them are probably drug dealers. Harry knew the hippie and doesn’t agree. The investigation takes him to Vadera County. As anyone who has ever watched American television knows all American small towns are incredibly dangerous places (much more dangerous than big cities) and small town sheriffs are always corrupt psychopaths. The dead hippie was trying to buy some land from fabulously wealthy rancher Glenna Nielson. Glenna is beautiful, possibly unstable, probably dangerous. She’s the sort of woman a smart private eye keeps at arm’s length so naturally Harry falls for her. And as happens to most city folk who are unwise enough to visit small towns Harry finds himself in the local jail, charged with first degree murder. Lots of clichés in this episode and it’s all a bit routine but it’s well executed and there are some fun supporting performances from Broderick Crawford and Craig Stevens.

Accounts Balanced is a story in which we know who the bad guy is, and then again we don’t. Maybe nobody does. It starts when Harry’s ex-girlfriend hires him to check up on her husband. It seems like just another case of a husband having an affair, except for a couple of niggling little details. Another pretty solid episode.

The Last Heir is a country house murder mystery but it also owes a large debt to a certain very famous Agatha Christie story. In this case the country house is built on top of a gold mine in the middle of the desert but the principle is the same. Letty inherited the whole of her father’s fortune. Her family (two sisters and a brother plus a great-nephew and his wife) are entirely dependent upon her for money and once a year they have to travel to her house to collect their allowances and be humiliated. Letty thinks her family are trying to kill her. Her family thinks she is trying to kill them. One of them has hired Harry as protection so this time there are seven people at the annual family gathering.

In true classic murder mystery style all the cars are sabotaged and since there’s no phone they are completely cut off until the next delivery truck arrive in a week’s time. And then the corpses start to pile up. It’s a clever and devious little tale and keeps us in doubt right up to the end. Great stuff.

Harry O - the Los Angeles episodes

Midway through season one the series received a complete makeover with Harry moving to Los Angeles. The entire supporting cast was dumped and replaced by new characters.

A lot of the wonderfully quirky features of the San Diego episodes were eliminated. Harry no longer catches buses. His Austin-Healey sports car now runs most of the time. He no longer has his boat that looked like it was going to take a lifetime to restore to seaworthy condition.

On the other hand there’s still Harry himself, shuffling about in what often seems like an absent-minded haze, being cantankerous and about as unglamorous as a private eye can be. And a major plus is one of the new regular characters, Lieutenant Trench (Anthony Zerbe), a cop who looks decidedly unfriendly but is actually rather amiable. He’s a most engaging and eccentric character. He likes to give the impression that he hates private eyes and considers Harry to be one of the crosses he has to bear but it’s clear that he likes Harry and has great respect for the value of his instincts. He’s the perfect foil for Harry and their repartee is a highlight of the L.A. episodes.

There’s also his sergeant, Roberts, who hardly ever speaks. And there’s Betsy, Harry’s slightly ditzy airline stewardess neighbour who takes Harry’s ’phone calls. So while some of the surface quirkiness of the series has disappeared some of that quirkiness has crept back in in the form of slightly eccentric supporting players.

In fact the overall impression given by the L.A.episodes is that the producers were trying to placate the network by making the series seem more conventional while what they were actually doing was to make its quirkiness a bit more subtle.

For the Love of Money opens with Harry having just relocated to L.A. and now he’s been hired by a secretary who wants to return $25,000 worth of bonds she stole from her boss. But her boss says half a million is missing, and the bonds belong to his clients and they’re not insured. This episode introduces Lieutenant Trench and sets up his odd relationship with Harry.

Disappointingly Harry seems to have given up catching buses. On the other hand his personality is pretty much unchanged which is pleasing since that’s the show’s major asset. It’s a reasonably solid episode.

In The Confetti People a client, Jack Dawes, tells Harry he’s just shot and killed his artist brother Arthur. Problem is there’s no body. There seems to have been no crime but something strange is certainly going on. That artist brother seems to make a habit of getting murdered. Jack may be a little on the crazy side. And everybody involved in the case is probably lying, for an assortment of reasons. There’s something odd about some of Arthur’s paintings as well. It’s a very decent episode with plenty of amusing verbal exchanges between Harry and Lieutenant Trench.

