Jason King

I enjoyed Department S when I discovered it on DVD, so decided to give its spin-off series a try, even knowing going in that it was not as well-regarded. I very quickly found out why!

What made Jason King (the character) work in Department S was that he had two relatively normal sidekicks - who appear here only in the briefest of stock footage flashbacks in one single episode - to bounce off, making him seem like an eccentric in a more or less everyday world. Given his own series and shorn of anyone to keep him in check, however, Jason becomes absolutely ludicrous, a camp comic-book creation with barely even one toe in reality. That he's at all bearable to watch is entirely down to Peter Wyngarde's charm, as the scripts frequently make him casually sexist and even racist in a cringeworthy 1970s way. (One episode actually has him say "Ah so, dlagon rady" to a Chinese woman... a Chinese woman played by a British actress in yellowface and false eyelids. Horrible!)

The stories are also bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Since he's no longer part of a law enforcement agency, every contrivance imaginable is needed to force Jason into the plots. He unwittingly uses a codeword meant to identify an arms dealer. He's hypnotised. He's mistaken for a hit-man because he's carrying a rose. He picks up a hitch-hiker involved in a crime. He's impersonated (twice). He's blackmailed by MI6 (several times). He's kidnapped (repeatedly). In the laziest example, he just so happens to know *three* different people - from different countries - who are trying to obtain a stolen statue, none of whom have any connection to each other.

The scripts are not the only thing that were cheap. To pay for location shooting in Europe (Jason visits Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, Venice and other cities - mostly wandering around in front of famous landmarks just to prove that yes, they really sent their leading actor there for the day) the show was shot on 16mm film rather than ITC's usual 35mm, and it looks terrible. 16mm can be decent quality - look at the restored DVDs of the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who - but here everything is muddy and astonishingly grainy. The same sets appear over and over (every rich character seems to share a room with a blue domed ceiling), as do even cars. There's a silver Vauxhall Viva that follows Jason to almost every country he visits!

Amazingly, a halfway-decent story does occasionally manage to force its way through the dross; 'As Easy As ABC' sees two criminals using the plot of one of Jason's own novels to carry out a robbery and frame him for it, 'To Russia With Panache' plays like a lost Department S script as Jason investigates a bizarre murder in the Kremlin, and 'Wanna Buy A Television Series?' amusingly bites the hand that feeds it by ridiculing the same US TV networks that ITC depended upon to fund its shows. But most of the episodes are empty, silly and, worst of all, *boring* nonsense that not even Wyngarde's charisma can save.

I'd heard for years that JASON KING was a campy badly dated clown show, but after watching it I strongly disagree. There are several good to very good to excellent episodes.

There are also some clunkers, not so much for their comical fashions and out-of-style mores, but for how dull they are as entertainment.

My picks for top quality are:

E01 - "Wanna Buy A Television Series?" E04 - "A Deadly Line of Digits" E05 - "Variations on a Theme" E09-E10 - "All That Glisters..." (Parts I & II) E14 - "Uneasy Lies the Head"

The two-part movie length adventure (9-10) is the best of the series, maybe the best of the entire DEPARTMENT S/JASON KING run, thanks to its sprawling cast, obvious larger budget & location shooting around Paris.

Peter Wyngarde was a unique actor, Jason King is his signature role. DEPARTMENT S, when it worked, had better and more intriguing plots overall, plus a terrific trio of stars, but several episodes of JASON KING are as good (though the failures are duller and worse).

Well, I may have a different view on this type of show than other reviewers. When I put on one of these DVD episodes I'm not expecting a mind bending plot experience or to be blown away by production values.

I put this on and I just go back. Back to the 70's and 80's (where I find my favorite TV programs, it was just a special time) and I can overlook a very lot of flaws. Thing is I'm American and never heard of Peter or this or the previous series until around 3 months ago, yet it still gives me nostalgia and I love British TV, maybe because there are so many new things to find I didn't have before.

This was just a different time and I can feel it and really enjoy everything about this. As far as Peter being the sole protagonist, this is actually fine with me. He is so entertaining that I enjoy every second of him being on screen. Yes I plan to get the Section "S"(I think that is the correct name) DVD's as well as honestly it's true they were better, the same "sniper" pistol is used over and over and over as a prop in this series due to budget, and the film isn't mega-HD (in fact I thought I bought a bootleg when first watching my copies) But I really don't care.

Peter is great and it's just fun. I love it but I'm hella nostalgic, I love to put on the series and just to watch or maybe let it run while I do something else, who wants today's TV in the background making you depressed with how terrible everyone is to each other as that seems to be what makes you "interesting" nowadays's--how much of a jerk you can be to others. Even as a womanizer Peter (Jason) is still more polite and a gentlemen than anyone on TV now. The reason I longer have cable.

As someone mentioned, at least these old shows HAD characters, flawed or not. Something you can not find in today's TV.

This is by way of a comment on one of the other reviews.

The episode "All that Glisters..." was playing recently on a TV that I could hear but not see. "Thunderbirds!" I thought since I could clearly hear the voice of Scott Tracey. On going in to actually watch the TV I was amazed to see that it was Jason King rather than Thunderbirds and that bizarrely Clinton Greyn was speaking with Scott Tracey's voice. The lip-sync was excellent but it was clearly a dubbed voice since the acoustic was different. And of course, rather than Greyn's rounded Welsh tones we were getting the distinctive Canadian sound of Shane Rimmer. Cant understand why they did this - and then not credit it? Weird.

"Jason King" was always an anticlimax after "Department S". Both were made at Elstree Film Studios with many of the same personnel, but "Jason King" was shot on 16 mm rather than the 35 mm of the earlier series and in 1971 the difference was jarringly obvious. Despite a few foreign location shots (mainly King crossing a road in Berlin or Paris) the whole thing looked decidedly cheap.

"Department S" had the great hook of a bizarre pre-credit incident and much of the interest was in discovering the rational cause. The Jason King character was a gadfly with unpredictable, often wrong, flashes of insight. Stewart Sullivan and Annabelle Hurst could be left to do, respectively, the gumshoe and the brain work. King was best taken in small doses which worked in "Department S" as he did not have to carry the plot. However, as the lead character in his own series he was in virtually every scene and had to be sensible and motivated enough to do the traditional detective stuff in order to progress the stories (which were themselves (unlike "Department S") little different to those of a dozen other series).

The tension in the one character between the frivolous dilettante and the determined detective often willing to risk his life for others must have been difficult to reconcile and the tone of the scripts and the degree of King's flamboyance varied significantly from episode to episode. King also suffered from not having strong regular characters the equal of Sullivan and Hurst to bring him down to earth when necessary and balance his excesses. The more interesting episodes were those rare ones where King was angered by the real suffering of others and had to confront, if not the hypocrisy, at least the irony of, his usual moaning about the minor irritations of his luxurious lifestyle.

Extracting King as a character from Department S was an example of an often repeated mistake in TV. Because a character is hugely popular in one situation it doesn't follow that they will work outside their complex support structure of setting, format, other characters, style, etc. (Having Inspector Morse star, in an Australian-set, pseudo-western rather than an whodunnit in Oxford is another example which fortunately only happened in one episode) King might have become even more of an unlikely heartthrob in his own series but the drama suffered badly.

Having said all that, "Jason King" remains a far more interesting, entertaining and original series than most and Peter Wyngarde (view "Night of the Eagle" to see him at his very best) one of the more complex and electric performers let loose in the lead of a major TV series. It is just that coming at the tail end of the "golden era" of ITC filmed series it is difficult not to judge it by higher standards than usual.