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Produced by ITV's regional broadcaster London Weekend Television, 1977's action adventure series "The Professionals" attracted huge worldwide popularity (that continues in repeats and DVD releases to this day). After the cancellation of the programme in 1981, the remainder of the decade witnessed a number of attempts to recreate its magic, notably LWT's own "Dempsey and Makepeace" and Television South's (TVS) "CATS Eyes"
In 1988 ITV's new Midlands-based broadcaster Central Television launched "Saracen" and arguably came artistically closest to reviving "The Professionals". However the series remains largely forgotten, a problem exacerbated by a curious lack of repeat screenings (at least in the UK). Does it deserve its obscurity?
The series was created by Chris Kelly, best known to viewers as the presenter of Granada Television's 1970s film review series "Clapperboard". He teamed up with Ted Childs, producer on the classic 1970s cop show "The Sweeney". Opening with a 90-minute pilot feature entitled 'The Zero Option', the action concentrated on SAS Major David Barber (played by Stephen Hattersley) who resigns his commission after being forced to undertake a badly-planned hostage rescue. Headhunted by private security company Saracen Systems he is partnered with Australian ex-Army sergeant Jack Carne (John Walton). Barber's first mission for his new employer is to recover diamonds which were stolen during a fake aircraft siege. Assisted by fellow Saracen employees, intelligence officer Alice Kavanagh (Joanna Phillips-Lane), technical expert Eric Nugent (David Moss) and company founder Colonel Patrick Ansell (Eric Flynn), the combination of tension, action and humour promised much
It isn't clear what Central Television's intention was when the pilot was followed up by a regular series of 50-minute episodes. The entire main cast had been ditched - with one exception all the lead characters remained but now played by different actors. In stepped Chistian Burgess as Barber, Ingrid Lacey as Alice, John Bennett as Nugent and Michael Byrne as Ansell. The character of Carne was replaced completely by that of Tom Duffy, an American ex-Delta Force commando, played by the little-known Patrick James Clarke. Also gone was Barber's wife, who had died off-screen, although no explanation was ever given. One assumes this was a move to allow Barber to become romantically involved with various guest characters aka "dead girlfriend of the week". Another notable change was the budget: there would be no money for the large-scale action set pieces seen in 'The Zero Option'. (In one episode Alice's car was crashed into from front and rear by the villains, yet none of the cars appeared to suffer any damage!)
Involving some of British television's top genre writers and directors, the series was well-scripted with likable characters and solid acting but lacked any real "Unique Selling Point" and generally came across as an utterly average offering. The absence of high-octane thrills and rousing musical themes (Barrington Pheloung providing the utterly forgettable score) didn't help. Some episodes involved genuine overseas locations but this did nothing to heighten the series' appeal.
On the plus side Patrick James Clarke made the most of his role and is essentially the programme's sole source of humour. (It's somewhat of a mystery as to why Clarke's acting career came to an end shortly afterwards).
Most episodes revolved around the bodyguard protection of a Saracen client or the rescue of a kidnapping victim. Indeed part of the problem for the show – a flaw in the programme's very concept – was that the range of situations that Saracen would tackle was very narrow, leaving writers to struggle to come up with new twists and spins in their plots. Too often Saracen's remit was exhausted and Ansell would have to order his team to hand over to the police. The better episodes were usually those which had a personal impact on our heroes
In 'Starcross' Barber gets unwittingly involved in a family with IRA connections who recognise him as the man who shot dead one of their own during an SAS raid in the 1970s.
In 'Next Year in Jerusalem' an ageing Nazi hunter, Frankel, finds a lead to the man who executed his wife and daughter during WW2. In a counter move, Frankel himself becomes the target and seeks protection from Saracen. However Barber and Duffy find the apparently frail old man is surprisingly sprightly, resourceful and cunning.
In 'Reaper' a psychotic mercenary kidnaps Barber's young son, offering to release him in exchange for access to a group of Arabs whom the hit-man has been hired to kill.
On the whole "Saracen" failed to live up to its pilot. Given the burgeoning obsession with ratings at the time – and the looming up of broadcasting license renewals - it's no too difficult to understand why Central did not commission further series. Yet had they poured more money into it in the first place, it may have had more success amongst viewers. Either way it's a shame because a second season would almost certainly have offered improvements.
Other than rare repeats on cable and satellite channels, "Saracen" slipped from people's memories. Fortunately the pilot and all thirteen regular episodes are now available on DVD. For fans of the genre it's worth picking up - as an interesting obscurity if nothing else although it's in danger of simply serving as a reminder of how superior "The Professionals" was!