It’s pretty much a given that any private eye series is going to include an episode centred around jazz musicians. An episode like Sound of Trumpets. Harry fishes an old black trumpet player named Art Sully out of the water. Everyone assumes Art was drunk and fell in, but he didn’t fall. Art thinks someone is trying to kill him. Everyone assumes that Art is drunk and crazy. He’s certainly drunk but maybe he isn’t crazy. Everybody has tried to help Art but they can’t but Harry is going to try anyway. In this episode Harry is back to riding buses! It’s not a bad episode, not startlingly original but it’s well executed.

In Silent Kill Harry is trying to prove that his client, a deaf-mute, is not guilty of arson. Arson that resulted in three deaths. It’s a fairly routine story and it doesn’t do anything interesting with the deaf-mute angle.

Double Jeopardy starts with a girl riding a horse on the beach. Somebody shoots her, right in front of Harry. Harry doesn’t see the actual shooting but he sees a guy making off down the beach on horseback. The guy, an aspiring actor named Todd (Kurt Russell), is the obvious suspect but the evidence is circumstantial. That's not good enough for the dead girl’s father, a former gangster. He wants his own justice. Harry will have to work fast to give Todd a chance. Harry has to come up with some clever detecting in this one but luckily he gets some help from his ditzy airline stewardess neighbour Sue (Farrah Fawcett). It’s a good episode.

Lester is an odd young man and he’s Harry’s client and he’s a suspect in a series of sex murders. Harry uncovers some evidence that could point to Lester as the criminal, but not necessarily. It’s a reasonable enough plot but the real interest here is provided by the interactions between Harry and Lester, and they’re enough to make this an intriguing episode.

In Elegy for a Cop a police officer is trying to save his junkie niece from herself and it costs him his life. Harry Orwell wants this killer really badly for very strong personal reasons (which I’m not going to mention since it’s a bit spoilerish. This episode, and it’s a good one, serves as a kind of epilogue to the San Diego era of Harry O.

Street Games has Harry trying to save a young drug addict who witnessed a murder. The girl, Nancy, is played by Maureen McCormick. Yes, Marcia Brady as a junkie. It’s a routine story but well executed. It sums up a lot of the differences between the San Diego and the LA episodes - had this one been done as an early-season San Diego episode it would certainly have been a lot darker and a lot better.

Final Thoughts

The San Diego episodes count as some of the best private eye TV ever. The LA episodes are more conventional and not as dark but on the plus side the chemistry between David Janssen and Anthony Zerbe as Lieutenant Trench provides some real zest and some real sparkle. Overall despite the mid-season change of pace season one of Harry O is good enough to be considered in the very top rank of private eye TV series. Very highly recommended.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (2016 mini-series)

This is a bit off-topic for this blog but I thought it might be of vague interest. It is at least about cult television.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is a 12-episode 2016 anime mini-series with lots of mayhem and a definite steampunk vibe.

The setting is Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (which lasted from 1600 to 1868) but this is obviously an alternate universe. Japan has been overrun by the Kabane who are basically blood-drinking murderous zombies. If you’re bitten by a Kabane you become a Kabane. The Kabane are mindless zombies but they’re almost unkillable. There are a lot of them and unlike some zombies they can move pretty quickly.

The population has taken shelter in fortified railway stations dotted across the countryside, kept in touch with each other and with the shogun’s capital by armoured trains.

Ikoma is a young engineer was has been working on a secret weapon, a super-rifle, to defeat the Kabane. Unfortunately just as the weapon is ready for him to test it his station is overrun and Ikoma is bitten. He has three choices - he can become a mindless Kabane,  he can kill himself or he can wait until the shogun’s soldiers discover he has been bitten in which case they will kill him. 

But in fact Ikoma has a third choice. It’s a long shot but it just might work. The Kabane are the product of a kind of virus. If he can stop the virus from entering his brain he may have a chance. The long shot comes off, in a way. He is not a Kabane. But he is also no longer human. He is both, and neither. He is a Kabaneri. What this will really mean for him is something he is yet to discover, and that essentially is the core of this series. 

