Simon Fernandes

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 8 – Everest Was Also Conquered

“Would you push a girl out of a window for two million?”

The one where…

The deathbed confession of a corrupt lawyer prompts the reopening of a murder case from 1953 – but 24 years later, all the witnesses are being killed.

Murder. Corrupt police. Corporate subversion of government. Flashbacks to 1953. On the face of it, Everest Was Also Conquered has all the makings of a very good Professionals episode. But in fact, it’s a surprisingly simple plot, far more linear than the usual twists and turns that lead the CI5 boys to a solution.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 7 – The Female Factor

“A hooker is a woman too!”

The one where…

Doyle’s emotional involvement in the death of a former informant leads CI5 to a prostitute-based blackmail ring, and ultimately, to the KGB.

What with this show basically half-wanting to be The Sweeney, it was only a matter of time before the boys of CI5 would find themselves immersed in the seedy world of prostitution. This being The Professionals, though, we’re not talking about the kind of chainsmoking, tired looking tarts whose witness testimony Jack Regan’s superiors found it so hard to swallow. Oh no, these are high class call girls with perfect skin, who only blackmail the richest of clients and never smoke. Well, they do cocaine, but isn’t that classier than Rothmans?

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 6 – Private Madness, Public Danger

“Some nutty idealist. He’ll make his point more than once unless we nail him!”

The one where…

An idealistic scientist threatens to poison the country’s water supplies with a powerful hallucinogen unless the government publicly renounces biological warfare.

Due to the totally random broadcast order of the episodes, this sixth one was actually the one that was shown first – it benefits from Gordon Jackson’s opening credits voiceover to explain the premise of the show, in lieu of any other kind of introduction.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 5 – Heroes

“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.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 4 – Killer With a Long Arm

“What kind of gun is that?”

The one where…

Another top international assassin arrives in Britain with an unknown target – and a special gun.

It may seem a bit repetitive for The Professionals to have another plot featuring a top hitman after Ramos in Long Shot only two eps ago – but with the seemingly random order of the original broadcast, this one was actually shown seven weeks before that. Besides, top international hitmen were very much a formula in the show, and we’re seeing that established early on here.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 3 – Where the Jungle Ends

“It’s war out there! It’s bloody war!”

The one where…

A group of mercenaries with a grudge against Bodie come to England to ply their trade robbing banks.

The budget must have been amped up for this one, as the first quarter of the ep is a lengthy action sequence in which mercenary leader Krivas and his motley crew storm a bank with machine guns, then pile into a stolen RAF truck for a gunfire heavy car chase with the police, then steal a plane to escape. As Bodie and Doyle listen to the radio chatter in Cowley’s office, a squadron of RAF Harriers (in some quite decent stock footage) is scrambled to pursue the plane, which dodges into a nearby cloud while, unseen, the mercenaries parachute out leaving the stolen plane to crash into the ground (that last bit isn’t actually shown – the budget wasn’t that high).

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 2 – Long Shot

“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.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 1 – Old Dog with New Tricks

“All right, so we may have half a dozen names, but only one job. To see that no one messes on our doorstep… by whatever means necessary. That’s our official brief – ‘ by any means necessary’. And that’s our loophole.”

OK, let’s get this out of the way first of all. This was not the first episode of The Professionals that was broadcast. It was, however, the first episode of four “production blocks” that I guess you could refer to as “seasons”. As was fairly common at the time, the show was purely episodic, with no kind of ongoing plot, so the episodes could be shown in any order.

The Professionals: Let’s talk about Bodie and Doyle

“Anarchy. Acts of terror. Crimes against the public. To combat it, I’ve got special men. Experts from the Army, the police, from every service. These are the Professionals.”

If you’re a reader of this blog, you might have noticed that the entries for the last few years have been a bit sporadic. This is because fundamentally, I’m a pretty lazy person. I like writing, but if I’m going to do it regularly, I need something to make me do it. In the past, that motivation has been provided by doing episode by episode reviews of weekly TV shows; after all, I originally started this blog to write lengthy essays about each new ep of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Season 2/15/41, Episode 8 – The Reality War

“Mr Smith is gone. I am the Doctor!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Well, that’s it for another season – and, it’s looking like, another era of Doctor Who. If you’re one of those unhappy at what has become known as the RTD2 era, there was really no need to be. In many ways, what we got here was a typical Russell T Davies season finale, with all the strengths and weaknesses he’s shown in writing the show since 2005 – great characterisation and dialogue, with plenty of spectacle, undermined by gaping plot holes that were seemingly papered over by fast-paced set pieces.