The Professionals – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Professionals: Series 2, Episode 2 – Hunter/Hunted

“Guard it Doyle, guard it with your life. In the wrong hands, that gun could create an instant disaster area.”

The one where…

CI5 are entrusted with the testing of a powerful, innovative new gun, and Doyle immediately loses it.

Although Cowley’s portentous warnings would suggest that the new gun central to the plot was some kind of doomsday weapon, the actual novelty of it is its laser sight; in every other way it’s just a (admittedly powerful) automatic rifle that had been on the market for a few years by this point.

The Professionals: Series 2, Episode 1 – Rogue

“You’re good, both of you, the best – but I’ve got the drop on you, psychologically. Ask yourself a question – who trained you, taught you?”

The one where…

An old friend of Cowley’s, his first pick when forming CI5, and Bodie and Doyle’s trainer, turns out to be corrupt, and the boys have to track him down before he can flee the country.

With the first series of The Professionals having been a storming success for ITV, obviously they were keen to have more. Surprisingly, though, many of the behind the scenes staff – and one conspicuous onscreen one – were not so keen, so it was all change for this second “series” (well, production block).

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 13 – When the Heat Cools Off

“I helped put away a man for a crime he didn’t do!”

The one where…

An old police case comes back to haunt Doyle, when the daughter of a man he put away for murder presents a case for her father’s innocence.

Most crime shows have done one of these from time to time – the episode where the hero has to struggle with the realisation that, perhaps, one of his previous collars was actually an innocent man who’s been rotting away in jail all this time. This time, it’s former copper Doyle who’s presented with enough doubt by the pretty daughter of an imprisoned crime lord to make him reopen an investigation he thought finished in 1971.

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 11 – Look After Annie

“You never married then?”
“You didn’t have to ask that, Annie. You know that as far as I’m concerned, you were always…”

The one where…

Bodie and Doyle are assigned to watch over a controversial evangelist/politician, only to discover that she’s an old flame of Cowley’s…

After two episodes focusing mostly on Bodie and Doyle, respectively, it’s now time for one that’s all about Cowley. As Bodie remarks at one point, besides being the standard firm-but-fair boss from all shows like this, we (and they) know very little about him. Look After Annie redresses that balance, delving into the dry, dour Scotsman’s past and giving Gordon Jackson a chance to be the standout cast member for once.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 10 – Klansmen

“I’ve seen and fought prejudice of one kind or another all my life, and I intend to keep on fighting it.”

The one where…

Doyle infiltrates a white supremacist group bringing the Ku Klux Klan’s brutal methods to Britain. But all is not what it seems…

Uh oh – it’s the racism one. Or the ‘racist’ one, depending on your point of view. In 1977, with race riots and the National Front very much on the rise, this was a very sensitive topic for an action-oriented thriller series to take on. Too sensitive, as it turned out, for ITV to feel comfortable showing the episode, which remained unbroadcast in the UK until satellite TV reruns of the show in the late 80s.

The Professionals: Series 1, Episode 9 – Close Quarters

“The Myer Helmut group. Anarchists, fanatics, they’ve bombed, killed and maimed at least a hundred people in the last two years. Now they’re here, in Britain – and I want them.”

The one where…

Bodie, on medical leave with a broken hand and a girlfriend, stumbles over the leader of a German terrorist gang while out rowing.

It’s back to the countryside this week for a tense siege thriller (you’ll read that phrase a lot) which puts the focus squarely on hardman Bodie. It is, in fact, almost a Bodie solo episode; there are occasional cuts to Doyle and Cowley searching for him, but for the most part, Lewis Collins carries this one by himself.

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.