The Professionals: Backtrack (1979)

"I'm Doyle. And that's Bodie..."

Marge: Well. Wot’s yer name Sunshine?

Ray Doyle: I’m Doyle and that’s Bodie.

Marge: My third husband was a ponce. Very pretty but a ponce just the same. He wanted to send me out onto the streets to tart for him.

Ray Dole: You’d have made a fortune, Marge.

Marge: Awww. That’s one of the nicest compliments that anyone’s ever paid me.

I’m glad we’ve extended our brief to include old television stuff, as it gives me an excuse to write about The Professionals. CI5: Britain’s answer to Starsky & Hutch (1975-79). I have something to confess: I’m a fan of the series. I’ve probably watched every episode of The Professionals, and I’m curiously fascinated by it, as much for its period charm (1977- 1983): an unintentional record of London and the Home Counties on the brink of social and political change.

‘By the 1970s, poor old Steed was decidedly Old Bowler Hat…’

The Professionals is, of course, the work of Brian Clemens — of Avengers (1961-69) and New Avengers (1976-77) fame. The New Avengers acts as a halfway house between the original Avengers and The Professionals. Despite The New Avengers’ mannered whimsy, by the 1970s poor old Steed was decidedly Old Bowler Hat. Female audiences craved a bit of rough: so enter Mike Gambit (Gareth Hunt) for The New Avengers (sharp suit and a cockney accent; man-made fibres), and for The Professionals, William Bodie (SAS meat ‘ead played by Lewis Collins) and Ray Doyle (white Escort Harrier and snazzy perm). Despite Bodie’s mock Mayfair accent, Doyle (Martin Shaw) was the ‘sensitive’ one. A touch of Harry Palmer: nothing like a whisked-up omelette or Mozart’s 21st to seduce the obligatory dollybird, is there? I’m also struck by how British it all seems. Cabinet ministers live in Grade II Georgian houses and wear camel hair coats and Old Harrovian ties with tight knots, pinstripe suits (if suspiciously Marks & Spencer), and talk proper, even if they’re Communist double agents. And their plummy, RADA-educated daughters provide the love interest: mews-dwelling, corduroyed posh totty for the lads; a chocolate brown Triumph Stag and a date down the local.

‘posh totty for the lads: a chocolate brown Triumph Stage and a date down the local.’

Avengerland is appealing. Clemens filmed both The New Avengers and The Professionals in that rather flat area to the west of London, where the borders of Berkshire, South Buckinghamshire and old Middlesex meet: close to the dripping rhododendrons of Pinewood Studios; Tinker Country, pheasant-breeding scrap-metal merchants, thoroughbred horses and brick and timber farmhouses. And London is revealed in all its shabby glory on the cusp of Thatcherite regeneration. As with The Long Good Friday (1980), it’s a world of derelict warehouses and abandoned docklands, skateboards beneath the concrete bunker of the Festival Hall. And looming over the brown, brooding, polluted skyline is London’s sole skyscraper, The NatWest Tower.

In 1974, my father took us to The Monument, followed by lunch at a rancid spaghetti house in Tooley Street (later that evening I was violently sick) — close to the former London Dungeon; Southwark in those days a frightening place, a sanctuary for outcasts and the dispossessed, where meths drinkers congregated underneath the soot and brick arches of the old South Eastern Railway. Tooley Street, today, is, of course, an entirely different proposition, with its squeaky clean hipster bars and mobile-obsessed, well-dressed crowds — even if their throwaway clothes are made in a poverty-stricken sweatshop, in some ‘distant land of which they know nothing.’

As with Chalk and Cheese, another favourite episode from The Sweeney of 1975, this is a London lost. A vanished world where the toffs mingled with the criminal classes. Especially in the secretive world of art and antiques, where at Phillips’ New Bond Street saleroom, a motley coterie of connoisseurs, collectors, gentlemen art dealers, Fulham Gangsters, hard-drinking restaurateurs, predatory out-of-work-actors and Irish tinkers, congregated every Monday for the ‘Green Room’ furniture and works of art auction.

“I bet the birds are just putty in your hands, aren’t they?”

In Backtrack (The Professionals, Series 3, Episode 2), Bodie and Doyle burgle a cream stucco’d embassy in Blomfield Road, Little Venice, the diplomatic HQ of an imaginary Middle Eastern power. CI5 enlists the help of Marge (played by the splendid Liz Fraser), a dodgy antiques dealer from Ladbrook Grove with criminal connexions; Ladbrook Grove then more probably Bayswater, but now described by estate agents as Notting Hill. I like the cut of Marge’s jib and her taste in antiques: the Piranesi etchings, framed maps and the gilded English 18th-century chair in the Louis XV style. Of course, in those days (1979), Notting Hill was a decidedly dodgy place in which to dwell. Infamous for its drug dealing and burglary. In the mid-80s, I knew a family (carriage trade, but, alas, slightly down on their luck) who lived in Notting Hill, and their distressed, chintzed maisonette gave Fort Knox a run for its money. Bars on every window and screwed on every door.

“Up and coming area, this.” “You could have fooled me…”

And I need to mention Major (George) Cowley (played by Gordon Jackson), the head of CI5. In the best tradition of all police and secret service bigwigs (Kojak, Bond and Starsky & Hutch), Major Cowley’s always pissed off; permanently angry. It’s a small wonder the man doesn’t have a heart attack. He needs to go on an anger management course. And thinking about it, why is he only a Major? Why not a Brigadier? I mean, this is a man running a secret intelligence department above the law, with a government jurisdiction to do more or less what it likes, which sounds scarily undemocratic and unaccountable. But that was the mood of the late 70s. A reaction to the breakdown of order and civilisation. In 1979’s infamous strike-ridden Winter of Discontent, Leicester Square (‘Fester Square’) became a dumping ground for uncollected, rat-infested rubbish. And that is very much the gritty background of The Professionals — which also might explain, to some extent, its whole raison d’ȇtre.

I watched The Professionals (Backtrack) (1979) on YouTube. An enlightened German enthusiast appears to have posted all 57 episodes in high resolution — remastered in lovely, pin-sharp, more than watchable quality. Plus the option to watch the thing with an English or German soundtrack. Otherwise, you can watch the entire run on ITVX, but only with an upgraded premium subscription (which, I gather, has replaced the former BritBox). Which gives one an excuse to save up for The Professionals, The Complete Series box set, which comes with some 22 discs. Hours of ersatz entertainment. I like DVDs. They’re for keeps. At least you own them, for what happens if Amazon Prime Video, or similar, goes under? Do you lose all your film downloads?

That was Film No. 130 and as it’s a Sunday, free to read by everybody and anybody. Friday’s posts, on the other hand, are for the paid subscribers. Become a ‘paid’ subscriber (£5 a month or £50 a year), and you’ll get an extra, exclusive post on Friday mornings, further ‘bonus’ posts on High Days and Holy Days and access to the entire WEEKEND FLICKS. archive, which now includes 130 film recommendations. Worth thinking about. Either option’s a good bet.

I’ll be back on Friday. In the meantime, enjoy The Professionals. It’s a Sunday (night) classic. As British as a slice of overcooked roast beef, Toad-in-the-Hole and a cracked mug of P. G. Tips.