“Now don’t be heroes, any of you!”
The one where…
A group of motorists in a traffic jam witness a political assassination, and CI5 must stop the killers hunting them down.
Remember when I mentioned last time that CI5 doesn’t always succeed in saving everyone? Well, this one has the assassination plot (of an unpleasant US senator) succeed in the first five minutes. More pertinently, though, CI5 singularly fail to save all the unfortunate witnesses who are targeted as a result.
When bigoted, rightwing firebrand Senator Patterson chooses to visit the land of his ancestors, a shadowy, unnamed American figure (let’s face it, he’s CIA) hires this week’s Big Crime Boss Latymer to have him killed. Cowley, sworn to protect even the likes of Patterson, foils one assassination attempt and comes up with a scheme to avoid another – he’ll have Patterson pretend to be a security guard in an armoured bullion van delivering silver to the airport.
Unfortunately, it leaks somehow, and a quartet of Northern hitmen in Michael Myers masks stage some fake roadworks to hold up the van, pretend to be robbers, and blast the unpleasant senator with shotguns. Sounds like the end of the story, right? Well, unfortunately for the killers, all the ordinary British motorists held up in their staged traffic jam decide to be ‘heroes’ and stop what they see as a bullion robbery. And, rather implausibly, two of them have cameras to film it all, one of them a 16mm film camera.
Again, sounds like the end of the story. Armed with all of this, surely CI5 can find them pretty quick, right? That would be the plot of an ordinary Professionals episode. But even more unfortunately for these ‘have-a-go-heroes’, the ever-scrupulous British press choose, for reasons that are never specified, to publish all their names and addresses. I know, I know – sounds ludicrous, yes? But remember, we’re talking about a country where The News of the World once tried to print the names and addresses of all known paedophiles. Which didn’t go well.
So, basically, the plot of this episode isn’t about preventing an assassination, or even, primarily, about catching the assassins. It’s about protecting all those ordinary people who thought they were doing the right thing, with no knowledge of the subterfuge in front of them.
It’s a welcome change of focus; The Professionals usually only shows ordinary people when they intersect with the usual world of punching and shooting terrorists. This ep, by ‘James McAteer’ (a pseudonym for regular crime scribe PJ Hammond, who would later create Sapphire and Steel) puts the ordinary people front and centre.
Not least with the assassins’ hapless factotum, the oddly named ‘Tin Can’, a poor low level junkie known to Doyle from his time on the Force. While the rest of CI5 is trying (and frequently failing) to prevent the deaths of the witnesses, Doyle’s knowledge of the local underworld is once again key to finding the baddies.
What’s interesting here, compared to the previous Brian Clemens shows, is that it’s a combination of knowledge of drug culture and Black culture that we see. Tin Can is a junkie idiot, but essentially harmless and well-liked by the local Black community. So Doyle seeks out info about who’s been employing him at a local Black social club, where, as you can imagine, a solitary white policeman doesn’t provoke the friendliest of welcomes.
This is Doyle, though, so he proceeds to single handedly punch most of them into submission – though actually, by the standards you’d expect of a white copper in the 70s, he’s fairly restrained. None of them end up arrested on false charges or mysteriously dying in police custody. And to be fair, Doyle is basically asking them to protect one of their own; though the very stark division between races is very clearly shown in just this five minute sequence.
Alongside all of this, we actually meet another CI5 agent for once; and he is, in the various words of Bodie and Doyle, “kill-crazy” and “a psychopath”. Imagine how mad you’d have to be for Bodie and Doyle to have that opinion of you. It certainly shakes your faith in the reliability of CI5’s psychological screening processes, which somehow even Bodie and Doyle got through.
But actually, loose cannon Tommy McKay is… well, really cool. Given to wandering around with a sawn off shotgun not very well concealed under a jacket in his arms, he’s your typical Dirty Harry-esque renegade that you don’t want to love but can’t help doing so. He’s certainly prepared to go the extra mile in ballistic insanity that even Bodie and Doyle would baulk at – tackling the raiders in a boat attacking a witness’ garden, he coolly dispatches them with… a rocket launcher. None of your namby-pamby automatic pistols for Tommy.
