Friday 12 February 2016

Department S: The Introduction


"The cases are inexplicable, baffling and illogical. They have to be... to interest Department S! The orthodox is not for this department of Interpol... its operators handle only cases which cannot be solved by normal police routine."


So says the original publicity brochure for this 1969 detective show from the British action-adventure factory ITC, makers of shows like Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), The Saint, Thunderbirds and The Prisoner. ITC, run by entertainment mogul Lew Grade, generally made its productions to a formula, albeit one that evolved over time; the lone hero format of earlier in the decade (The Saint, Danger Man, The Baron, Man In A Suitcase) had by 1969 become two heroes and one heroine, one of the male leads usually being American to improve the chances of making a sale to a US network.




Department S perfectly fits this formula, established by the previous year's ITC series The Champions and later followed by Strange Report and The Protectors. One British hero, one American hero and one heroine, and for good measure an older boss who hands out assignments and occasionally gets involved in the action. Let's meet them, shall we?


His moustache would soon mysteriously turn a darker shade.

Jason King (Peter Wyngarde)

Best-selling author of the suspiciously James Bond-ish series of Mark Caine novels, the wealthy, famous and hedonistic Jason King has a sideline as a freelance investigator for Interpol’s Department S. Quite how he managed to wangle this is never explained. Possessed of a huge ego, considerable narcissism, outrageous dress sense and we have to assume a grotesquely enlarged liver from all the alcohol he consumes, Jason is the team's "whiz-kid" who comes up with bizarre and outlandish theories to explain the inexplicable crimes they are assigned. To the annoyance of at least one of his colleagues, he's usually right.


"Shullivan. Shtuart Shullivan."

Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani)

The team's most traditional detective, token ITC American Stewart Sullivan is also landed with the most traditional wardrobe, favouring three-piece ensembles of brown, a different brown, brownish grey, and sometimes a sort of blue-grey with a bit of brown. But mostly plain brown. He follows leads the old-fashioned way, by interviewing witnesses, questioning suspects and occasionally beating the truth out of them. Stewart generally acts as straight man to Jason, being a consummate professional, but he can get righteously angry if he thinks politics is interfering with justice.


"It has a whole two kilobytes of RAM!"

Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols)

Where Jason works on instinct and imagination, Annabelle Hurst favours the application of science and reason to solve crimes, so her relationship with the author is often a bit spiky. She's far more comfortable with Stewart, however; he has a key to her apartment and they frequently flirt to the point where the room they're in tells them to get another room. While she's generally found teasing information out of her ridiculously large 1960s computer Auntie, Annabelle doesn't hesitate to get out into the field (or rather the Borehamwood backlot).


A fish drinks from the head.

Sir Curtis Seretse (Dennis Alaba Peters)

An African diplomat of ill-defined bailiwick (seeming to work for Interpol, the United Nations and/or various western intelligence agencies depending on the script's requirements), the urbane Sir Curtis Seretse is effectively the boss of Department S. His role usually consists of assigning them new cases, but he sometimes gets more personally involved in the investigations. His vast network of high-level contacts often proves useful, although his predilection for secrecy frustrates Stewart.


"I won't cooperate, so you might as well kill me - oh."

So that's the cast: what, you may ask, is the show's gimmick? It is, in theory, that its heroes solve the unsolvable: the opening scene (the 'teaser') of each episode sets up a bizarre event that defies explanation - a man wearing a spacesuit is found dead in the middle of London; a plane lands six days late but nobody aboard realises anything unusual has happened; assassins blow up a car, but the occupant is a wax dummy - and then Department S is called in to find a rational explanation with a combination of dogged detective work, scrupulous scientific analysis of the evidence and esoteric knowledge being used to formulate way-out theories. In practice, it didn't take the show long to become lax with its own premise, but we'll learn more about that in the individual episode reviews.


Somewhere, someone has a fetish about this moment.

Another question you might be asking is: why would someone go to all the trouble of doing detailed reviews of an almost-forgotten TV show that's now over half a century old? My answer is largely "because I can", but there's more to it than that. For all its faults (again, you can discover those in the reviews), I enjoyed watching Department S, and wanted to share that enjoyment with other people.


She wondered why on earth the director wanted her to sit in such an uncomfortable position.

It's also a chance to look at a very different era of television. Commercial TV in the 1960s - on both sides of the Atlantic - actively avoided things like character arcs, ongoing plotlines and callbacks to previous episodes: the belief at the time was that such things would confuse and enrage viewers, and a confused and enraged viewer would change the channel! As a result, shows were deliberately made so that each episode stood alone as a totally self-contained story, and could be watched in any order. Times have changed, with even straight procedural shows like the various CSIs, Criminal Minds or NCIS now having serialised elements threaded through them, so it's almost refreshing to go back to a time when each episode existed in its own little bubble.


