So, that was Department S. What did I think of it overall?
Well... it could have been so much better.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it - I wouldn't have spent so much time doing these reviews otherwise (and for all I know, nobody will ever read them but me!) But rewatching the show, especially the lesser episodes, drove home what a missed opportunity it was.
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| 'Ship all you like, it ain't ever gonna happen. |
The blame for that can be laid squarely on ITC, and its production-line method of operation. Doing things as cost-effectively (ie, cheaply) as possible was the company's watchword, which it had down to a fine art by the late 1960s. Department S was made back-to-back with Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), sharing many of the same production staff and even on-screen assets like sets and props (and cars!) so that both shows could get the most for their money. However, this cheapness also applied to the scripts. As I mentioned in the review for 'Dead Men Die Twice', ITC depended on proven hands whom it knew could deliver stories on time and in a filmable state rather than gamble on someone who might have great ideas, but hadn't yet shown themselves to be reliable.
And it was this, more than anything else, that ensured Department S would be a one-season wonder.
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| After cutting himself shaving, Jason vowed never to trim his sideburns again. |
The premise was great, even ahead of its time: "detectives with very different methods solve crimes so strange the regular police can't handle them" is basically The X Files, a quarter of a century early. Obviously The X Files leaned heavily on the paranormal, but Department S wasn't averse to the odd bit of science-fictional weirdness, and in fact some of its best episodes were the more out-there ones.
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| "Annabelle, I bought the handcuffs and inflatable sheep - oh, hi, Jason! Didn't expect you to be in today..." |
Unfortunately, it turned out that coming up with bizarre crimes is actually really hard. Or rather, coming up with a bizarre crime that then has a satisfying explanation is the tricky part. To do that, you need highly imaginative and talented writers. For the most part, ITC's stable of hacks just wasn't up to the challenge.
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| ITC's version of Dr Zhivago had a very low budget. |
Sure, we had Tony Williamson, who wrote 'Who Plays The Dummy?', 'A Ticket To Nowhere', 'The Man From X' and 'The Bones Of Byrom Blain', some of the show's best episodes (we'll consider 'One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty' as his off-day), and Donald James, who came up with 'The Pied Piper Of Hambledown' and 'The Shift That Never Was'. But their efforts are more than counterbalanced by the likes of Leslie Darbon - two misses and one so-so with 'The Double Death Of Charlie Crippen', 'The Perfect Operation' and 'Soup Of The Day', or the execrable Philip Broadley, who wrote ten - ten! - episodes, of which I only considered 'Les Fleurs Du Mal' to be anything approaching good, the others ranging from fair ('Black Out') to absolute garbage ('Dead Men Die Twice', 'A Fish Out Of Water'). Even Terry Nation, at the time Britain's most famous and certainly best-paid television writer thanks to his creation of the Daleks for Doctor Who and a relentless talent for self-publicity, phoned it in with 'The Man In The Elegant Room' and 'A Cellar Full Of Silence', both of which started out with a suitably intriguing mystery for their teasers and then fell apart in the telling.
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| Stewart suffered horribly in the terrible ketchup disaster of 1970. |
The problem was that too many of the writers approached the job as if they were writing a typical 'ITC action hero' show of the era, such as The Saint or The Baron. Take a standard crime plot involving the Mafia or bank robbers, divide the role of the solo lead between the two male characters and assign the female sidekick or love interest's part to Annabelle (after taking out any love stuff), give Jason all the best lines, have something slightly odd happen in the teaser, done. That, frankly, wasn't enough, and if more writers had gone the extra mile to make their plots click together like Williamson and James, the show might have lasted more than one season and been remembered as fondly as The Avengers or The Prisoner. But it wasn't to be.
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| "Deliveroo? You do deliver whisky, don't you? Because I'm almost out." |
Still, it did give the world one of the most memorable screen creations of the Sixties: Jason King. I've already said plenty about him (and the actor who portrayed him) in the reviews, only adding here that it's hard now to imagine just how outrageous this long-haired, peacock-feathered, leeringly camp lothario must have seemed at the time when compared to the staid, besuited and above all straight-edged heroes of other shows. The fact that Jason was often a bit useless rather than super-competent was another factor that must have been remarkable in 1969.
