The Equalizer

"The Equalizer" was a unique and amazing series. I followed each episode with great interest. The ensemble of talent was remarkable - Edward Woodward having started out as a Shakespearean actor.

Hostile comments against this brilliant series derive largely from an inability to understand what McCall represented and who he was. A veteran of the British Army, he served in the Suez conflict and - while in the SAS - in operations in Malaya against Maoist gunmen. On leaving the British service he was recruited by the CIA who had apparently heard of his SAS exploits and talent in intelligence gathering. As his mother was an American, he could qualify as a US citizen - combine that with his last name, and he hardly qualifies as an Englishman. In the CIA he worked in Vietnam, where he met many of his later New York allies.

The character of Robert McCall may be in his early-mid fifties, but has a background of training and experience which would humble any supposedly tough petty-thug. For better organised enemies, McCall has a loyal following of friends to call on, including a selection of law enforcement personnel and ex-Special Forces men.

Therefore, he is not the tea-sipping greying middle-aged gentleman he may appear to be at first.

I adored this show. It requires a certain depth of historical knowledge to fully understand.

The Equalizer-like so many shows from the 80's-is pure class.

It had a very dark premise. Robert McCall was a guy who helped people whose lives were in danger and had no one to turn to. Woodward was very serious and menacing as Robert McCall. McCall may not have been a young man and may not have been capable of jumping onto the top of a van or chasing after the bad guys on foot but he was dangerous. His voice was menacing and he put the fear into every bad guy he ever met. Once he took on an assignment (sometimes for no pay)he would not stop until he finished the job. Many of the bad guys were killed by McCall.

The best thing about this show was the premise. In the 1980's we had a lot of altruistic heroes (such as The A-Team and Michael Knight)who always helped the needy and always put the bad guy away-no matter how much above the law the bad guys thought they were. McCall was always there for people who needed him. That was the great thing about this show. Nowadays on TV, characters are out for themselves and will betray people on a whim, even the good guys. The likes of McCall were not like that-they were caring. No-body could kill them, scare them off or pay them off. They were true heroes.

I doubt that I could call this an objectively excellent show, but I loved it. We all have worries and concerns in this world, and when The Equalizer would come on, it was as if someone showed up to take care of it all.

The violence was gratuitous, the hero flawed, the premises and execution over the top. Yet the team, headed by an effective if somewhat hammy Edward Woodward who is in turn flanked by Mickey Kostmayer, and Jimmy and Sterno, and the regulars - Control, Pete O'Phelan, Lt. Smalls, Scott, etc. - grew on us. So many budding actors, now famous, guested on this show.

In a key conversation, McCall tells Control how he wished the rain pouring outside could clear away all the human scum and filth that terrorizes society. McCall took it upon himself to do so.

I often wished that longer-term plot elements would take hold. At one point, McCall says to Saul Rubinek's character, "Jason, you set me up. I don't know why, but believe me, I will find out" - but nothing came of this. Some of today's shows, Alias for example, show the potential for twists and turns in long-term plot elements. So, while there were serial elements (ex. McCall's family tribulations), the episodes were largely stand-alone. The Equalizer had huge potential for groundbreaking storylines, but failed to realize it. Still, it provided me with my weekly dose of valued escapism.

Before online streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, et al. Began creating original content, the broadcast networks produced quality television series. Compared to today's standards this show doesn't seem too violent, but in the late 1980s it caused quite a stir. Led by classically-trained British actor, Edward Woodward, who plays a dapper vengeance-seeking vigilante, this series is a gritty crime drama that doesn't pull any punches; in fact, it lands quite a few. Woodward received five Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. It is a crime he lost one year to the acting hack Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, the 2021-reboot of this series is disappointing and verges on the comically absurd. Stick to the original.

Amid designer-superficiality like "Miami Vice" and myriad juvenile Glen Larson productions, "The Equalizer" came as a breath of fresh air when first broadcast in 1985. After many years in the wilderness, American studios recognised the intelligence of their audience and produced a well-scripted, well-acted action drama with character, depth and real bite.