Literary critics were closing in.

One thing that Department S has in common with the modern shows above is that it later got a spin-off series. This is in contrast to most ITC shows, which rarely even got a second season, never mind an expanded continuity! In this case, Jason King the character begat Jason King the series, the gadabout author going solo for a new set of globetrotting adventures. The only reason it was made was because Lew Grade's wife rather fancied Peter Wyngarde, so pestered her husband into commissioning him a new show. It's true! However, beyond making you aware of this so you'll understand the references to it (and also some jokes), that show won't be covered here. Why not? Because, well... it's really not very good. I have a lot of fondness for Department S, but it doesn't extend beyond the show itself!


"Morning, all! I brought breakfast."

With all that now established, it's time to get to the important stuff: namely the episodes themselves. Here's what you can expect to find in the guide to each one.

By Any Other Name

The first thing in each review is the episode's title. Self-explanatory.

The Order Of Things

Each episode is listed according to its order in actual production, where known (taken from the booklet accompanying the Network DVDs, which unfortunately doesn't give the production order for the final seven episodes made - these are listed as "Unknown"); its code number as assigned by ITC (which has almost no correlation to the production order); the order in which it was first shown on British TV (which has almost no correlation to either of the previous two); and its order on the DVDs (which, you won't be surprised to learn, has almost no correlation to any of the preceding). The episodes here have been reviewed in DVD order because, well, it was the easiest way to do it, but should you fancy pretending you're back in 1969 about to watch an intriguing-sounding new detective show from the makers of The Champions and want to view them in broadcast order, now you can.

Those Responsible

Next come the names of the writer and director. In the former case, there's a 35.71% chance that it will be a man called Philip Broadley. Be warned.

Where & When

Each episode starts with a caption saying where the action takes place, and on what date. The differences between production, episode code, airdate and DVD order mean that the dates are in a totally jumbled sequence. Either our heroes can time-travel, or their cases are spread out over several more years than the show actually ran.

The Inexplicable Mystery

A weird crime or event is presented to the audience before the opening titles, one which seemingly defies any rational explanation.

The Mystery Explained

The reason for the events in the teaser is revealed here, to save having to work it into the individual reviews. Sometimes - more frequently as the series goes on - the revelation is pretty mundane after all and scarcely seems worth Interpol's time. C'est la vie.

Review

Your author's opinions on the episode as a whole.

Fancy Quotes

Jason, Stewart and Annabelle (and occasionally even Seretse) get some quite clever dialogue. The best exchanges and quips are presented in this bit for your pleasure.

Cheers!

Jason King enjoys his alcohol, so much so that the only other television character seen more frequently with a glass in his hand was Norm Peterson. Whisky is his preferred tipple, but in general if it's a higher percentage proof than water he'll have some. The only exception is beer - a man has to have some standards! This section catalogues the rapid rotting of his liver throughout the series.

Fight!

It wouldn't be an ITC show without frequent outbreaks of fisticuffs to add a bit of excitement, often for completely gratuitous reasons. (Not even The Prisoner, over which Patrick McGoohan had absolute carte blanche, was immune to the call of fast-paced music over shots of stuntmen backflipping and crashing into boxes.) Here we run down the Department's all too common pugilistic performances, along with the startling number of times either Jason or Stewart takes a blow to the head and is knocked out cold. It's a wonder they don't have constant concussions.

Author! Author!

Jason is a world-famous novelist, and his books pop up quite frequently throughout the show, whether merely by name or actually in the hands of readers. This is where we find out his ever-expanding bibliography.

That Looks Familiar

ITC made its shows on a production-line basis, saving money as much as possible by re-using sets and props from its other shows - Stewart's white Vauxhall Ventora is the same car occasionally driven by Jeff Randall in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - and even previous episodes of the same show. This parsimony will be taken to extremes by Department S's spin-off Jason King, in which every wealthy villain shares the same interior decorator and Jason himself is stalked around the world by a silver Vauxhall Viva. Department S is slightly more varied, but there are several sets and locations that reappear from episode to episode. In addition, there are regular guest appearances by certain cars: a white Vauxhall Victor (with a registration number only one different from Stewart's wheels; his is RXD 997F, while the Victor's is RXD 996F), a red Lotus Elan and a black Ford Zephyr.

So now you know what all of this is about, let's get on with the reviews!