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| He's not the slightest bit interested. Wonder why? |
Something else that Jason did, however, was overshadow his co-stars. Many reviews of the show as a whole dismiss Stewart and Annabelle's roles as bland or wooden, which is very unfair to the actors. Peter Wyngarde is rather like having a small supernova on set - it's impossible not to notice him, and he overpowers everything else in the area. It's no coincidence that the only person who really goes toe to toe with Wyngarde in terms of screen presence is future Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins!
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| Booze, cigarettes and porn. It's like Men Behaving Badly, two decades early. |
But Jason's co-stars are underrated, and rewatching the show confirmed that. Stewart's role may be to act as the dependable straight man, but he does so with dedication and an easy, likeable charisma, and on the odd occasion when he gets to cut loose (such as interrogating Kyle in 'A Cellar Full Of Silence') Joel Fabiani gives his character a far harder edge than normal. Similarly, Annabelle's role as the team's Dana Scully (which makes Jason its Fox Mulder; he has crazy ideas that turn out to be right, while the sensible woman who shoots them down always gets it wrong) is often thankless, particularly later in the run when she's relegated to acting as secretary or all but disappearing entirely, but her analytical bent frequently provides insights that her colleagues would have missed. Her flirtations with Stewart also give a bit of humour and humanity to the couple, these scenes often the only redeeming features of Philip Broadley's stories. Without his co-stars to ground him, Jason would have looked utterly ridiculous.
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| "Hold off PETA while I hide my jacket." |
Which indeed happened when he returned to television in 1971 with his own solo series. But that's another story - and one that I won't be telling! Watching Jason King once is more than enough. As a sidenote, for all that Jason King (the character) has a reputation as being appallingly sexist and even more appallingly dressed, for the most part it comes from the later series. In Department S, he usually wears flamboyant yet stylish suits and his conquests are won over with class and charm; Jason King, on the other hand, is when he becomes all about kaftans and disposable dolly-birds.
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| Another job well done for Department S! |
At the end of all that, how would I rate the episodes? I'm not going to rank all 28 of them in order, as it would probably change from day to day depending how I was feeling, but here are the five best - and the five worst...
The Best
5: The Bones Of Byrom Blain
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| Auditioning for Velma from Scooby Doo. |
The story cheats a bit by not having the skeletons immediately discovered as bogus, but with a teaser this memorable it doesn't matter too much.
4: The Man From 'X'
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| Jason's hatmaker would not escape his wrath. |
The opening mystery is intriguing, and our heroes have to work hard to find the answers - by which time Jason is trapped in mortal danger.
3: A Small War Of Nerves
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| "This guy'll never amount to anything." |
A no-holds-barred performance by a young Anthony Hopkins brings out the best in Peter Wyngarde, giving us an unusually serious Jason.
2: Who Plays The Dummy?
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| The Six Dollar Man. |
A clever plot, a ruthless villain, and an action-packed and exciting finale (notwithstanding a bit of shonky bluescreen) make this the most thrilling case for Department S.
1: The Pied Piper Of Hambledown
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| For most, a big night out. For Jason, breakfast. |
The closest the series ever got to its obvious inspiration The Avengers, while being smart enough to poke subtle fun at that show's implausible stories.
The Worst
5: The Treasure Of The Costa Del Sol
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| A furious Dame Edna wanted her glasses back. |
Having a drunken dwarf randomly dance through the scene and lead the investigators to a secret room containing all the answers might work in Twin Peaks, but not here.
4: The Mysterious Man In The Flying Machine
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| Not a fake beach at all. How could you even think that? |
Our heroes have so little impact on the eventual outcome of the story, they may as well not have bothered turning up.
3: Dead Men Die Twice
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| Yes, this character was once considered a sex symbol. The Seventies were weird. |
One of many stories that feebly glues a (not very) 'weird' opening onto a completely mundane crime plot, but also certainly one of the weakest.
2: The Duplicated Man
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| "This case is certainly a bag of something, Sir Curtis." |
Dull, contrived, and sharing way too many plot points with a previous episode that wasn't even good in the first place.
1: A Fish Out Of Water
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| She gave him a key for "emergencies". Yeah, sex emergencies. |
Everyone acts out of character, the story is slow and boring, and a chance to find out more about Jason as a person is completely wasted.
And that, since I am absolutely not going to review Jason King, brings us to the end. Or does it? As it turned out, Jason, Stewart and Annabelle had one more case, though in an unusual place...
