Department S

I had never seen Department S until fairly recently when Top Gear did its spoof Sixties show "The Interceptors", which used the Department S theme music. Because I have a liking for the spy-fi shows of that era, I tracked down the DVDs of the series out of curiosity.

And I'm glad I did, because while it's no classic and falls some way short of the likes of The Avengers and The Prisoner, it's still lively and entertaining thanks to the interplay of its three leads. Joel Fabiani's Stewart Sullivan is largely the straight man and muscle, but still maintains a deadpan humour - with a righteous anger whenever politics interferes with justice. Rosemary Nichols' Annabelle Hurst has a flirty relationship with Stewart, and while something of a computer nerd is still more than capable of taking care of herself in the field.

Then... there's Jason King. Jason is the character known even by people who've never seen the show, simply because he's so outrageous. A chain-smoking dandy and fop who drives a Bentley even when trying to be inconspicuous and more often has a glass in his hand than not (he starts drinking when most people would be having their morning coffee and must surely be pleasantly buzzed, if not outright drunk, for 90% of his screen time), he's also arrogant, egotistical, rude, self-centred, lazy, hedonistic, snobbish, bitchy (poor Annabelle takes most of his cutting put-downs), a smarmy lech and is constantly outclassed in fights to the point where Annabelle chastises him for getting "knocked out AGAIN!" in quite an early episode. Yet despite all that, he's still utterly charming and magnetic because of Peter Wyngarde's effortlessly suave and confident performance. Played by anyone else Jason would seem like a buffoon - he was, after all, one of the inspirations for Austin Powers - but Wyngarde gives him class even at his most ridiculously pompous.

The actual stories are mixed; some of the mysteries Department S are called upon to investigate are genuinely clever, while others (mostly those written by Philip Broadley) are bog-standard ITC crime plots involving bank robbers, smuggling rings or the Mafia with a 'bizarre' opening slapped on them to fit the format of "crimes too weird for the normal police to solve". Watching on DVD, ITC's penny-pinching also becomes evident - the same locations and sets appear again and again with only slight changes (watch for the corridor with a distinctive illuminated ceiling, which appears in almost every episode), and if you ever see anyone driving a white Jaguar, you know it's going to go over a cliff! ("Toonces, look ouuuuuut!") But overall it's a fun, lightly tongue-in-cheek adventure show that gets by on pure charisma.

Department S was one of the first TV programmes I can remember watching and loved it for it's strange plots and interesting characters. I waited for years to see it again and I am delighted to say it has just started a re-run on a UK satellite channel and it's just as good as I remember it. The character of Jason King is fantastic and the two straight-playing members of the trio are also very good. The whole thing looks fantastic, there are some wonderfully corny lines, excellent clothes, theme music that ranks among the very best and it all comes together to present us with something camper than a hut full of cub scouts (and if you ever wondered where many of the ideas for the X Files came from - look no further than Department S). Simply brilliant.

I first saw Department S perhaps twenty years ago while doing work experience at a studio in London dealing with dvd restorations.. instead of watching what the audio guy was doing I spent more time enjoying this great show

I liked it even more once i realized Peter Wyngarde (Klytus from Flash Gordon) was Jason King and so purchased a really great restoration of Department S by network just recently, and what a treat it is.. it has cleaned up really well and is just a perfect snapshot of the late 60's

I'm a big fan of shows like The Avengers too but I actually prefer the lesser known Department S a little more now since the storylines are a tad more serious and more James Bond / Ipcress File styled

The 3 main characters are all great, the head of Department S who appears sometimes is also excellent

The production values of the show are high class.. good sound and dialogue, lovely late 60's interior designs. Attention to detail was even paid to things like making the views outside moving cars look reasonable and consistent given what else was going on at the time

Department S also has good humour and is of course lusciously retro

I think that in all the imagination of the ITC writers, Department S was ahead of it's time. First of all, although it was set in the cold war world years,the series really thought of a global society,the crimes were no longer the responsibility of local police but of a higher authority that had to be involved ( thus the chief Sir Seretse, which shows his position seems to be a sort of a U.N appointment). Then the crimes were not only state secrets but industrial and financial. I can't think of too many shows that would involve themselves with the work of Interpol ever since. In addition the mysteries are so bizarre that all the computer and imaginative efforts have to be thrown into the case to solve it. The Lone Ranger theory would be no longer feasible, it would seem we live in a society that has to pull resources together in order to figure out what is going on.

With all due respect to Joel Fabiani and Rosemary Nicolls and their characters, Department S will be forever associated with Peter Wyngarde's Jason King.

Most people remember him as this camp, flamboyant and debonair womaniser cum detective in the mould of Austin Powers but that will do a disservice to the character: He's far more nuanced than that.

Jason King is lazy (he often lets Stewart fight all the bad guys and only chips in at the end), he is egotistical (his appreciation of people is based on whether they've read his novels or not), a lot of his detective work is speculation without facts to back them up and he sulks whenever Annabelle is right...and she often is. He's clearly a man having a mid-life crisis and drink drives but.......Jason King is brilliant. If Wyngarde had played him purely as a dashing hero, it wouldn't have worked but he shows King often as a paper tiger, led by his libido, love of finery and prone to grandstanding (and it gets in the way of his detective work at times) but he has some of the best lines and put downs in TV history. And by not playing him as whiter-than-white, the chemistry and interactions between the three lead characters is all the better for it.

Watching it again on DVD recently, you get to see just how much depth Wyngarde put into Jason King.