In 1988 ITV's new Midlands-based broadcaster Central Television launched "Saracen" and arguably came artistically closest to reviving "The Professionals". However the series remains largely forgotten, a problem exacerbated by a curious lack of repeat screenings (at least in the UK). Does it deserve its obscurity?
The series was created by Chris Kelly, best known to viewers as the presenter of Granada Television's 1970s film review series "Clapperboard". He teamed up with Ted Childs, producer on the classic 1970s cop show "The Sweeney". Opening with a 90-minute pilot feature entitled 'The Zero Option', the action concentrated on SAS Major David Barber (played by Stephen Hattersley) who resigns his commission after being forced to undertake a badly-planned hostage rescue. Headhunted by private security company Saracen Systems he is partnered with Australian ex-Army sergeant Jack Carne (John Walton). Barber's first mission for his new employer is to recover diamonds which were stolen during a fake aircraft siege. Assisted by fellow Saracen employees, intelligence officer Alice Kavanagh (Joanna Phillips-Lane), technical expert Eric Nugent (David Moss) and company founder Colonel Patrick Ansell (Eric Flynn), the combination of tension, action and humour promised much
It isn't clear what Central Television's intention was when the pilot was followed up by a regular series of 50-minute episodes. The entire main cast had been ditched - with one exception all the lead characters remained but now played by different actors. In stepped Chistian Burgess as Barber, Ingrid Lacey as Alice, John Bennett as Nugent and Michael Byrne as Ansell. The character of Carne was replaced completely by that of Tom Duffy, an American ex-Delta Force commando, played by the little-known Patrick James Clarke. Also gone was Barber's wife, who had died off-screen, although no explanation was ever given. One assumes this was a move to allow Barber to become romantically involved with various guest characters aka "dead girlfriend of the week". Another notable change was the budget: there would be no money for the large-scale action set pieces seen in 'The Zero Option'. (In one episode Alice's car was crashed into from front and rear by the villains, yet none of the cars appeared to suffer any damage!)
Involving some of British television's top genre writers and directors, the series was well-scripted with likable characters and solid acting but lacked any real "Unique Selling Point" and generally came across as an utterly average offering. The absence of high-octane thrills and rousing musical themes (Barrington Pheloung providing the utterly forgettable score) didn't help. Some episodes involved genuine overseas locations but this did nothing to heighten the series' appeal.
On the plus side Patrick James Clarke made the most of his role and is essentially the programme's sole source of humour. (It's somewhat of a mystery as to why Clarke's acting career came to an end shortly afterwards).
Most episodes revolved around the bodyguard protection of a Saracen client or the rescue of a kidnapping victim. Indeed part of the problem for the show – a flaw in the programme's very concept – was that the range of situations that Saracen would tackle was very narrow, leaving writers to struggle to come up with new twists and spins in their plots. Too often Saracen's remit was exhausted and Ansell would have to order his team to hand over to the police. The better episodes were usually those which had a personal impact on our heroes
In 'Starcross' Barber gets unwittingly involved in a family with IRA connections who recognise him as the man who shot dead one of their own during an SAS raid in the 1970s.
In 'Next Year in Jerusalem' an ageing Nazi hunter, Frankel, finds a lead to the man who executed his wife and daughter during WW2. In a counter move, Frankel himself becomes the target and seeks protection from Saracen. However Barber and Duffy find the apparently frail old man is surprisingly sprightly, resourceful and cunning.
In 'Reaper' a psychotic mercenary kidnaps Barber's young son, offering to release him in exchange for access to a group of Arabs whom the hit-man has been hired to kill.
On the whole "Saracen" failed to live up to its pilot. Given the burgeoning obsession with ratings at the time – and the looming up of broadcasting license renewals - it's no too difficult to understand why Central did not commission further series. Yet had they poured more money into it in the first place, it may have had more success amongst viewers. Either way it's a shame because a second season would almost certainly have offered improvements.
Other than rare repeats on cable and satellite channels, "Saracen" slipped from people's memories. Fortunately the pilot and all thirteen regular episodes are now available on DVD. For fans of the genre it's worth picking up - as an interesting obscurity if nothing else although it's in danger of simply serving as a reminder of how superior "The Professionals" was!
Although the "buddy/buddy" cop show genre of the 1970s (in which "Starsky and Hutch", "The Sweeney" and "The Professionals" were prime exponents) had been hugely successful, most such shows utilised a male/male pairing. In 1983 Britain's southern ITV member company London Weekend Television sought to redress the balance. Additionally, despite sales to almost sixty other countries, no major US broadcaster had ever bought their previous series "The Professionals" (which had ended its six-year run earlier that year), so LWT took the view that they needed an American actor for one of the lead roles. (Despite the fact that the idea had never done Lew Grade's ITC organisation much good!)...
