ITC Fridays

[Rob McCow]

Department S - The Pied Piper of Hambledown
There's a whole sub-genre of 70's Abandoned Village thrillers. The Avengers did it at least twice and so did The Prisoner. And Department S have a go this week.

The action starts in the village bar. The barmaid's daughter, Susan, needs to get an early night because she's going to a beauty contest on the morrow. (There's a song about that, surely?) She takes a pill and so misses out when the whole village ups and leaves!

The morning after we get the memorable site of the inadequately dressed Susan running around the empty village. It is quite hard not to notice during this sequence that Susan has very large breasts.

Stewart and Annabelle arrive at the village via some quite appalling back projection, to find that Jason has already moved in on Susan's stack. He's also doing a good job of clearing out all the alcohol behind the bar.

It's a fun packed episode, with a great fight sequence on the staircase at the bar. Jason's intuituve approach is well balanced against Annabelle's more rigorous methods. In the end they discover that Richard (Slartibartfast) Vernon has a diabolical scheme to bring about world peace by threatening everyone with a deadly virus. Except Department S have already worked out that the virus is a phoney, sold to him by a con-artist.

The abandoned village plot is a good one, it's no wonder they keep using it. Hambledown is very picturesque - it's Latimer Village in Buckinghamshire. Also seen in Randall & Hopkirk as well as Inspector Morse - http://avengerland.theavengers.tv/department.htm

Man In A Suitcase - The Bridge

It's another wayward child case for McGill. Only this time the father is Bill Owen (Compo from Last of The Summer Wine) and the son is Rodney Bewes (Likely Lad and Dalek Agent). Which makes perfect sense when you think about it. These two were born to be related.

Tim Gormond (Bewes) is obsessed with chucking himself off Albert Bridge. He was there when his best friend Danny (Michael Culver from Secret Army) fell to his doom. McGill has to uncover what really happened to stop Tim from chucking himself off.

It's a fairly slim premise, but they get a heck of a lot of mileage out of it. The scenes where actors are genuinely climbing up the side of Albert Bridge are nerve-wracking. There's an unrequited love angle too, as Annabelle (Jane Merrow) enters the scene. She knows what really happened, but McGill has to push her right to the edge (not literally) to get her to admit the truth. The final twist is quite shocking.

McGill Is Clobbered: A new regular piece as McGill seems to get his a*** kicked every week. Annabelle's father hires some thugs to beat McGill and discourage him from continuing his investigation.

Another trendy nightclub is visited too, Rossiter's Roost. No stock footage, it's all for real man. In the studio, at least.

An incredibly young and dashing Simon Williams also turns up as one of Tim's friends, Le Strange.

In the end McGill is morally compromised and everyone else has to re-assess their values in light of the tawdry test of character they've been forced to face. Brilliant.

[Nyder]

So which of the two series are you currently enjoying the most then boys?


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[SiHart]

Rather unexpectedly, it's Man in a Suitcase. I think I went in not expecting much from it, but it's proving to be brilliant. Very gritty and quite dark in places. Richard Bradford is magnificent as McGill- very likeable and rather world weary.

Department S is great, but it's exactly what I expected- lots of fun and Peter Wyngarde is obviously extravagant and wonderful, but it's not surprised me the way that Man in a Suitcase has.

[Rob McCow]

Department S has been consistently good so far, but I agree, Man In A Suitcase is outstanding. Richard Bradford is as strong an actor as Patrick McGoohan in many ways. He's got a nervous, ground-down kind of energy that is very exciting to watch.

I also think we're watching these the wrong way round. Man In A Suitcase is like a hearty dinner, your solid and nourishing meat-and-two-veg, while Department S is more of a crazy trifle pudding with sprinkles and bananas sticking out of it.

[MacNimon]

I remember being really impressed by Man In A Suitcase when it was repeated on ITV in the mid-80s, but that was really the only time I saw the series on a regular basis. Any time I've watched it since, it has really only been the odd episode here and there squeezed in among other things. I've always enjoyed these random episodes, but not quite to the extent I did back in the day. Perhaps I should stop trying to watch a bit of everything and thus taking ages to work my way through things, and concentrate instead on a series or two at a time!

I've never seen the Pied Piper episode of Department S, but it sounds right up my street! I think that'll be my next episode there, then...

[Rob McCow]

Deparment S: One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty

A passenger plane comes in to land at "London Airport". But on board - there is nobody! In the pilot's chair there is only a tape recording. Interpol are baffled, could this be a case for Department S?