The survivors of Ikoma’s station have taken refuge on one of the armoured trains. To reach safety they will have to run the gauntlet of the Kababe. Ikoma can help them to survive, but of course they don’t want his help. They believe he is a Kabane. 

Ikoma has two main allies, both cute teenage girls. 

Ayame is a kind of princess, the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country. Her social position makes her the commander of the train. Fortunately she’s wise and resourceful but taking charge of hundreds of terrified people who are ready to lash out at any perceived danger will be a challenge.

His other ally is Mumei. She’s a typical teenage girl apart from her superhuman strength and fighting ability the source of which is at first a mystery but of course we will soon find out she is a Kabaneri as well.

The salvation of everybody is in the hands of Ikoma and Mumei and it’s just as well they’re on the side of good. Except for one small detail. They do from time to time have an overwhelming urge to gorge themselves on human blood. 

So this is both a zombie and a type of vampire tale.

The technology is 19th century although the trains seem just a little advanced for the Tokugawa shogunate period (which ended in 1868). They seem early 20th century. And there are one or two other items that are moderately high-tech for the 19th century. But this is steampunk so a few minor anachronisms are no big deal. In fact they make steampunk fun.

The characters have some complexity. Ikoma and Mumei find that being half-human and half-Kabane is complicated, and gets more complicated. If you’re only half-human, are you really human at all? Is there any way you can have anything even approaching a normal life? Mumei has other problems to deal with, which makes the future an even more worrying prospect for her. Mumei has a dark side, and a tragic side. She’s a young girl facing challenges and conflicting loyalties that very few people would be able to deal with.

Ayame has been thrust into a leadership position for which she is too young and inexperienced. She is out of her depth. Her great strength is that she realises this. She makes mistakes but she accepts that leaders make mistakes. She is willing take responsibility for decisions she makes. Her incredibly strong sense of duty allows her to keep going when things go wrong.

The samurai Kurusu has the strengths and weaknesses of his caste. He is arrogant, stubborn and inflexible but he’s insanely brave and utterly loyal to Ayame. He hates admitting to mistakes but he has enough strength of character to do so.

Then there’s Biba, the Liberator. Mumei calls his Brother but their relationship is much more complicated. Biba is either a great Hero or a Great Villain, or perhaps he’s both.

Ayame and her followers on the armoured train face other problems aside from the terrifying hordes of Kabane. There are power plays going on at the Shogun’s court, and outside it. It’s not just humans against Kabane, but (as so often) humans against humans as well). When you have people you’re going to have factions and you’re going to have individuals lusting for power, even in a country overrun by zombies.

Both Ikoma and Mumei clearly have some kind of destiny toward which their lives are moving regardless of whether they want that destiny or not. Whether their destinies are to be tragic or hopeful - well you’ll have to watch the series to find that out.

The characters in this series have to make difficult choices, choices with momentous consequences for themselves and others. There are prices to be paid for everything, and that can include paying the ultimate price. There are questions of duty and honour, and of course there is love. All of these things may be worth fighting for or even dying for.

There’s an enomous amount of violence and gore and there is some brief nudity - this is not an anime for kids.

Although made in 2016 this series has very much the look and feel of classic anime. And it has the blend of action, ideas and emotional content that you expect from classic anime.

If you’re an anime fan and/or a steampunk fan Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is pretty satisfying entertainment. Highly recommended.

The Saint - The Angel’s Eye (1966)

When I did my recent post comparing the stories in Leslie Charteris’s 1953 collection The Saint in Europe with the 1960s television adaptation I mentioned that I had been unable to find a copy of the TV version of one of the stories, The Angel’s Eye. That problem has now been rectified, my boxed set from Network containing all the colour episodes having now arrived. So I can now offer my comparison of this story and the TV version (which went to air in 1966 as part of the first colour season of The Saint).