The central premise was of a British military officer named Robert McCall who had served the latter half of his career with an American intelligence agency nickednamed "The Company" (although it approximated the real-life CIA) but had grown disillusioned with its methods. The series starts with McCall having resigned and decided to use his espionage, intelligence-gathering and combat skills on a lone crusade to champion the victims of crime, apparently as some form of atonement for his shady past.

But McCall could never fully escape The Company. Occasionally he needed some of its resources to help him tackle the job at hand. While his ex-superior, known only as "Control" (played by Robert Lansing), was sympathetic to McCall's reasons for quitting, he was never fully prepared to let him go, both because of his skills and the sensitive secrets he carried with him. Indeed many episodes saw McCall being drawn back into Company operations. The two men remained friends but their relationship was on a constant knife-edge (and often led to some of the series' best "stand off" dialogue moments).

The first two seasons wrought a tremendous variety in interesting story lines, had good dialogue and the performances of Edward Woodward, his regular co-stars and the often-abrasive interplay between their characters lifted the show further.

Location shooting in New York was used highly effectively and Stewart Copeland's startling, unique musical style lent the show a sparky, effervescent, slightly off-beat air.

The staging of action scenes was reasonable, though would never match the sensational jousts witnessed in Brit series such as The Sweeney and The Professionals. In fairness, though, The Equalizer trod a more realistic path in this respect.

The series' sole fault, during the first three seasons, was that the scripts became rather formulaic. With a few notable exceptions, the plots tended to revolve around a well-established, predictable pattern: McCall would receive a call from some distressed individual being terrorised; they would meet to discuss the problem at hand; McCall would then use his dubious contacts to dig up some dirt on the aggressor, who McCall would then threaten and, ultimately, end up having to kill - though all imbued with a liberal dose of pathos, of course!

The production schedule on the series was frenetic and with most scenes requiring the involvement of Woodward, it maybe shouldn't have been a surprise that he, a heavy smoker, suffered a heart attack during filming on the third season in 1987. Actor Richard Jordan was brought in to lighten McCall's load for several episodes. While a perfectly understandable move, in many viewers' minds it appeared that Jordan was taking over.

By the time of the fourth season Woodward had returned full-time and Jordan was phased out. But a necessary reduction in the strenuous exercise regime Woodward had previously followed meant he was far from the dynamic powerhouse he had once been. The show took on a new direction and embraced socially-sensitive themes. (In one episode a small boy is dying of AIDS and being harassed by frightened, ignorant neighbours.) Although audience rating were not as strong as before, they remained high...

Unfortunately CBS was apparently suffering from internal power struggles and some of its senior staff wanted to launch new series at the expense of existing ones. "The Equalizer" was axed after completing its usual 22-episode production. Neither Woodward nor a huge campaign of public support could convince CBS to change its mind.

The situation for the UK was actually worse. For reasons that have never been clear, proper peak-time screenings (on the ITV network) of the final season stalled after a few episodes. Naturally many Brits assumed the show had been cancelled mid-season. The remaining eventually aired via regional syndication in late-night "graveyard" slots with no publicity. In fact some ITV regions opted out completely, the affected editions being buried amongst repeat runs in the 1990s. It was an astonishing attitide to adopt as the show had actually been even more successful in the UK than its home country! Once can only suppose that denial of a complete network run was due to CBS.

The series had to wait for many years until it was made available on videocassette and even then only nine episodes from the first season were issued. Yet - probably to CBS' embarrassment - repeat runs continued to demonstrate the show's enduring appeal. In early 2008 the first season was issued on DVD in the US and UK. But even then problems continued. The American set has a welcome addition of an audio commentary by the series' creator Michael Sloan but the episodes suffer from several mysterious substitutions of incidental music. The picture quality on the UK set is notably "scratchy" and has been overly compressed for digitisation.

However with efforts under way to launch a movie version in 2009, there is clearly still an audience for this show... and deservedly so.