And just to complete the links, some videos for you!
Department S: Opening Titles
A Tribute To Department S
Top Gear: The Interceptors (a fun spoof of ITC's shows using the Department S theme music)
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01: 'Six Days'

Production order: 06 | ITC code: 5101 | Airdate order: 01 | DVD order: 01

Writer: Gerald Kelsey
Director: Cyril Frankel

Where & When

Astrair Golf-Alpha-Zulu-Echo-Bravo, Karachi to London: July 17th

The Inexplicable Mystery

An Astra Airlines flight from Karachi approaches Heathrow airport, its pilots and passengers pleased that they are thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Their arrival causes consternation on the ground, however, and when the plane touches down the reason becomes clear. They're not half an hour early - they're six days late!

The Mystery Explained

The plane was hijacked and diverted to Albania in a plot to brainwash British government official Hallet into handing over military secrets to the East. The stewardess - and girlfriend of Walsham, a British spy on the flight who is really a double agent - drugged all the in-flight meals, and then pilot Borowitsch took over the controls while accomplice Durres acted as navigator. The passengers and crew were kept drugged and unconscious for the six days it took for Hallet to be 're-educated', then Borowitsch took the plane back up, set the autopilot, and let the passengers and crew wake up without any memory of what had happened.

Review

'Six Days' is an odd choice with which to start the series. On the one hand, you can see why it was picked; the central mystery is intriguing with a solution that makes sense (within the bounds of the genre), jet travel at the time was still exotic enough to make for an interesting backdrop, there's plenty of action, violence and danger, and the female lead parades around in her underwear on the flimsiest of pretexts, all of which would be strong selling points to a television executive.


In the days before the internet, this was practically hardcore.

But on the other, and unusually for an ITC show of the late Sixties, there's no setup. Department S's contemporaries, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Champions, both had pilot episodes that established the premise and characters, explaining that one is about a detective whose recently-murdered partner comes back as a ghost to help him solve cases and the other concerns a team of three secret agents who gain superpowers.


"So unless I've read this wrong, one of us is a ghost with superpowers."

Unless the audience in 1969 had read the pre-publicity material, however, Department S's setup was limited to the flash-frames of teletypes in the super-stylised opening credits, which on a typical 1960s TV might not even have been clearly legible. Instead, viewers are dropped into the story with no knowledge of the premise, or even the identities of the lead characters. Given that this is the first time they'd seen the show, they would have to be paying really close attention to realise that one of the passengers on the plane is also credited in the title sequence. Sir Curtis doesn't get a namecheck until six minutes into the episode, Stewart (first seen only from behind and then also partially obscured by another character) has to wait another two minutes before his formal introduction (by surname only), Annabelle shows up over eight minutes in but isn't named in dialogue at all (!), while to meet Jason - the first-billed star of the show - the viewer has to wait almost ten minutes, a full fifth of the episode, and even then doesn't learn who he is until the seventeenth minute. As for any explanation that he's actually a bestselling thriller author who works for Interpol on a freelance basis... well, you have to do your own detective work based on Annabelle's mockery of Jason near the end!


Special effects by Industrial Light and Tragic.

This lack of background on the characters or situation dates the show as much as Jason's fashion sense or the surprisingly traffic-free streets of London. If Department S were remade today, it's almost certain that the first episode would be an origin story a la Castle, showing how Jason King became involved with the Department by getting mixed up in - or even the prime suspect of - a bizarre crime, which he solves by using his intuition, imagination and esoteric knowledge, aided by Annabelle's forensic data analysis and Stewart's dogged detective work. For that matter, the show as a whole would likely make full use of ongoing story arcs, recurring characters and continuity breadcrumbs; all the tools of the 21st century television writer's trade. But in 1969, with ITC's sausage-factory mentality behind it, Department S suffers perhaps more than most from the mindset of the time that episodes ought to be viewable in any order and the viewer shouldn't need (or be expected) to remember anything that might have happened previously. Each episode stands in total isolation, save for a single non-regular character who makes a repeat appearance. (Returning actors are another thing entirely.)


To The Manor Born... and to the runway died.

As for the story itself? It's a solid enough debut, the Cold War brainwashing concept a little risible now but in keeping with the show's arrival at the tail end of the Sixties 'spy-fi' trend exemplified by the likes of James Bond, Danger Man, The Avengers, The Man From UNCLE and ITC's own The Champions. The villains' plan may be flawed - the sheer strangeness of the plane's late return would guarantee an investigation, which is the last thing any spy trying to implant a sleeper agent should want - but it unfolds well enough with no implausible leaps of logic by any of the detectives, and all three leads contribute to the breaking of the case with their own distinct skills.