Sadly, even though I (and, I’m guessing, writer PJ Hammond) would have loved Tommy to continue as a regular character, the budget probably isn’t up to that level of carnage (also Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw might have been upset at being upstaged). So Tommy has a fittingly Gotterdammerung-esque farewell, taking down the last of the raiders in a firefight even as their bullets send him to Valhalla.
The cars
A veritable cornucopia of classics, given the premise of the story. Most are in the stalled traffic at the roadworks, much to the later detriment of their occupants.
The bullion van hiding Senator Patterson is a white Ford Transit Mk1. Amusingly, Latymer’s toy car-based plan for the operation has a miniature of this exact vehicle, along with a James Bond Aston Martin.
The attractive blonde girl who plays no further part in the plot after this is driving a yellow Triumph Spitfire MkIV, one of Britain’s better roadsters that was somewhere between MG’s Midget and B in terms of size.
Cantankerous, lawn-loving pensioner Ralph May is the proud owner of a beige Morris Marina estate, which is later riddled with bullets.
Inevitably, the ill-fated newly married couple are driving a Mini 1000 – well, it was the 70s, there was bound to be one on the motorway somewhere.
Yes, that’s a lovely, mint condition 1966 Ford Cortina Mk1 that gets destroyed by a bulldozer in the ‘foiling’ of the raid – well, sadly, they weren’t worth anything then.
A taste of things to come, with the first sighting of a Ford Capri in The Professionals. Driven by the intense Tommy McKay, it’s a far more modest model than Bodie and Doyle’s later MkIII 3.0S – a MkII 1.6L.
The Raiders drive an old Jaguar, the getaway car much loved by villains in The Sweeney (and indeed real life). It’s a grey Mk2, the earlier (and nicer looking) model than the S-Type usually favoured as a getaway vehicle.
Having been fingered in it after the hit on the truck driver, they change for a dark blue Triumph 2000 – perhaps hoping people will think it’s a police car.
1970s clothes
Bodie has yet another leather jacket this week, a light brown bomber with absolutely humungous side pockets – the zips go all the way from the waist to the shoulders. Doyle is wearing a blue denim jacket, and I’m fairly certain this is actually the blue leather one we’ve seen him wear before – that one appeared to have a blue denim lining, and this one appears to have a blue leather lining. It’s clearly reversible – nice way of keeping the costume budget down.
1970s references
One outraged motorist exclaims disbelievingly: “Roadworks on a weekday!” Yes, hard to believe though it may be now, it used to be customary to perform highway maintenance at weekends only to minimise disruption.
Cowley has one of those newfangled “videocassette recorders” – a gigantic Sony U-Matic, a format that died out with the advent of Betamax and VHS. These were not cheap at the time, so only the rich and taxpayer-funded organisations like CI5 could afford to own them.
The TV newsman claims that the raid took place “on the M39 motorway” – no such motorway exists, or ever has. The Daily Express, should you wish to read it, costs 8p; one of the amusing things about this High Definition remaster is that you can now read the story below the plot-relevant headline, which is a mishmash of a review of French movie The Story of Adele H and something about curbing the National Front.
This week, we see the first in a long line of abandoned factories that the villains choose to hide out in; it’s identified as an old brewery. Judging by this show, such closed down industrial sites were plentiful in the 70s, an indicator of the dire state of British industry at the time.
Doyle is crestfallen that a horse he bet on didn’t win. “You lose much?” enquires Bodie. “Yeah,” says the devastated Doyle, “50p.” Well, it was a fair amount of money then.
Hey, it’s that guy from that thing!
Far more of an ensemble cast than usual in this one, with many more speaking parts but (perhaps as a result) fewer well-known (and therefore costlier) actors among them.
