plutonium – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 12 – Stake Out

“How many stake outs you been on, Bodie?”

The one where…

The stakes escalate dramatically when Bodie and Doyle’s stakeout of a bowling alley reveals a plan to nuke Central London.

After the rather overambitious attempt at spectacle in the previous episode, this one goes completely the opposite way by having an entire episode mostly set in one location. And you know what? It’s much, much better. Unfolding over the course of about four hours, as Bodie and Doyle stake out a bowling alley after a CI5 agent is killed with a scorecard in his pocket, the episode is both tense and, surprisingly, funny.

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).