Making The Champions look like chumpions.

Stewart shows that while he may be the most traditional investigator on the team, he's far from a conventional plodder; trying to crack a suspect's resolve by sending an airliner into a crash dive before donning a parachute and threatening to bail out without him is not exactly standard interrogation procedure! Annabelle too proves her worth by locating the hijacked flight's unscheduled stopover, then later showing off her lockpicking and improvisational skills to break into Walsham's flat and bluff her way out of it when discovered - to say nothing of saving the life of the team's third member.


"Really, Jason? A whoopee cushion?"

But even in just a single episode, Jason King is established as a different kind of hero. His clothing hasn't yet reached the outrageous peacockery that it will later in the series, and especially his own spin-off adventures, but the mere fact that he drives a Bentley to a stakeout hints as to how detached he is from the mundanity of regular police work. He's also Dorothy Parker-ishly bitchy towards Annabelle (possibly a reflection of Wyngarde's own feelings towards Rosemary Nicols, whom he reportedly disliked), and in his one action scene gets knocked out by a single blow - hardly the typical tough guy of a regular adventure show. Yet this, allied with Peter Wyngarde's unfailingly magnetic performance, is what makes Jason stand out. No mere Bond clone, he's already on his way to becoming one of the most unlikely sex symbols of the era.

Fancy Quotes

Jason: One of the cankers of science is its incestuous obsession with itself - science for science's sake.
Annabelle: Science isn't doing too badly.
Jason: Enlighten me.
Annabelle: The mud from the underside of the fuselage contains a red volcanic dust.
Jason: Astounding.
Annabelle: It didn't come from Karachi, or Rome, or any other airport where they officially landed.
Jason: So all we have to do is look for an airport that's buried with red volcanic dust.
Annabelle: [smugly] I found it.
Jason: Fancy.

[To prove that Borowitsch is a trained pilot, Stewart punches out the captain and sends the plane into a dive, then dons a parachute!]
Borowitsch: What are you doing?
Stewart: She's all yours.
Borowitsch: No, you are crazy! I tell you, I am no pilot!
Stewart: Then your luck's run out.
Borowitsch: No, it is a trick. You would not kill a man!
Stewart: He's expendable. We play for high stakes.

[Walsham's girlfriend Janet finds a near-nude (and blonde!) Annabelle in her boyfriend's bedroom]
Janet: Who are you?
Annabelle: I might ask you the same question.
Janet: What are you doing here?
Annabelle: Use your imagination!

Cheers!

• Starting as he means to go on, Jason has a glass of whisky as he tells Annabelle how he found out the backgrounds of Borowitsch and Duras.
• He eases the tedium of listening to the air traffic control tapes with another glass of Scotland's finest.

Fight!

Jason tries to charm Janet into giving the game away by using a risible "Albanian" accent. Amazingly she falls for it, but the returning Walsham doesn't, and he knocks Jason out with a single karate chop. KO!

Jason 1, Stewart 0.

That Looks Familiar


The Department S corridor makes the first of its many, many appearances in the series right after the opening credits as the flight crew walk through the airport. It actually appears to be the only corridor in the whole of Heathrow.



Stewart chases a suspect along this distinctive covered passage, with which we'll become very familiar: the Ancillary Building at Borehamwood Studios.
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02: 'The Trojan Tanker'

Production order: 04 | ITC code: 5102 | Airdate order: 02 | DVD order: 02

Those Responsible

Writer: Philip Broadley
Director: Ray Austin

Where & When

Bedfordshire, England: July 3rd

The Inexplicable Mystery

A tanker truck is involved in an accident on a country road. But when someone goes to help, they find that its cargo isn't fuel - instead, it contains a secret compartment with an unconscious woman inside. When the emergency services arrive, however, she has vanished!

The Mystery Explained

The woman, Veronica Bray, had, er, woken up and left. So not much of a mystery there. But the truck itself is key to a plot to steal a shipment of gold bullion from a plane when it lands at a Paris airport. The villains plan to hide inside the secret compartment and enter the airport undetected in the guise of being a regular refuelling tanker, then drive right up to the plane and burst out to take the gold before escaping undetected the way they came in.

Review

Ah, Philip Broadley: a name in the opening credits that will be greeted with increasing dismay as the series goes on. Broadley wrote a whopping ten episodes of Department S, more than a third of the entire series. Having previously knocked out numerous scripts for the show's ITC stablemates Danger Man, The Saint, Man In A Suitcase and The Champions, it's clear that he was regarded by the company as a safe pair of hands who when given a brief, a typewriter and a deadline would produce something filmable on a TV schedule and budget - in other words, a television professional.


