“Cowley is as good as dead!”
The one where…
The world’s top hitman comes to England and his target is Cowley.
Not that our heroes realise the target at first, and with good reason – there’s a Very Important International Anti-terrorist Conference going on, so when the first bullets fly, it seems reasonable to assume that it’s one of the illustrious foreign dignitaries being aimed at.
Top assassin Ramos (he doesn’t seem to have a first name) is a flamboyant figure whose ridiculous outfit of shades, black rollneck sweater and big gold medallion wouldn’t exactly help him to blend into the background – surely a requirement for a hitman. He’s clearly based on the legendary “Carlos the Jackal”, and equally clearly, the production team only had that famous photo of the Jackal to base his look on. Presumably even Carlos didn’t dress that way all the time though.
Ramos, who constantly talks about himself in the third person (“Ramos does not fail!”) has a taste for the finer things in life, which is ultimately his undoing. Rather than, say, booking an anonymous hotel and trying not to be too conspicuous, he decides to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy financier so as to use his mansion as a home base while drinking all his most expensive cognac. It was at this point that I started doubting his credentials as a top assassin; but then, whoever said The Professionals was believable?
The Very Important Conference is taking place (as such Conferences always do in 70s TV) at a remote country house, where a number of extras mill around and only two actual dignitaries seem to be present. One is former US Secretary of State “Dr Ernest Harbinger” (any resemblance to Dr Henry Kissinger presumably intentional), while the other is genial Arab tyrant Sheikh Achmeia, from the fortunately fictional Middle East state of “Morani”. The sheikh amiably invites his colleagues to send their terrorists to his country so they can be shot without due process – this is The Professionals’ idea of realpolitik. However, it’s a nice bit of seeding for Ramos’ ultimate fate.
His first attempt at Cowley having failed, Ramos is instantly recognised by the pursuing Bodie and Doyle, who must have memorised all the international hitmen on CI5’s files. This handily cuts out a lot of tedious detective work when there’s running and punching to be done. Likewise, his location is conveniently revealed by a pair of particularly crap burglars who are caught trying to break in and tell the police about the dodgy foreigner in the ridiculous outfit.
Further shenanigans ensue as Ramos heads to London to try and take out Cowley at the CI5 HQ itself – you can’t fault his confidence. Unfortunately for him, this is Cowley he’s dealing with, and not even shooting his own henchman just to get into the building will guarantee success. An unwise attempt to shoot Cowley in his office shower just results in Ramos finally getting caught – and in a fetching shot of Gordon Jackson clad only in a towel.
But Ramos still has one ace up his sleeve, in the form of his unfortunate hostage, who’s currently tied up in a building that’s in the process of being demolished. Cue Bodie and Doyle (or some stuntmen who look vaguely like them) frantically running around a collapsing factory rather than. say, asking the workmen nicely to stop knocking the building down. Well, that would have robbed us of an action sequence, of course.
Unfortunately, Ramos’ price for revealing the girl’s location was his freedom and a plane ticket out of there. Even more unfortunately (for Ramos), he doesn’t know Cowley very well. The ruthless CI5 chief has arranged for one of his men to be on board and to handily stage a heart attack so the plane will have to be diverted to Morani – remember, that place where they like to shoot terrorists? It’s a weird choice that we don’t actually see that happening – we just hear about it in Cowley’s office, while Bodie has a good old smirk. But justice has plainly been done for another week.
The cars
Bodie and Doyle are still tooling around in that brown Rover 2000 P6; there’s a glimpse of them driving the Triumph Dolomite Sprint in Ramos’ spy film of Cowley, but it has yet to be seen in an episode properly at this point.
Mitchell’s daughter is kidnapped returning from a drive in her shiny 1970 Triumph Stag, a grand tourer that was Triumph’s flagship model in the early 70s. Again, it’s a trifle odd that, with British Leyland providing the cars, they couldn’t have given her a new one, rather than one that was seven years old. Particularly as by that age, Stags had usually already had lots of problems with their troublesome all-aluminium engines.
Ramos, being a classy kind of hitman, drives the far more exclusive 1972 Jensen Interceptor, not the kind of car you’d choose if you wanted to blend in; still, given his outfit, that clearly isn’t a priority for him. The Interceptor, a handbuilt grand tourer, cost more than a Rolls-Royce, and was equipped with a 7.2 litre Chrysler V8 that gave about 13 miles to the gallon. No wonder Ramos is so expensive to hire, he has to pay for the petrol.