This story begins with a man named Upwater and his wife asking Simon’s help in regard to a very valuable diamond. Upwater works for a jeweller and has taken the stone to Amsterdam to be recut but the diamond cutter not only refuses to return it, he denies having ever seen it. Which of course interests the Saint. In fact he is not only interested, he is enchanted. This promises to be a rather artistic swindle and Simon is a connoisseur of swindles.

The Saint is not the only one to have taken an interest in the case, which enchants Simon even more.

The twist in this tale is really not one of Charteris’s more dazzling efforts but it’s clever and enjoyable enough and a swindle involving an immensely valuable diamond gives it the characteristic flavour of later-period Saint adventures. And the swindle is, as Simon had hoped, artistic and devious. There are also some clues scattered through the story but they won’t help you unless you know a lot about diamonds.

Harry W. Junkin wrote the television adaptation. Junkin was also the script supervisor for the series. Junkin and Charteris did not always see eye-to-eye when it came to adaptations of Saint stories, and that’s putting it mildly. 

The TV version opens in England and immediately introduces us to half a dozen key characters who were not in the original story so we know that this is not exactly going to be a faithful adaptation (and we can also therefore guess that it’s probably going to be one of the episodes that irritated Leslie Charteris).

In the TV version the diamond belongs to Lord Cranmore but he’s broke and needs to sell it. This enrages his snobbish nephew Jeremy. There are a couple of very suspicious characters hanging about who look like they might be jewel thieves. Upwater in this version is Lord Cranmore’s estate manager and he his daughter are sent to Amsterdam to have the stone recut. Replacing the middle-aged Upwater’s middle-aged wife with his daughter of course allowed the script to include an attractive young lady in the cast, and attractive young ladies were always an essential element in the TV series. 

To be fair to Junkin he has kept the core of the plot intact. All he’s really done is to add a bit of extra misdirection which actually works reasonably well. There’s still the diamond cutter who mysteriously denies any knowledge of the Angel’s Eye and Simon’s involvement still follows the same course. Perhaps Junkin has added some complications that weren’t strictly necessary but on the other hand he’s also made it a bit more of a challenge for the viewer to figure out the solution. The only weakness is that the TV version doesn’t include Simon’s explanation of the clues that allowed him to solve the problem.

Overall both the story and the TV adaptation are quite entertaining. I certainly enjoyed both.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - The Copenhagen Affair (novel)

The Copenhagen Affair is an original 1965 novel by Welsh writer John Oram based on the hit 1960s television spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and it’s a tale of flying saucers - but there's reason to believe that these flying saucers might not be from outer space.

Like the other Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV tie-in novels I've read it does deviate in minor details from the TV series but it’s quite enjoyable.

Here’s the link to my full review at Vintage Pop Fictions.

Code 3 (1957)

Code 3 is an American cop show which lasted one season (of 39 episodes) in 1957. It was aired in syndication. It deals with cases facing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office (which co-operated in the making of the series).

Four episodes are included in Mill Creek’s Best of TV Detectives boxed set and they’re the only four episodes that I’ve been able to see. It’s hard to draw conclusions from such a brief sampling but I get the impression that Code 3 was a series that tried to emphasise a human interest angle, to see crime as a human problem. Sometimes people are well-meaning but they make mistakes. Sometimes people do the wrong thing but they have reasons for their actions. Sometimes criminals are weak, sometimes they’re foolish, sometimes they don’t see any other way out,  but they’re not necessarily evil.

Each episode is introduced by Richard Travis in the rôle of Assistant Sheriff George Barnett and there’s a brief spiel at the end by the actual Sheriff of Los Angeles County. The stories are supposedly based on actual cases. A semi-documentary feel was quite a popular approach for crime series in the ’50s.

Apart from Richard Travis (who appears only in the intros) there are no regular cast members, which is undoubtedly the reason the series only lasted one season and was not picked up by one of the networks. A successful cop show has to have regular characters whom the viewers get to know and get to care about.

Despite this Code 3 offers an interesting mix of stories.

The Rookie Sheriff deals with a central European refugee under training as a sheriff’s deputy. Rancich is quite old to be a trainee but on paper he’s ideal material. He’s intelligent and resourceful, he’s super-fit and he speaks five languages. The problem is that having been in the Underground during the war he’s much too gung-ho and he’s arrogant, overbearing and opinionated. He also thinks that if people don’t respect the police they should be taught a lesson. The other trainees hate his guts and he would have washed out of training but for the fact that the head of the academy has a stubborn faith in him.