One more move, and their phones would form the Italian flag.

Or, less charitably, a hack. None of Broadley's Department S episodes are likely to trouble anybody's best-of lists, and he's undeniably responsible for most of the show's worst. The big problem with his scripts is that he generally only pays lip service to the premise of "cases too bizarre for the regular police to solve", instead writing very mundane tales of the lives of criminals and simply sticking a weird - yet frequently irrelevant - opening sequence upon them.


Zoom glasses: just £29.99 from the Sex Pest Store.

'The Trojan Tanker' is a case in point. The villains' ultimate aim is straightforward armed robbery, though with the admittedly neat gimmick of hiding inside an innocuous airport vehicle to get through security. But the mystery set up in the teaser is completely contrived (why was Veronica in the back of the tanker? For that matter, why was the tanker being driven around country lanes in Bedfordshire at all, nowhere near Paris?), and things get no better as the story lurches from plot point to plot point. Veronica just happens to leave a lighter with a distinctive crest in the tanker; Jason just happens to know the man in Rome who dishes out said lighters to his female acquaintances; said man's sole purpose in the story is to give Jason Veronica's name. And so on.


No, there's no gratuitous sexualisation of women in this episode. None at all.

Despite that, in fairness, the episode at least keeps moving quickly enough around Europe that it keeps viewers from looking too closely at the forced plotting. Stewart dons a tuxedo and looks dashing at a casino before getting into fisticuffs with criminal ringleader Mike Taylor, Jason is told to get a haircut by a stroppy witness and Annabelle gets naked for no particular reason, her modesty protected only by a sunlamp. It's all watchable enough. But there's nothing particularly clever or unusual about it either. It's an ITC show in a nutshell: undemanding brightly-coloured viewing with fights, murders and women in bikinis appearing at regular intervals, the kind of bread-and-butter product that Philip Broadley could churn out in his sleep.


"And while you're down there, Miss Hurst..."

Which is a shame, because Department S had the potential to go so much further than that. And this is pretty much Broadley at his best, so - as will be seen before too long - things can only go downhill.

Fancy Quotes

Jason: I'd offer you a glass of champagne, but it's very bad for you in small doses.

Cheers!

• Stewart has a mug of coffee as the team try to puzzle out the mystery of the lighter. Jason, however, has a glass of whisky. Of course.
• Jason drinks a glass of Stornoway with Paulo Cortelli.
• Stewart and Jason are in bed together (no, not like that) as they try to identify Veronica Bray. Jason, inevitably, has a whisky in hand.
• Two glasses of champagne as he leers at the sunbathing Veronica through binoculars (and this being Jason, it's unlikely that he wastes the rest of the bottle).

Fight!

Jason has a tussle with Taylor at Veronica's flat. He at first seems to have won - only to collapse unconscious after taking one step out of her door. KO!

Jason 2, Stewart 0.

Taylor challenges Stewart to a tux-clad fight on the beach. He does not come out the champion.

Jason and Stewart take down the tanker's drivers before they can escape with their haul.

Author! Author!

People In Glass Houses Should Not, in which Jason uses the case as the basis for his plot. The difference is that he has Mark Caine solve the whole thing single-handed, much to Annabelle's annoyance.


As a sidenote, this episode gives us the clearest look at Jason's biography on the back cover of one of his novels. For reference, here's what it says:

Jason King was born in Dangeeking, India. He was educated privately (after being expelled from his English public school after six months) in Switzerland, where he is now resident.

After embarking on the Mark Caine books - which he started writing at the age of twelve whilst interned in a Japanese camp during World War Two - he joined the Hong Kong police as a forensic advisor.

Various careers followed, rumour hints at gold smuggling and gun-running, but except for notoriety as a “Bon Vivant” he is now reasonably law-abiding.

A widower, his wife - the late Marion West - was tragically killed in the Chicago plane disaster.

Writing the Mark Caine books aside, the only part of this intriguing bio (based in part on the life of Peter Wyngarde himself) ever mentioned in an episode - 'A Fish Out Of Water', also written by Broadley - is that he was once married. It also allows Jason's age to be deduced; Wyngarde was interned by the Japanese in 1943, so if Jason was then 12, by 1969 (when Department S was first broadcast) he must be 38, making him three years younger than the actor playing him.

That Looks Familiar


We don't get to see its whole length, but those walls and windows look familiar: it's the Ancillary Building!