Yes it's back to Heathrow already for Jason, Annabelle and Stuart to re-tread ground from the opening episode, Six Days. Although this one does take a fairly different approach. In fact it's more like The Pied Piper of Hambledown with a hospital full of docile passengers.

It takes them ages to solve the mystery and there's a thrilling showdown on the plane as Anton Rodgers (one of the Number Twos from The Prisoner) tries to gas everyone and chuck them out over the Atlantic.

The contrast between Annabelle and Jason is also distnctly marked in this story. Jason uses his intuition and manhood to solve the problem while Annabelle relies on a 1960'S REEL TO REEL COMPUTER that fills a whole room. The Computer may be vast, but it is obviously dwarfed by Jason's ego.

It's good solid stuff, if a bit over-familiar. Not a good sign seeing as we're only a few episodes in, but let's see where they go next.

Curtis Seretse spot: I can't even remember what the Department S boss was doing this week. Standing in a bland corridor and saying bland things, probably. He's still biding time until the episode where he gets kidnapped, I'm sure.

Man In A Suitcase: Follow The Lady
A safecracker named Giulio goes about his work and when he's spotted he casually guns down the man who interrupted him. Giulio is clearly a tough nut!

McGill is in Rome and his informant, a slimy fellow called Mori tells him about a jewellery theft. McGill goes to visit the Comandante, (played by Italian Patrick Cargill) who promptly nicks his passport and tells him to find the thief. Although Patrick Cargill is a fabulous actor, he has an extremely English voice so getting him to play a Roman is a bit of a push too far.

There's a shootout in a Roman garden (filmed in Glasgow) which leads McGill to chase Giulio down to the catacombs, but Giulio gets away. In the meantime, the diamond jewellery has gone missing.

McGill is horrified when Giulio tracks down Mori, his informant and kills him. From this point on, it's personal. Mori's last message is that the Signora has the Jewels. But which lady is he referring to?

The Commandante confines McGill to his appartment (saves on budget I suppose) where he falls in with a pretty girl named Francesca at the bar. She seems sweet enough, but McGill is highly suspicious of her. Eventually Giulio tracks down McGill and takes Francesca hostage. He forces McGill back to the garden, because they've worked out that the Signora is one of the statues there. McGill is finally betrayed when Francesca reveals she is Giulio's brother - which was actually a bit of a shock twist. They find the diamonds and McGill takes it out on Giulio with a big punch up in the catacombs.

McGill Is Clobbered: The final fight with Giulio is pretty brutal, but McGill comes out on top. Even as the police are dragging him away, he still gets a few kicks in!

This wasn't the best of episodes. Nothing especially bad about it aside from Cargill's accent, but I think the pacing was a bit off. Didn't really have the cynical bite of some of the other episodes.

[MacNimon]

The action starts in the village bar. The barmaid's daughter, Susan, needs to get an early night because she's going to a beauty contest on the morrow. (There's a song about that, surely?) She takes a pill and so misses out when the whole village ups and leaves!

The morning after we get the memorable site of the inadequately dressed Susan running around the empty village. It is quite hard not to notice during this sequence that Susan has very large breasts.

Nice legs as well...

I'm not going to add much else to Steve's review except to say that I really enjoyed this episode, it's probably been the most enjoyable 50 minutes or so of tv I've watched in the least week or so. An excellent episode, full of mystery even though I figured out what was going on pretty early on. That pre-credits sequence with Susan more than compensates for that, though. Great fun!

[MacNimon]

Department S - The Pied Piper of Hambledown

The action starts in the village bar. The barmaid's daughter, Susan, needs to get an early night because she's going to a beauty contest on the morrow. (There's a song about that, surely?) She takes a pill and so misses out when the whole village ups and leaves!

The morning after we get the memorable site of the inadequately dressed Susan running around the empty village. It is quite hard not to notice during this sequence that Susan has very large breasts.

Nice legs as well...

I'm not going to add much else to Steve's review except to say that I really enjoyed this episode, it's probably been the most enjoyable 50 minutes or so of tv I've watched in the least week or so. An excellent episode, full of mystery even though I figured out what was going on pretty early on. That pre-credits sequence with Susan more than compensates for that, though. Great fun!

[Rob McCow]

That pre-credits sequence with Susan more than compensates for that, though.