The result was "Dempsey and Makepeace". The pilot episode laid down the show's raison d'etre: a New York cop, Lieutenant ("Lootenant!") James Dempsey has to take flight when forced to kill his partner after discovering he and one of the city's most senior police officers are embroiled with the Mob. Arriving in England, ostensibly as part of an exchange deal between the two countries, Dempsey is assigned to a police unit named SI10 (the acronym is never explained), set up to tackle major organised crime. The squad is headed by gruff boss Gordon Spikings and Dempsey is partnered with Lady Harriet Makepeace, an aristocrat who oddly chose a career in the force, Mutual antagonism ensued and the series proceeded to show the difficulties of how such different people could work together.
After an interesting start, the series immediately ran into difficulties. It wasn't clear why SI10 actually existed, when its brief seemed so similar to that of the (real-life) Flying Squad. The plots themselves were usually paper-thin. Undoubtedly inspired by the 1975 film "Brannigan", Michael Brandon's Dempsey was a poor man's John Wayne and simply unlikeable, while Glynis Barber's character hardly developed at all throughout the show's three seasons. The friction between the two characters became predictable and boring, not helped by the inane dialogue. Dempsey's frustration at British Police's procedural approach to villain-taking would have been an interesting angle to explore but the character's response was consistently unrealistically macho and knuckle-headed. Ray Smith's Spikings was a poorly-observed, over-the-top and one-dimensional interpretation of Gordon Jackson's Cowley role in "The Professionals". Tony Osoba played the support role of Sergeant Chas Jarvis but was woefully underused. Other "buddy" series had relied on the two leads sharing and haranguing each other with pithy, witty dialogue - in this show, however, the humour fell flat.
Overall the series was frustratingly shallow and mindless.
In the second season Dempsey and Makepeace's relationship started to gel but it led to many episodes culminating in them looking dewy-eyed at each other while exchanging toe-curlingly saccharine dialogue. The plots were little better, even when "highbrow" writers such as Murray Smith were drafted in. Perhaps the "hightlight" of the season was its final episode in which Dempsey embarked on a personal crusade to catch a psychotic villain, with Chas warning Spikings about the American's obsessive behaviour and Makepeace noting that he and the villain are remarkably alike in some ways. That's how deep the "pathos" ever got in this show! At least Ray Smith was allowed to tone down Spikings: he became the most likable character in the show! The third season was an improvement overall. The opener saw the New York mob finally catch up with Dempsey. (Oddly it had taken them three years yet one of Dempsey's ex-girlfriends had tracked him down easily enough in a previous season: "I just called your mom!"). Another story dealt, albeit with little depth, with a mentally-subnormal man being dragged into the world of armed crime and weapons dealing.
But there were still problems with plotting. One episode relied on endless injections of footage of the villains driving in to London to fulfill the 50-minute timeslot.
In fairness to the series, it was reasonably popular in its day but seasons comprising of just ten episodes each - the minimum other ITV regions would accept - seemed to demonstrate LWT's unwillingness to commit to the show. Indeed they elected to drop it at this point and, tellingly, a repeat run on the ITV network just two years later was pulled after just three episodes with low ratings. (Contrast that with reruns of "The Professionals" which, five years after original transmission, were still achieving a position in the weekly top twenty.) Since then the series has made occasional appearances on minor UK satellite stations.
Given many of its antecedents, "Dempsey and Makepeace" should have been better. Considering the sexual chemistry, wit and sophistication of "The Avengers"/"The New Avengers", the grit and depth of characterisation of "The Sweeney" and the humorously acidic banter, clipped dialogue, complex plotting and stylised action of "The Professionals", it's a mystery why "Dempsey and Makepeace" was so deficient in these attributes. Almost certainly had it been produced by the likes of Euston Films ("The Sweeney") or Mark 1 Productions ("The New Avengers" and "The Professionals"), the results would have been far superior.
To its credit the show mostly avoided the inclusion of shots of London tourist traps - a sure sign that producers are desperate to sell a series overseas! - and Brandon performed much of his own stuntwork. On the other hand his presence did nothing to attract a major American broadcaster.
Britain had a reputation for producing the best television in the world. If this show's shortcomings came about due to a misguided desire to appeal to American audiences, it's a terrible indictment of television executives' opinions of viewers on both sides of the Atlantic, As it is "Dempsey and Makepeace" remains an aberration that not only failed to live up to its own potential but also gave the genre a bad name. But perhaps the biggest tragedy is that it is the only show for which the late Ray Smith will be remembered.