It may supposedly be a hotel room, but the corridor can't hide from someone with a DVD and too much time on their hands.



The corridor takes a jaunt to the south of France to take up residence in a casino.



A debut appearance for the Borehamwood scenery docks, which stand in for part of Orly airport. Maybe Monsieur Bertillon can help out.
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03: 'The Man From X'

Production order: 15 | ITC code: 5111 | Airdate order: 16 | DVD order: 03

Those Responsible

Writer: Tony Williamson
Director: Gil Taylor

Where & When

London, England, February 2nd

The Inexplicable Mystery

A young couple are canoodling in a Soho alleyway when a man wearing a spacesuit staggers towards them - then keels over dead!

The Mystery Explained

The spacesuit is needed for an ingenious robbery. The only way to reach a vault full of precious stones without tripping the building's security is by breaking through the wall of the adjoining business - a frozen food factory that uses a vacuum chamber to sterilise, preserve and deep-freeze its produce. The dead man, Jimmy Rankin, was a safecracker with rare expertise in the type of lock used in the vault; the team of criminals (backed by the boss of an aerospace company with access to spacesuits) was practising the raid when his suit ran out of air and he panicked, getting separated from the others.

Review

'The Man From X' - the title playing off a rare joke by Sir Curtis, who suggests that the dead spaceman, having recently been exposed to vacuum, sub-zero temperatures and radiation, came from "Planet X" - is, like the previous episode, a case of a relatively straightforward crime being carried out in an unusual way. Unlike 'The Trojan Tanker', though, this story plays out its outrageous premise without too many forced leaps of logic. It also strings out the audience's curiosity for as long as possible, not answering the question of how and why a dead man would be found in a spacesuit in the middle of London until about ten minutes from the end... by which time an undercover Jason is trapped with the villains and in mortal danger if he is found out.


Not least from the Fashion Police.

As long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief that A: a super-secure vault would directly back onto a meat-packing factory, and B: said factory would use a massive room as a vacuum chamber rather than the much smaller machines employed in reality - admittedly, Department S will ask it to be suspended way, way higher - then this is a fun, clever and constantly twisting tale that gives all three main characters a share of the detective work. Stewart tracks down the spacesuit, ending up in hospital for his trouble after a particularly original assassination attempt, while Annabelle uses her computer skills to identify any possible location in London where a spacesuit might be needed, leading her and Stewart to the frozen food factory.


Stewart had also seen Jason's outfit.

Meanwhile, Peter Wyngarde gets a lot more scenery to chew than in the first two stories, as Jason dons his best lounge lizard clobber - it appears literally to have scales - and gets down with the kids at a groovy nightspot while searching for Rankin's sister Leila (with a great comedy moment where he puffs on Leila's probably 'special' cigarette only to grimace and hurriedly return it). Later he adopts a silly hat and a not entirely convincing American accent as he takes the place of the New York safecracker flown in as her brother's replacement.


A most groovy fella, maaaaan.

The leading trio also get plenty of snappy dialogue, as well as hints of flirtation between Annabelle and Stewart - and Jason's utter horror at the suggestion that there might be anything going on between him and Annabelle! Jason also manages to charm the "way out" Leila, despite Annabelle's gleeful interference. It's the first time in the series that we properly get to see our heroes interacting and playing off each other as friends, and while Jason's relationship with Annabelle is tinged with disdain for what he sees as her overly analytical and logical approach to solving crimes, he still improvises a way to save her life when she's caught by the villains.


YouTube cat videos had to be printed out as flickbooks in 1969.

Overall, it's the show's first solid success, combining an intriguing mystery that has a satisfying solution with plenty of good character interplay. As we'll discover, Department S unfortunately couldn't maintain this level of quality throughout its run - but that doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of good episodes to come.


"Just filling the alcohol tanks - oxygen tanks. I meant oxygen tanks."

An odd, funny moment for car buffs is where the goon sabotaging Stewart's Chevrolet Corsair goes to its rear and opens the 'boot' to plant the liquid oxygen canister - only to find the engine inside, forcing him to walk to the front and try again. (However, the show will forget that the Corsair is rear-engined in 'Who Plays The Dummy?'...)

Fancy Quotes

[Annabelle tells Jason about Stewart's car being booby-trapped with liquid oxygen to make him intoxicated]
Jason: Sounds like a good way to stop Mark Caine, I must remember that.

[At Stewart's apartment, Leila reads the title of one of Jason's novels]
Leila: 'The Lady Is Willing.'
Jason: [smirking] Really?
Leila: There'd better be a lock on my door.