I was starting to wonder if we were watching 'Confessions of A Window Cleaner' by mistake. The village didn't seem too empty with all that jiggling up and down. :O

[Stuart Wallis]

I know that part of the world quite well - Upper Jiggling, Lower Jiggling, Great Jiggling, Jiggling-under-Crabtree...

[MacNimon]

I think I'll maybe just have to watch the start of this one again to make sure that it's worth revisiting again, sometime in the future...

...just to compare how bad the back-projection scenes actually are compared with other episodes/series of the period, of course! (Well, any old excuse will do...)

[Stuart Wallis]

Ah yes - the number of ITC shows that went to their GP complaining that they'd put their back projection out...

[Rob McCow]

Department S - The Man In The Elegant Room
Captain Trent from The Sea Devils is being shown around a warehouse, where a mysterious object has appeared. This is a large structure which contains an elegantly furnished room behind bars. And inside the elegant room - A Man! And next to The Man - a woman! A dead woman! Stabbed in the chest!

The police don't even try, they just get on the line to Department S.

Sir Curtis Seretse is at a party. And if the establishing shot is to believed, this party is actually happening inside L'Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He's in a hurry to get on a plane, which presumably is going to take off down the Champs Elysee. Annabelle and Stuart meet him there to be briefed on their latest mission. Jason also happens to be there with a girl on his arm... "In the morning, Stuart" he quips when Stuart asks for a word with him.

The Man (in the Elegant Room) turns out to be an epileptic with severe speech difficulties. So no leads there. In the room, Jason spots that one of the pictures is a nude with her boobys out. The picture is a recent reproduction, so he reckons that if you find the nude you'll find the owner of the room.

The nude sneaks into the hospital (fully clothed) and murders The Man (ITER). This is immediately suspicious. Jason tracks the painting down to an artist, Doug Martin - played by John "Light" Hallam. Following up on his own, Jason gets knocked out and tied up. The artist burns his copies and his design of the Elegant Room but gets talked out of stoving Jason's head in. As he leaves in the car park, Nude Woman (clothed again) called Selina guns him down.

Eventually the team work out that the Elegant Room was a rehearsal room for a robbery. Selina is planning to rip-off and murder her husband, a wealthy businessman who has got involved in the drugs trade. The delivery man would be blindfolded all the way into the country and only be allowed to see where he is once he is in the room - hence the Elegant Room in a warehouse set up. The wife used this fact to usurp her husband.

A few punch ups and shoot outs later, it's all sorted out and all the villains are dead. OK, it's a lot more complex than that but I'm impatient to get onto Man In A Suitcase. Back in the fake elegant room, Department S laugh over their differences over a bottle of champagne as the room is dismantled around them.

Doctor Who wise, this episode also featured Tony Caunter (Enlightenment & Colony In Space), Michael "Richard Mace" Robbins (The Visitation), Frank "Ortron" Gatliff (Monster of Peladon) and Stratford "Monarch" Johns (Four to Doomsday) as the drug dealing husband.
And Juba Kennerley who may have played on old man in The Smugglers. Phew.

Man In A Suitcase - Brainwash
This is without a doubt one of the most thrilling 50 minutes of television I've ever seen.

What's more, the only representative from Doctor Who is a bit-part guard played by Bill Brandon, who may have been in Marco Polo as a Mongol Warrior. Phew.

McGill Is Clobbered: Pretty much the premise of the episode. McGill gets off a train to meet with a potential client, "LaPorte". But within three minutes he's been beaten up, drugged and carted off in the back of a car. Not before he recognises "LaPorte" as Colonel Davies, the ex-governor of Ikwala, a small African country that you've never heard of.

He wakes up in a comfy hotel room with bars and shutters on the windows. A "maid" arrives and serves him food. When McGill tries to get out, he finds two guards with rifles standing on guard.

Colonel Davies and his associate, John, offer McGill £50,000 for a job. They want him to sign a piece of paper saying that American Intelligence were behind Colonel Davies being thrown out of power in Ikwala. McGill refuses - and so the brainwashing begins.

This is like an episode of The Prisoner, except way more brutal. It's more like Intersections In Real Time from Babylon 5. McGill is imprisoned in a plain, box-like room with a huge projector at one end, where they show a documentary film of Ikwala on a loop, then later an unnerving high speed drive through the country culminating in repeated car crashes, a trial where McGill is found guilty and finally Colonel Davies out in the grounds with a pistol saying "I'm going to shoot you, McGill" before the defeaning sounds of gun shots ring out repeatedly. They also employ fake surgery and other sadistic techniques to get what they want. John, who is organising the torture, appears to be getting real pleasure out of punishing McGill.

