Powerswitch

'Powerswitch' was the first of two episodes of 'The Persuaders!' that ended Basil Dearden's directing career on a minor note; with the shot of Tony Curtis supposedly making his pile on Wall Street that appeared each week in the title sequence actually taken from this episode when Curtis is rifling through a guy's office.

The presence of Terence Alexander and Melissa Stribling evoke 'The League of Gentlemen', although they don't really get much to do. Madge Ryan however makes an effective villainess, Lionel Blair gets a brief look in, while the single most impressive feature is probably Annette Andre's enormous blonde hair and tiny dresses.

A rather ho-hum adventure this time for Brett and Danny, the friendly Persuaders. It starts well enough, with our two intrepid heroes on a water skiing excursion presumably on the French Riviera (what a life!) in a sequence which became incorporated into the regular opening titles. The jolting surprise though is that after Brett falls into the water, he comes up with a dead, bikini-clad young girl in his arms.

Naturally our esteemed duo decide to take on the case especially as the local chief of police seems to demonstrate a distinct indifference to the girl's curious demise. We learn she's a go-go dancer and when her pretty young friend and fellow-dancer Annette Andre, late of "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)" appears on the scene also demanding answers, especially given her maintenance that the dead girl was a champion swimmer, Danny and Brett go their separate ways to solve the mystery. For some inexplicable reason, Laurence Naismith's The Judge appears to be in on the Persuaders' involvement, although he's not seen again in the rest of the programme flagging up a continuity hitch somewhere along the line..

Anyway, both their paths lead to a wealthy businessman, his wife and right-hand man and an elaborately muddled case of substitution designed to cover-up the main-man's unexpected demise. It's all rather confusing with not a lot of action to help it along barring a less-than-riveting sabotaged car ride careering down a hill near the end.

Curtis and Moore demonstrate their easy bonhomie which was certainly needed to help carry this rather mundane adventure directed by Basil Deardon who by contrast did such a good job on the contemporary Moore feature film "The Man who Haunted Himself". Besides the lovely Miss Andre this one also features well known British TV faces of the time, Terence Alexander and Lionel Blair, whose brief appearance sadly doesn't give us a clue as to why he was cast.

Still, it's worth watching to the bitter end to see our Rog dance "The Chicken", although trust me there's nothing even remotely funky about the shapes he cuts!

Brett and Danny go water skiing in Cote d'Azur and come across the drowned body of a young woman called Julie Blake.

Her flatmate Pekoo Rayne thinks it was murder. Julie was a dancer and a champion swimmer, she would not accidentally drown. Inspector Blanchard from the local police seems disinterested and reckons it was either an accident or suicide.

An angry Brett and Danny decide to make their own investigations. Not realising that Judge Fulton had got the Inspector to appear as not too bothered.

Both men's investigation take them to reclusive businessman Lanny Koestler. He had an affair with Julie but she found out something about him.

There was an interesting plot here, some sinister people who had something to hide. Both Brett and Danny in danger, they work well together despite some abrasiveness.

As usual, the same recipe, the French Riviera, many bunnies and our two playboys. The same element which the audiences crave for. Here, for once our two leads investigate on their own to find out how a young woman drowned herself- or not - in the sea. They were water skiing when, by chance, they found the corpse...You will appreciate this pure "hazard"...For the rest, nothing special, not too many action scenes but a good script, and, among the villains, the wife of the director Basil Dearden - who will be killed in a car accident a few weeks before the episode was released. So that will be the last material that the LEAGUE OF THE GENTLEMEN director has ever made.