[Jason is about to take Leila to bed when Annabelle arrives]
Annabelle: I thought you were going to telephone the hospital?
Jason: [annoyed] How very nice of you to come round here and remind me!
Annabelle: Am I intruding?
Jason: Yes!
Annabelle: What a pity.
Leila: Your wife?
Jason: Perish the thought!

Jason: If you can't sleep, there's a collection of my novels beside the bedside table.

Jason: Now, let me do the talking for a change.
Stewart: [to Annabelle] Could we stop him?

Cheers!

• Jason makes Leila a coffee to help her calm down after being attacked. He fortifies his own with a large slug of whisky.
• While holed up with the robbers, our man obviously needs a way to pass the time. He does it by drinking more whisky.
• Having cracked the case, Jason celebrates - while still wearing his spacesuit - with a very large glass of whisky. (He has at least removed the helmet!)

Fight!

Jason punches out two thugs who try to silence Leila. Remarkably, he doesn't get knocked out in return.

The bad guys force Annabelle's car off the road and drag her out, then a goon backhands her across the face. Boo!

Having staked out the vacuum chamber, a spacesuited Stewart spars with one of the raiders (in a lovely touch, the scrap plays out in a scientifically accurate way with no sound), before he and Jason take down the others with the aid of a - frozen and irradiated - side of beef.

Author! Author!

The Lady Is Willing. Jason has probably been waiting for a sexy woman to read out the title to him ever since he wrote it.

That Looks Familiar


The corridor takes a transatlantic trip to act as a hallway in the United Nations building in New York.



Later, it hops back to England to become part of the hospital in which Stewart recovers after his car crash.



The scenery docks are used here as the exterior of the frozen food factory.



The oxygen-drunken Stewart swerves to avoid an oncoming car - the debut appearance for the Vauxhall Victor that had its paperwork done at the DVLC right before Stewart's usual Vauxhall Ventora.
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04: 'The Pied Piper Of Hambledown'

Production order: 02 | ITC code: 5110 | Airdate order: 04 | DVD order: 04

Those Responsible

Writer: Donald James
Director: Roy Ward Baker

Where & When

Hambledown, Hampshire, England: April 16th

The Inexplicable Mystery

It's an ordinary evening in the village of Hambledown. A young woman, Susan, is competing in a beauty contest the following day, so to make sure she's well rested she takes a sleeping pill. But she's woken in the middle of the night by light and noise from outside. Still half-asleep, she looks out of the window to see the village's population being rounded up by hazmat-suited figures. She then passes out again, waking in the morning to find Hambledown completely deserted...

"Right! It's the anal probe for you lot."

The Mystery Explained

Local resident Colonel Loring has a grandiose plan to end war, by creating a completely lethal, yet short-lived, virus that can be unleashed upon any nation that threatens world peace. When a sample of the virus was spilled in a minor car accident, he had the villagers rounded up and brought to the research facility hidden beneath his house so they could be given the cure. However, he is being taken for a very expensive ride by his co-conspirators Brogan and Yates: the virus is nothing more than the common cold and the 'cure' merely water.

Review

This was only the second episode of Department S filmed (the first being 'The Man In The Elegant Room', which would end up the sixth broadcast), but in many ways it's a defining story, both for the characters and the show itself. The mystery of a deserted, Marie Celeste-style village is an excellent hook, and its ultimate answer is both entertaining and a clever twist on what by 1969 had become a much overplayed cliche of spy-fi shows like The Avengers. Colonel Loring is a loon with a plan for world domination, like so many opponents of John Steed and Emma Peel or Tara King - he even has a secret underground base! But it's as if he's spent too much time watching those stories himself, making him a prime mark for Brogan and Yates, who stoke up his deluded fantasies and play him for every penny he's got.


After a few whiskies, Jason would never know the difference.

Donald James's script also sets up the leading trio to their best advantage. The relationships between Jason, Stewart and Annabelle are subtly but clearly defined: Annabelle is worried and afraid for Stewart when he's taken by the bad guys, but exasperated with Jason for not only failing to stop them but getting hurt in the process, while Jason patronises her both here in return for what he obviously considers her feminine hysteria, and earlier when he dismisses her deductive reasoning (which turns out to be right on the mark, so Jason's just being a dick to her, as usual). Stewart, meanwhile, tellingly corrects himself in vino veritas after describing Jason as a "friend" to merely calling him a "colleague"; his early conversation with Seretse suggests that the author's presence on the team is a fairly recent development, and that he's still ambivalent about it.