In the end McGill barely gets away with his life, a gunshot wound to the shoulder spurting red blood all over his shirt. It's shocking, thrilling and utterly fantastic.

One further detail - the actor playing Colonel Davies obviously burst a blood vessel in his eye during recording, so for half the story he has a hideous blood red colour to one side of his left eye. Yuck!

[Rob McCow]

Department S get stuck in the bunker while Man In A Suitcase takes the battle to the enemy...

Department S - Handicap: Dead

Fore! A huge golf tournament is underway. Somewhere in Scotland. We close in on somebody taking a swing but the picture quality changes which makes me think that the close ups are not in Scotland. Anyway, one of the golfers is missing. He's lying dead on a beach nearby with his club and a ball. Apparently, the normal police are not up to this challenge and it'll take a maverick band of genii to crack the case. Seriously. Sigh.

Stewart and Jason are in Paris again with an establishing shot of L'Arc De Triomphe, where Dept.S seemingly have an office.

Stewart has some wild theory that the golfer (Johnnie Collins) was practicing on the beach and the ball rebounded and hit him in the temple. Jason King has a wackier theory that it was set up to look like that had happened. In his book "From China Yours Sincerely" a golf-ball firing gun was used to enact a murder made to look like an accident.

In the Department S universe, maybe there's a spoof of Jason King's books with titles like "From Russia With Love". How outrageous. Or maybe their titles are "From North Korea Kind Regards" or "From Kazhakstan Kiss Kiss Kiss Aunty Beryl."

Their only lead in this UTTERLY BAFFLING MYSTERY is Dianne Lynne and she lives in a house at The Pines, in Rickmansworth (Actually Aragon on Elstree Road). The trail leads to golfer Eddie Curtis. The fact that I watched this on Friday and can't remember how one thing leads to the other is slightly disturbing. Anyway, here's what I do remember:

Stewart finds some golf clubs at the house and takes a casino chip out of the pocket. Later the golf clubs go missing.

Jason is at Le Mans, France, about to take part in the 24 hour race but his car won't start. I can't remember what follows on from that or how it ties in to the plot, but later on he performs a parachute jump. While he's going up in the plane, Annabelle tries to tell him something important but I can't remember what because Jason King was jumping out of an aeroplane and if it wasn't Peter Wyngarde, it was definitely someone with a big moustache we saw doing an actual freefall.

Stewart traces something to an appartment and gets knocked out by Tinker from Lovejoy (Dudley Sutton) and his mate. As he falls unconcious he sees a beautiful blonde woman.

Sir Curtis Seretse turns up twice in this episode. The first time is in a funky nightclub where a mirrorlon effect is used to distort the picture and make it look like we're on drugs. Sir Curtis threatens to take Stewart off the case and for once I'd agree with him. It's seriously dull. Later Stewart meets him in the back of Curtis' car, parked in Belgrave Square, where again he tries to take Dept.S off the case. All I can remember about this episode is the damned padding.

Stewart interviews Eddie Curtis in a greasy spoon cafe, but Eddie isn't saying nuffink alright? He legs it while Stewart buys coffee. Tinker and his mate bundle Eddie into a car and take him up to his appartment, where they force alcohol down his throat and chuck him out of the window. Splat.

Annabelle tries to track down the chip that Stewart found in the golf clubs via a Casino Montage. Literally, she pretends to walk against a black background while the words 'CASINO' and 'BETTING' appear in bright lights around her. In the end the trail leads her to Aces High, a Casino right opposite the Hippodrome at Leicester Square. Fancy!

The gang rendez-vous at Aces High where it turns out that Edward Waterfield (John Bailey, playing Kruger the casino boss) is behind it all. The devil! There's a big punch up and a marvellous bit where Jason jumps down a flight of stairs and knocks out two of the villains.

The golf clubs were made of gold and only painted to look like normal clubs. I'm wondering if everything in the ITC Canon is made of gold and only painted to look like normal things. So Dept.S break into a boring golf-smuggling ring in a very dull episode indeed!

Man In A Suitcase - The Girl Who Never Was

She never was!