This episode is marred by way too much speechifying. Most of the dialogue is in fact little more than speeches telling us about the perfection of American law enforcement officers and the American way of life. It’s just too heave-handed. Which is a pity because it’s actually an interesting slightly offbeat story and Rancich is in his own way a fascinating and interesting character. Despite its weaknesses it’s a reasonably good story.

In The Sniper George and Marie Thayer’s marriage is heading for the rocks. George is a not very successful real estate man. Marie is a high-flying businesswoman who also runs an art gallery. George feels inadequate and despised. 

And now somebody has tried to shoot him. It must be that sniper that they’re talking about in the papers, the crazed gunman who has murdered seven people at random. That’s the only explanation. The detectives from the Sheriff’s Department are not so sure. What’s going on here is perfectly obvious right from the start but it’s still not a bad little tale. This being the 1950s we get some pop psychology as well.

The Man with Many Faces is the story of forger Charlie Ellsworth. He is a good man and basically a solid law-abiding citizen but his fifteen-year-old daughter is dying and Charlie wants to give her a trip to Honolulu before she dies. Charlie is a skilled forger but perhaps too good. He forges cheques but they’re a bit too perfect. Despite this he might have gotten away with it if not for his hearing problem.

This is definitely an episode that takes a sympathetic view of a criminal. Quite a decent episode. 

The Benson Case takes place at the Terminal Island women’s prison. Bonnie Person is on remand, facing a murder charge. She gets wind of the fact that an undercover woman Sheriff’s Deputy has been planted in the prison and she assumes that the deputy is there to collect evidence against her. This episode has promise and some good moments but the ending seems too abrupt.

Code 3’s main virtue seems to be that the episodes are so varied, but that’s a weakness as well. The impression given by this handful of episodes is that the series doesn’t quite establish a character of its own.

Code 3 is moderately entertaining but certainly not in the same league as great 1950s cop shows such as Dragnet or M Squad. Maybe worth a rental if you really love ’50s police dramas.

Mr Rose season 3 (1968)

Mr Rose was a British crime series made by Granada Television in 1967-68. It was created by Philip Mackie who was involved as creator or writer with some of the most interesting British television series of the ’60s and ’70s such as The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Caesars and Raffles.

Chief Inspector Charles Rose (played by William Mervyn) first made his appearance in 1963 as a supporting character in the third season of a detective series called The Odd Man. He was popular enough to be featured as the central character in a spin-off series, It’s Dark Outside, made in 1964-65. It’s Dark Outside then spawned a further spin-off series, Mr Rose, three seasons of which were produced in 1967 and 1968.

In The Odd Man and It’s Dark Outside Chief Inspector Rose was pompous, high-handed and sometimes rather prickly. For the Mr Rose series the character was softened somewhat, but he was softened without becoming bland. In fact he becomes rather more interesting. The slight personality change did make some sense since Rose was now living in comfortable (very comfortable) retirement, at work on his memoirs. He is as pompous as ever but, freed from the stresses and strains of his police duties, he is more relaxed and even amiable. And his eccentricities, already present, have blossomed.

In the first season he was living in Eastbourne with his manservant/chauffeur/assistant John Halifax (Donald Webster) and his secretary Drusilla Lamb (Gillian Lewis). That first season feature some of the most delightful ensemble acting you could ever wish to see. The three characters complement one another perfectly. Mr Rose is upper class with the arrogance self-assurance of his class, but he can be charming and fascinating. Halifax is working class and is in fact an ex-criminal. Miss Lamb is middle class and takes life very seriously. Halifax is devoted to him. Miss Lamb disapproves of Mr Rose’s laziness and self-indulgence and his whimsical attitudes towards the law. All three characters are, in their very different ways, extremely likeable. And the three leading players play off each other superbly. The result was some of the best British television of the ’60s.