The result was "Dempsey and Makepeace". The pilot episode laid down the show's raison d'etre: a New York cop, Lieutenant ("Lootenant!") James Dempsey has to take flight when forced to kill his partner after discovering he and one of the city's most senior police officers are embroiled with the Mob. Arriving in England, ostensibly as part of an exchange deal between the two countries, Dempsey is assigned to a police unit named SI10 (the acronym is never explained), set up to tackle major organised crime. The squad is headed by gruff boss Gordon Spikings and Dempsey is partnered with Lady Harriet Makepeace, an aristocrat who oddly chose a career in the force, Mutual antagonism ensued and the series proceeded to show the difficulties of how such different people could work together.
After an interesting start, the series immediately ran into difficulties. It wasn't clear why SI10 actually existed, when its brief seemed so similar to that of the (real-life) Flying Squad. The plots themselves were usually paper-thin. Undoubtedly inspired by the 1975 film "Brannigan", Michael Brandon's Dempsey was a poor man's John Wayne and simply unlikeable, while Glynis Barber's character hardly developed at all throughout the show's three seasons. The friction between the two characters became predictable and boring, not helped by the inane dialogue. Dempsey's frustration at British Police's procedural approach to villain-taking would have been an interesting angle to explore but the character's response was consistently unrealistically macho and knuckle-headed. Ray Smith's Spikings was a poorly-observed, over-the-top and one-dimensional interpretation of Gordon Jackson's Cowley role in "The Professionals". Tony Osoba played the support role of Sergeant Chas Jarvis but was woefully underused. Other "buddy" series had relied on the two leads sharing and haranguing each other with pithy, witty dialogue - in this show, however, the humour fell flat.
Overall the series was frustratingly shallow and mindless.
In the second season Dempsey and Makepeace's relationship started to gel but it led to many episodes culminating in them looking dewy-eyed at each other while exchanging toe-curlingly saccharine dialogue. The plots were little better, even when "highbrow" writers such as Murray Smith were drafted in. Perhaps the "hightlight" of the season was its final episode in which Dempsey embarked on a personal crusade to catch a psychotic villain, with Chas warning Spikings about the American's obsessive behaviour and Makepeace noting that he and the villain are remarkably alike in some ways. That's how deep the "pathos" ever got in this show! At least Ray Smith was allowed to tone down Spikings: he became the most likable character in the show! The third season was an improvement overall. The opener saw the New York mob finally catch up with Dempsey. (Oddly it had taken them three years yet one of Dempsey's ex-girlfriends had tracked him down easily enough in a previous season: "I just called your mom!"). Another story dealt, albeit with little depth, with a mentally-subnormal man being dragged into the world of armed crime and weapons dealing.
But there were still problems with plotting. One episode relied on endless injections of footage of the villains driving in to London to fulfill the 50-minute timeslot.
In fairness to the series, it was reasonably popular in its day but seasons comprising of just ten episodes each - the minimum other ITV regions would accept - seemed to demonstrate LWT's unwillingness to commit to the show. Indeed they elected to drop it at this point and, tellingly, a repeat run on the ITV network just two years later was pulled after just three episodes with low ratings. (Contrast that with reruns of "The Professionals" which, five years after original transmission, were still achieving a position in the weekly top twenty.) Since then the series has made occasional appearances on minor UK satellite stations.
Given many of its antecedents, "Dempsey and Makepeace" should have been better. Considering the sexual chemistry, wit and sophistication of "The Avengers"/"The New Avengers", the grit and depth of characterisation of "The Sweeney" and the humorously acidic banter, clipped dialogue, complex plotting and stylised action of "The Professionals", it's a mystery why "Dempsey and Makepeace" was so deficient in these attributes. Almost certainly had it been produced by the likes of Euston Films ("The Sweeney") or Mark 1 Productions ("The New Avengers" and "The Professionals"), the results would have been far superior.
To its credit the show mostly avoided the inclusion of shots of London tourist traps - a sure sign that producers are desperate to sell a series overseas! - and Brandon performed much of his own stuntwork. On the other hand his presence did nothing to attract a major American broadcaster.
Britain had a reputation for producing the best television in the world. If this show's shortcomings came about due to a misguided desire to appeal to American audiences, it's a terrible indictment of television executives' opinions of viewers on both sides of the Atlantic, As it is "Dempsey and Makepeace" remains an aberration that not only failed to live up to its own potential but also gave the genre a bad name. But perhaps the biggest tragedy is that it is the only show for which the late Ray Smith will be remembered.