Initially it seems that McGill has a time-travelling suitcase as we open up in France during WWII. It's only a flashback though. Kershaw (Bernard Lee) leads a troop of soldiers through a battlefield with lots of explosions and gunfire. I think it's from a film, but the picture quality matches exactly which makes me wonder if they really did film it for the episode.

Anyway, the English soldiers arrive in a monastery where there is a painting - a Botticelli of Venus' head. The monastery is burning down, however.

Back in the present day, a rich lady named Gilchrist has put out an advert to see if anyone can recover this Botticelli for her. (She is played by Annette Carell who was 'B' in the Prisoner episode A, B and C. Oh and her butler is David Garfield - Von Weich / Neeva from The War Games / Face of Evil respectively). Kershaw turns up and says he can recover it, but he needs £200 to buy it from a dealer. After some persuasion, she gives him the money but asks the butler to find McGill for her.

"You know my fee," says McGill. "Three hundred a day, plus expenses." (NB this is his catchphrase).

Gilchrist doesn't give McGill the full story - she doesn't want to make it easy for him in case he finds the painting and cheats her. So McGill doesn't find Kershaw right away, instead he locates a soldier named Foley who is in an asylum. Foley looks astonishingly like Reece Shearsmith with grey hair. Foley has been painting endless copies of the Botticelli and claims he once knew where it was. When he was taken to the asylum though he painted over all his work - including the Botticelli. His landlady, Mavis, threw it all out.

In a flashback we see that Foley fell in love with the painting when he saw it in the monastery during WWII - he stole it and took it home to save it from the fire.

Kershaw is now renting Foley's old flat and so Mavis is his landlady. She thinks he fancies her, but Kershaw is only interested in finding the painting and claiming the reward. Kershaw thinks he has lost the painting for good at one point and gets very drunk. He threatens Mavis, demanding money and ends up stabbing her with a pair of scissors. She recovers, but is badly injured. Really gritty, thrilling stuff!

It all comes to a head as Kershaw takes poor, mad Foley and breaks into the antiques dealer who has the Botticelli. He demands that Foley tell him which painting has the Botticelli underneath, but Foley just breaks down.

Meanwhile, McGill has worked out where the painting is. Gilchrist sends two thugs after McGill so she won't have to pay him after he finds him, but he sees them following him and - in an unusual twist - beats the crap out of them. Go McGill!

At the antiques dealer McGill comes across Foley and Kershaw. He's called the police who are right behind him, but Kershaw pulls out a gun. Again, going against form, McGill doesn't get shot, but Kershaw gets hit in the arm before the police come to take him away.

Finally Gilchrist retrieves the painting but she discovers it is - and always has been - a worthless copy. She offers McGill one pound for his services. McGill is furious and grabs the painting, giving Gilchrist two pounds for it. He thinks it will be worth something to somebody.

Finally, he gives the painting to Foley who hangs it up on the wall of his room.

This was another stunning episode. Bernard Lee! ACTING! I've only seen him doing his schtick as 'M' from the Bond films so this was a real treat.

We also had Derek Smee (Ransome from Spearhead From Space) as the antiques dealer. Somewhere along the line there was Jack Bligh who was Gaptooth in The Smugglers and Roy Vincente who played various roles in Marco Polo. But we didn't recognise them.

[MacNimon]

I'm really going to have to give Man In A Suitcase another chance soon. Your reviews have really been whetting my appetite, Steve!

[Nyder]

Mine too Kenny! I hope Department S picks up again soon! Will you be doing Jason King after this?

The episode of The Persuaders! I saw recently had Jean Marsh AND Joan Collins in it. Unfortunately, Jean didn't make it past the opening credits


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[Rob McCow]

Jean Marsh deserves better - always!

I don't know about the Jason King series. We're due to run out of Man In A Suitcase episodes before Dept.S episodes and we haven't decided what we'll fill in with. Might do 2x Dept.S to get them finished. Then it's all up for grabs!

[SiHart]

Could be the boring old Champions. Personally, I'd go for Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased)

[MacNimon]

The Baron is another worth a look. I used to like it way back when it was repeated in the 80s, but like Man In A Suitcase I haven't watched it properly since. I've got the box set handy though, so there's really no excuse...

Randall & Hopkirk is another old favourite...you could do a lot worse than that. Not so sure of The Champions though, it was always my least favourite ITC series...I always just found it a bit on the dull side. And of course The Persuaders is another great option, as is The Saint...but then you have to choose between Roger and Ian...