Too late, she realised Loring had used the stick to get his dog's poo off the lawn.

Seretse himself has little to do here, begging the question of why he appears at all. An answer comes in the documentary included on the Department S DVD boxset, which reveals that a few episodes had already been shot before Dennis Alaba Peters was added to the regular cast and Department S suddenly gained a boss. Since Sir Curtis appears in every story as broadcast, presumably additional scenes were filmed so that he could be edited into the existing episodes, of which this would have been one. Seretse appears only in a single scene here, giving Stewart a very short mission briefing and a little back story on Jason, and has no direct impact on anything else that happens. (We'll discuss Seretse's early appearances when we get to 'Elegant Room'.)


Special precautions were needed before entering Jason's aftershave storeroom.

If 'Hambledown' has a fault, it's that the episode is a bit ambling and parochial, the sleepy English village setting at odds with the glossy and action-packed globetrottathon the show's creators wanted to push. It's probably the closest Department S came to aping the show its creators doubtless took as inspiration, The Avengers. But overall it's one of the series's best stories, perfectly balancing the detective work with character moments and humour. Everyone gets snappy dialogue throughout, but there's also non-verbal comedy to be had, such as a cute (and nicely underplayed) moment when Jason goes to a great deal of effort to break into Loring's house, only to find, to Annabelle's amusement, that the door was unlocked the whole time.


"It's happy hour somewhere in the world."

The episode is also the apogee of Peter Wyngarde's initial idea (quickly shot down by the directors and crew) that Jason should have a drink in hand at all times, no matter the situation. Jason starts helping himself to the Duke of Cumberland's stock as soon as he arrives at the pub in the morning, and that night when the bad guys sneak inside, the author has not only polished off even more booze during the stakeout, but finds the time to fill a fresh glass after they've gone past him to kill Stewart!


Or "Gates Elizabeth", as he signs his name.

An interesting bit of trivia is that we get a look at Stewart's Interpol ID card in this story. The show's makers obviously had no inkling that anyone would be freeze-framing it on DVD over four decades later, or they might have put a bit more thought into it. The lanky Stewart is listed as only five feet six inches tall, yet weighs a rather chunky 150 pounds!

Fancy Quotes

Jason: Whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes.
Stewart: Sounds like one of Mr Caine's lines.
Jason: It will be, Oscar, it will be.

Annabelle: Jason, I've never known anyone like you in my life. How could you go and get yourself knocked out again?
Jason: At the time, it seemed to happen quite naturally.

[Stewart is forced at gunpoint to drink a bottle of brandy so that the villains can dispose of him, a la North By Northwest]
Stewart: Aw, no. Not the car ride bit?
Yates: Don't bother with questions!
Stewart: You know, I have a friend - er, a colleague. He'd be very upset, it shows no imagination at all.

Cheers!

• "Oh, good morning!" says Jason to Annabelle - as he pours himself a glass of red wine from the Duke of Cumberland's stock.
• Barely a minute later, he pours another (full) glass! Stewart seems to be more than happy to join him in drinking while on duty. Right afterwards, Jason takes off in his Bentley to check the village's outlying houses. Drink-driving clearly wasn't a big deal in the 1960s...
• Jason has another glass of wine beside him as he and Stewart mull over the case in the evening.
• Our hero helps himself to a large glass of whisky while staking out the pub. Judging from his glassy-eyed and slightly wobbly state, it seems unlikely to be the first! However, he doesn't get to finish it as he uses it to extinguish his cigarette when the bad guys turn up.
• But he then immediately pours himself another glass to replace it!
• Jason wraps up the case with yet another glass of vintage wine.

Fight!

Jason and Stewart take on Brogan and Yates at the pub. The American makes a good showing until being caught at gunpoint, but Jason gets only a black eye for his troubles, as well as falling down a flight of stairs (probably thanks to having drained half the pub's supply of alcohol over the course of the evening). He then gets clubbed over the head by Loring and knocked out. KO!

Jason 3, Stewart 0.

Stewart tricks Yates into getting too close, and promptly beats the crap out of him. With some glee.

Author! Author!

Dead Dames Don't. "Don't what?" Stewart asks, quite reasonably.

The sequel Middle Finger Right Hand didn't sell as well.
Susan's father is reading Index Finger Left Hand. Jason tells him it has a marvellous twist at the end. (Seretse also reads the same story earlier.)

This Looks Familiar


It may be lurking in the corner of the screen, but the corridor - here passing itself as a hospital office - can't hide!



It returns later as another hospital, Colonel Loring's underground lair (you can tell it's an evil hospital by the angular archways).
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