Mitchell’s car, which Ramos takes to the city, is a Jaguar XJ6 series 2, while the hapless burglars are equipped with a Ford Cortina MkIII in the kind of hideous lime green that was symptomatic of the 70s.
Harbinger, meanwhile, is collected from the conference in a 1972 Ford Granada Coleman Milne limousine. Amusingly, the usually very thorough Andrew Pixley has got a bit confused here, as his voluminous Production Notes list “Coleman Milne” as an actor playing Harbinger’s chauffeur.
1970s clothes
The bright red jogging tracksuits worn by Harbinger (and necessarily, Bodie and Doyle, as his bodyguards) are hardly likely to make him harder to shoot. To be fair, Cowley does point this out.
Bodie, meanwhile, is later seen wearing a rollneck sweater under one of his many leather jackets, this one with gigantic 70s lapels.
Hey, it’s that guy from that thing!
Lots of hardworking 70s character actors in this one, and at least one who would go on to be far more famous later.
The evil Ramos is incarnated by an utterly miscast Roger Lloyd Pack, later to be better known as the hapless Trigger in Only Fools and Horses. Possibly the director thought he was miscast too, as all his lines have clearly been dubbed by a much older actor with a generic “foreign” accent. Sadly, not even Andrew Pixley’s incredibly comprehensive production notes provide the identity of that actor, though his voice definitely sounds familiar.
His too-trusting accomplice Villa is played by Martin Benson, a British actor whose swarthy looks led to him being typecast as vaguely untrustworthy Mediterranean types for most of his career. His credits are too numerous to mention, but horror fans will remember him as the dodgy Father Spiletto in The Omen.
Mitchell, the financier, is played by John Horsley, an actor who seemed to have been born middle-aged. Always cast as older than he actually was, he tended to play slightly befuddled elderly authority figures like priests and doctors; in fact, he was probably best known as Doc Morrissey in classic 70s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
Ernest Harbinger and Sheikh Achmeia, who seem to be the only attendees of the Very Important Conference, are played by Ed Bishop and Nadim Sawalha respectively. Again, both have credits too numerous to list, mainly because they were the go-to actors in the UK for almost every role as a white American and an Arab. Bishop, of course, was already well-known for his role as Ed Straker in UFO, while Sawalha later went on to father the slightly more famous Julia Sawalha.
As for would-be burglars Sammy and Walton, both are played by prolific actors usually better known for comedy roles: Robert Gillespie and Peter Cellier, respectively. Gillespie, who’s 91, was still working as recently as 2018, as a judge in Mike Leigh’s Peterloo; though he’s probably best known as the star of 70s sitcom Keep it in the Family. Cellier, who was usually cast as oily officials and/or executives, is probably best known as Sir Frank Gordon, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in Yes Prime Minister.
And yes, that’s ubiquitous 70s hardman Tony Caunter as the by-the-book copper interviewing Sammy. Another one with too many credits to list, Caunter is known to Doctor Who fans as sadistic IMC security officer Morgan in 1970’s Colony in Space; but for the Not-We, he’ll forever be remembered as Pat Butcher’s nth husband Roy Evans in EastEnders.
Casual Sexism
There’s a gag plot early in the ep in which the boys compete to date a new CI5 employee, who isn’t even dignified with a character name – she’s simply credited as “Girl in Gym”. Which is where Bodie and Doyle first encounter her, practising kung fu (very popular in 1977, thanks to a certain Bruce Lee).
They make a bet that whoever “subdues” her can go out with her. Fortunately, when it comes to it, they do have the courtesy of actually asking her about this. Unfortunately for Doyle, she kicks his butt in about thirty seconds, and confides, “I could never go out with someone I feel superior to”. There’s a lot to unpick there…
Long Shot is a marvellously silly runaround, the first of any number of Professionals episodes about top international assassins with dubious and unidentifiable foreign accents. It’s far from perfect – some of the plot conveniences are utterly unbelievable, Roger Lloyd Pack is far too young for the part of Ramos, and the character’s dubbed voice never once convinces. His ludicrously complex schemes are less than believable for someone who’s supposed to be so good at his job, but fair’s fair, this is The Professionals; it gets even more outlandish later. And Cowley’s ultimate, ruthless, disposal of the baddie shows us the more gritty style of the show compared to earlier Brian Clemens efforts. John Steed would never have done that; it wouldn’t be cricket.
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