[Rob McCow]

We've got a Man In A Suitcase two-parter coming up, so we took the plunge with two Department S episodes last week (on Thursday for the bank holiday weekend). Was that a good idea? As it turns out, no.

Department S - Black Out

An elegantly dressed gentleman goes to the opera in London. When he leaves he suddenly finds himself in Mexico! We know it is Mexico because the Mexican from The Prisoner episode "Living In Harmony" turns up in pretty much the same clothes, moustache and accent.

The man (Robin Skelton) can't remember how he got to Mexico but Department S hypnotise him - and he remembers "Turtle in the shell". Jason King (who has a fabulous tan this week) knows that turtle in the shell is only served in the Bahamas, so off they trot.

First though, Stewart has to meet with Sir Curtis Seretse on a train to tell him. They're off on a jolly! Seretse is on his way to Cape Canaveral for an important rocket launch. The entire US space program may hinge on it. I don't know what Seretse was hoping to do, apart from maybe arrange a late launch lunch?

Meanwhile the kidnappers find their real target, Rocket Scientist Peter Sinclair. Skelton was Sinclair's doppleganger, which was how they managed to c*ck it up the first time. They drug Sinclair and take him to the Bahamas, where they have AN EXACT COPY of Cape Canaveral in the attic of their villa.

Department S go to every restaurant in the Bahamas and order turtle in the shell. The 'S' clearly does not stand for 'Slimfast'. Jason cracks onto a blonde girl and takes her to the beach. Instead of going to a local beach he takes her all the way to Studland Bay. One of the villains realises Jason is looking for them and tries to kill him with a sniper rifle. Guess who takes the bullet for King? Yup, blondey no more.

The Department S get up to their usual schtick of one member going to find the villains' lair without telling the others, who eventually come and rescue them. The villains were going to use their fake Cape Canaveral and Real Rocket Scientist to destroy the US shuttle launch. Step 3: Profit.

This episode features Neil Hallett who was Maylin Renis in Timleash. No, I don't remember either.

Department S - The Double Death of Charlie Crippen

A posh car drives through the countryside in Borehamwood *cough* Naples, Italy. It goes over a landmine and is jumped by a couple of men with machine guns. Nobody could survive - and nobody does. The only occupant is a waxwork dummy!

For some reason we're now at the end of Series 2. This is the very final episode of Department S, although we've got another 20 or so to watch. Strange.

Jason King is brutally interrogating a witness, but when the camera pulls back we see his jibes are directed at the badly melted wax dummy - Jason names it Charlie Crippen.

They talk to the farmer who may have been a witness and he shows them his potatoes.

George Pravda plays a count.

I fell asleep, but Si assures me that Sir Curtis Seretse went on location with the whole of Department S as they visited someone... there was a guard in a hut... so they arrange a trap for the counter revolutionaries...

I slept through most of this one. It might have been quite good. Shame.

George Pravda was in The Deadly Assassin. We also had Peter Arne who wasn't in Frontios; Edward de Souza who was in Mission To The Unknown, plus Sapphire & Steel and The Golden Compass movie; John Savident who was in Blakes 7 - Orbit and Department S a few weeks ago; Michael Godfrey who may have been Captain Samuel Pike in The Smugglers; and Nicholas Chagrin who played Quillam in Vengeance on Varos.

[Rob McCow]

Man In A Suitcase: Variation On A Million Bucks

A rarity last Friday - a two part story for The Man In A Suitcase!

It starts in Libson where Max Stein has stolen a million dollars. Max has defected from Russia and is looking for a new life. However he is threatened at gunpoint, throws an ashtray in his assailant's face and makes good his escape. However, the million is left behind in a safety deposit box.

Most notably, Max is played by Anton Rodgers who was a Number Two in The Prisoner and later went on to star in such sitcoms as Fresh Fields and From May To December. Here he is fairly young and dashing.

Cut to Piccadilly Circus. Max is friends with McGill and they go out to the theatre together. There McGill spots a face he hasn't seen in a long time, an ex-lover named Taiko. They get back together and for a while they have a nice little group, with Max, Taiko and McGill enjoying life in London. But they are being watched.

A man approaches Max in a cafe and demands that he give him the key. (To the safety deposit box). He follows Max out of the cafe and shoots him in the back. Max is dying, but manages to shoot his assassin and crawls back to McGill's apartment, where he tells McGill that the key is in the black queen of his chess set and that it opens the safe in Lisbon.