Making quite an impression as CI5’s loose cannon Tommy McKay is actor John Castle, who never really had the success he deserved. With work as varied as The Lion in Winter and Antonioni’s Blow Up, he may be best remembered as Postumus Agrippa in I Claudius and Number 12 in The Prisoner. He would go on to appear in The Professionals again later, in an entirely different role.
The nasty (and very Trump-like) Senator Patterson is Canadian actor Bruce Boa, one of the North American actors frequently used in British TV shows when Ed Bishop was doing something else. Another actor with a huge list of credits, he’s probably best known to SF nerds as General Riekaan in The Empire Strikes Back; but Brits of my age may know him best as the loud, irritating American who clashes with Basil Fawlty in the Fawlty Towers episode Waldorf Salad.
Also common in American roles was Kenneth Nelson, who plays the mysterious, trench coat clad figure who hires Latymer to kill Patterson (and who apparently gets away scot-free, never being mentioned in the episode again). Nelson is familiar to Brits of my age as nuclear fission tycoon Jerry Grogan in 1985’s classic Edge of Darkness; but perhaps more memorably, was one of the leads in both the stage and film productions of gay classic The Boys in the Band.
That’s Afro-American theatre pioneer Rufus Collins as the poor, pathetic Tin Can. Just starting out in his career, Collins had moved from New York to Europe in pursuit of work, and makes an impression here in a pretty small role. Later, in the early 80s, he would go on to make quite a name for himself in theatre in the Netherlands.
Doyle’s ‘friend’ Huntley, boss of the Black social club, is played by trailblazing Guyanese actor (and opera singer!) Thomas Baptiste, who was the very first Black character in long-running soap opera Coronation Street. Among many other credits, he was hugely memorable and charismatic in the one-off part of President Selim Mohammed in Yes, Minister.
Nice bit of dialogue
Cowley gets all the best lines in this one.
Describing the late, unlamented Senator Patterson: “Loudmouthed, rich, stupid. A hellraiser, a firebrand. ‘Senator in one year, President in three’ was just one of his well-worn phrases. A clown, a people’s clown.” Sound like anyone we know?
Indicating the news reporter and pre-empting every conspiracy theory prevalent today: “See how easy it is to fool the people, tell them lies? Even that poor fool doesn’t know.”
Responding to Bodie’s suggestion that a personal appearance might bolster morale: “The day I cheer my men up, I’ll know I’m ready for the scrapheap.”
Having overheard some criticism on the radio: “The radio is still open, Bodie. But continue with your interesting assessment. Cowley is… what?”
Bodie: “Would you believe warm and considerate?”
Operational double entendres #453 – talking about the men he has guarding Sumner: “They’re there for your protection, Mr Sumner. That’s why I want to pull them off.”
But the ever-humorous Bodie and Doyle get a few quips in too.
Bodie, watching the 16mm footage shot of the raid, which oddly matches exactly the shots and editing seen moments before: “A lousy bit of film.” Take that, director!
Bodie, complaining that Doyle didn’t bring any beer to the stakeout: “I’m like a fine piece of machinery, I need lubrication.”
Doyle: “Well, too much lubrication and that machine might end up with a bullet in its crankcase.”
Casual Sexism
Actually quite the opposite this time. Trying to cheer up the depressed Cowley, Bodie tells another tale of his past in Africa, this time about a girl who he was just friends with – who slit her wrists and blamed him. “I couldn’t be responsible for something that was out of my control.”
This ep feels like another style for the show, with the assassination actually successful right at the start, and focusing as much on the ordinary people who are the targets as CI5 and the villains they’re hunting. The characters are all well-drawn, and Tommy McKay in particular feels like he could have become a pretty cool recurring character – someone who even Bodie and Doyle think is a bit too mad.
The character of Tin Can, and the Black British culture we see here, is sensitively handled. The plot also brings in another recurring theme, already common in the likes of The Sweeney, but previously not a feature of previous Brian Clemens shows – drug addiction. It wouldn’t be the last time this featured in The Professionals, and is yet another sign of this show trying to be more ‘adult’ than its predecessors. Can you imagine Steed and Mrs Peel trying to deal with a junkie doing cold turkey?
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