While he is now retired Mr Rose has by no means lost his taste for crime-solving. He is not a private detective but is now a kind of consulting detective in the Sherlock Holmes mould but on an amateur basis. Crime-solving is for Charles Rose a welcome diversion from the tedious grind of memoir-writing. The fact that he is writing his memoirs does however serve as useful leverage in a number of his cases.

Unfortunately Gillian Lewis departed after the thirteen episodes of the first season. It was a blow from which the series never quite recovered because the three characters had formed a perfect balance. Nonetheless a second season of six episodes, with Mr Rose relocated to London, followed in mid-1968. Donald Webster then left and a third and final season of five episodes screened in late 1968. That third season has its moments but the loss of Webster was a fatal blow.

Mr Rose gains a new assistant in the person of Robert Trent (Eric Woofe). In the first episode he seems rather obnoxious but after that he settles down. The problem is that he’s too much like a younger Mr Rose.

Episode Guide

In The Less-Than-Iron-Duke Mr Rose goes to the assistance of an old flame, theatrical legend Sheena Coltman, who has just opened a night-club and is being pressured to pay protection money. It appears that the man behind the protection racket is a rising star in the local organised crime world, a nasty piece of work named Eddie Rice. Mr Rose decides to fight crime with crime by persuading Harry Duke, the former gangland kingpin and know to everyone as The Duke, to deal with Eddie. But will The Duke agree to such a proposal?

The Bogey Man has a promising setup. Mr Rose witnesses a fatal traffic accident. He recognises the victim as a man named Saunders, whose is (or was) ironically traffic expert. Except that it turns out that the victim isn’t Saunders, it’s someone else entirely, but Mr Rose insists that it really is Saunders. The possibility that he might be mistaken is one that he is not prepared to entertain. There’s not just a question of identity, but also one of dates. And there’s a police sergeant who might not be a police sergeant, and there are two widows. There’s a murder that might not be a murder, or perhaps there are two murders, or even more. It’s all very baffling.

The Missing Chapter is a chapter from the next volume of Mr Rose’s memoirs. The story all involves a large amount of money withdrawn from the bank by Mr Rose, a visit to the racetrack, a mysterious telephone call from a glamorous blonde and some strange behaviour by Rose’s friend publisher Nigel Chinnery. The plot is less complex than it sounds but it’s entertainingly embellished by the amateur detective efforts by Robert and by Mr Rose’s new secretary, the detective story-obsessed Miss Tait-Fairlie.

In The Jolly Good Fellow Mr Rose is to be made a Fellow of St Stephen’s College. The college is about to be presented with a rather valuable painting. It already owns a priceless painting, and Mr Rose is more than a little concerned about the non-existent security arrangements. It’s Rag Week and Mr Rose has already been the victim of one of the good-natured pranks the students get up to at this time, all in the interests of charity. Mr Rose is kidnapped by some rather likeable undergraduates and as his ransom cheerfully hands over a cheque to a local charity. But are all the pranks being planned by the students so harmless?

Free and Easy is a bit of a mess. Mr Rose has written a play but both the director and the star, an actor named Marcus Despard who looks remarkably like Mr Rose (and is in fact played by William Mervyn), have tampered with the ending. Rose is not pleased.

This episode seems to be an attempt at political satire with some scare stuff about neo-fascist plots (a positive obsession with both British and American television at the time). It’s all too clever by half and doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Final Thoughts

The third season isn’t as bad as I’d feared but it is a bit disappointing. The dynamic between Chief Inspector Rose and Robert Trent just doesn’t have the nuances that made his relationships with John Halifax and Miss Lamb so interesting and so delightful. This is perhaps the major weakness. In the earlier seasons the interplay between the leads made even the lesser episodes thoroughly enjoyable. In this third season the uninteresting dynamic between the two leads makes the faults of the lesser episodes more obvious.

I’ve previously reviewed both the first season (by far the best) and the second season.

My advice is to buy the complete series set from Network which includes all three seasons. If you love the first two you’ll end up giving the final season a spin as well. If you’ve bought the individual season sets of seasons one and two then don’t bother with the third season unless you’re thoroughly hooked on the series.