McGill's apartment is nice, but decorated in a repulsive violet colour.

So McGill has the key and access to a million dollars, if he can get to Lisbon. But various hoodlums want in on the money, as do US Intelligence who want some important papers contained in the safety deposit box.

Taiko doesn't want McGill to go after the million. She worries he'll end up dead like Max, on a strange street in a strange country. The relationship between McGill and Taiko really makes this story. She wants him to settle down and have a normal life, to give up his private detective work and have children together. But of course, McGill has to go after the million dollars.

The rest of the story concerns his voyage to Lisbon and what he eventually finds there...

A few brilliant moments include:

McGill hallucinating after arriving in Lisbon. He's been beaten and is delirious. He arrives at a safe house where a girl named Lucia looks after him. At night he stares into a candle and sees the faces of Max, Taiko and his ex-boss at US Intelligence laughing at him.

McGill does get his hands on the million at one point and you see a smile appear on his face, which grows into a grin and then laughter as he stuffs it into an envelope.

Finally McGill is lying in bed at the hospital and he's given contact details for Taiko, who has flown back to Tokyo. Alone and dejected, he crumples up the paper.

McGill Is Clobbered:
It's a two-parter, so McGill gets extra punishment. First, some thugs ransack his apartment looking for the key and when McGill returns, they knock him unconcious and strip search him.

Next he gets stabbed in a fight with some sailors aboard the ship carrying to Lisbon. He fends them off at gunpoint.

After that, on arriving in Lisbon the same three sailors smash him on the head with a cricket bat that breaks in half!

Finally in Lisbon he is shot at and eventually rugby-tackled by a US agent. He spends his last scenes in hospital, naturally.

There are some interesting guest stars too. Mike Pratt (Jeff Randall from Randall & Hopkirk [Deceased]) turns up briefly as a police inspector. Jeremy Wilkin (Revenge of The Cybermen) plays an American agent on McGill's tail. Aurbey Morris (Hitch-Hiker's, Space 1999, Catweazle, The Prisoner, Babylon 5) plays the cafe owner who helps McGill get to Lisbon. There's John Lee (Alydon from The Daleks) and Alan White (Schultz in Tenth Planet) for a huge bonus score if you recognise them.

A brilliant two-parter, though we have had better episodes. It does feel a bit over-extended. That said, the padding is highly entertaining and there's an ongoing sense of tension that serves the story well.

[Rob McCow]

One thing I forgot to mention is that McGill goes to London docks to catch his boat to Lisbon and there is some fabulous footage of London in the 60's when there really was an industrial dockland at Docklands. Sadly he doesn't go to Shad Thames.

[Rob McCow]

Department S: Treasure of The Costa Del Sol

The Costa Del Sol! Sun, sea and S - a case for Department S that is. In the part of the Costa Del Sol that happens to look most like Ivinghoe , two men are driving to the beach. One of them puts on scuba diving gear and retrieves a large model fish from the sea bed, via the power of genuine underwater filming! Then as he comes back to the car, his friend shoots him! But the diver shoots him back with his harpoon gun! A policeman hears! The fish is full of money! Apparently it's a case for Department S!

They really have lost the 'Mysterious' factor to the episode openings.

One of the men has a locket with a picture of a woman in it, plus a little notebook with a list of 51 more women's names in it. Jason King leaps into the detective role here by... sleeping with every woman in the notebook. Literally. We see him flirting with one or two of them but basically he's using it as a long shaglist.

He saves the girl in the locket until last, a woman named Elaine whom he chats up at a Flamenco Night Club with real Flamenco Dancers. Unfortunately two thugs who are watching over Elaine decide to beat up Jason for flirting with her. It's not clear why they think she won't get chatted up when they've sent her to a Seedy Flamenco Club to eat on her own. Those Flamenco Clubs are notorious.

Now if the Flamenco dancers had beaten up Jason, that would have been fun.

Meanwhile, Stuart is meeting with Sir Curtis Seretse in a cable car. The money from the fish is counterfeit! - As Stuart explains while dangling the forged US note from the window of the cable car. The team in the lab have carried out extensive tests, but Annabel spots the forgery straight away because the green is too vivid.

Jason sneaks into Elaine's house, but he's chased away by dogs and thugs. It's a shame, because she lives with George Pastell (Eric Klieg in Tomb of The Cybermen) Louis Mansi (Von Smallhousen from Allo Allo) and David Prowse (Darth Vader's body). There's even Peter Thomas (Apparently Captain Edal from The Savages but I can't prove that). Isla Blair herself played Isabella in The King's Demons.

Anyway, Klieg is running this smuggling operation for counterfeit money. Von Smallhousen is operating a printing press in his basement. They put the money in the fish and send it to Turkey, or Italy, or somewhere. Stuart and Jason basically go back to the mansion and beat the crap out of everyone, including Von Smallhousen who is incredibly drunk and accidentally shows them his printing press.

Finally they have to sort out the smuggling ring. Stuart goes diving and replaces the fish with one full of dye that will never come out. The smugglers are in for a big surprise but we never get to see it or care about it.

A fairly decent episode, though nothing outstanding APART FROM Jason King's outfit. A light brown suit over a pink (salmon?) shirt and matching pink kipper tie. Astonishing.

[Rob McCow]

Man In A Suitcase: Day of Execution

"Hey Mariocki! We're going to kill you, Mariocki!"

McGill is facing a series of bizarre death threats - but not in his name, they're addressed at Mariocki. Could this be a case for Department S? Apparently so, because his chief squeeze this week is Moira played by Rosemary Nicholls - Department S's own Annabelle Hurst!

And if that wasn't enough of a shock, at the start of the episode McGill and Moira are trying to get McGill's drunken friend Willard home. Willard is played by Donald Sutherland. Holy mackarel!

There's a lot to love in this episode. The premise is as simple as can be, but superbly executed. The highlight of the death threats has to be when McGill looks out of the window of his appartment and sees the words "SOON, MARIOCKI" painted in bright red letters on the top of an ice-cream van.

We also get an absolutely stunning car chase around Kingston-Upon Thames, with McGill chasing one of the people who's threatened him. It's late at night, there are high-speed twists and turns, lots of 60's department stores to look at and a genuine sense of speed and peril. In fact, this car chase was so good they reused it in The Saint and TWICE on Randall and Hopkirk [Deceased].

Even McGill's apartment is stunning. Far from the purple horror he resided in last week, he's now got a stylish open-plan pad with a wooden-box staircase leading to a bedroom. Halfway up the stairs is a kitchenette and there are huge windows overlooking some beautiful buildings near the Royal Albert Hall.

Sutherland is clearly as Method in his acting as Richard Bradford and the two play off each other superbly. Sutherland isn't as dry as Bradford (but then nobody is as dry as Bradford) he's much more fun as McGill's drunk friend.

Rosemary Nicholls is good in Department S, but she's never been as good as she is here. McGill wants to push her away because of the life he leads but she's determined to prove to him that she's up to the challenge. There's a marvelous scene where she tells him about her abandoned ambitions to be a ballerina, feminist and jockey. Richard Bradford even goes on location with her at one point which is a rarity. Usually whenever we see McGill out and about he's turned into a gambolling fool who can barely walk, wearing the same wig that Terry Walsh used to plonk on his head when he was filling in for Jon Pertwee.

The paranoia and tension build up throughout the episode until it's revealed that T.P. McKenna is behind it all - the scoundrel! (He's Captain Cook from Greatest Show In the Galaxy). We also have a caretaker played by Jimmy Gardner, who was possibly in Marco Polo and Underworld. I'll be honest, I haven't checked the episodes to see if I could spot him. ((On a side side note - in Department S we had Isla Blair who was in a Hard Day's Night, this time we have Maggie Wright who was in Magical History Tour. Bit part facts.))

McGill Gets Clobbered: Actually McGill gets through without a scratch! Though he does drop a saucepan while making a cup of coffee. No, seeing as there's a big guest star it's actually Willard (Sutherland) who receives a horrific beating. Fat lip, blooded eye, the lot.

It all builds up to a shocking conclusion. McGill finds out who the real Mariocki is (or was?). T.P. McKenna and his goons arrange for McGill, Willard and Moira to be in his appartment when they come for him with a machine gun. McGill's response is to use fire and lots of it. The moral of the story? Don't f***with McGill!

[Nyder]

Nearly at the end of The Persuaders! now Tonight it was "The Morning After" (every TV series worth its salt should have an episode called this ) in which Lord Brett Sinclair wakes up with a stonking hangover only to find himself married to Catherine Schell! Tony Curtis wears the most bizarre shiny crocodile skin jacket in this one. No wonder he's so snappy ...


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