Public Eye

Alfred Burke deserves to be ranked with Sean Connery, Edward Woodward and Roger Moore for his portrayal of Frank Marker in Public Eye. This was the detective story from the council estate, and at the time in the UK, there were no better writers nor better actors. Burke plays the poor man's private eye, operating in an environment where there is neither money not glamour. He needs his fee to pay the rent and light, but often does not collect anything other than a beating. His cases are not the stuff of Sam Spade, but Marker is the right stuff nonetheless.

I missed the UK Gold reruns, but will not miss them again. If you watch no other '60s specials, watch this.

These series in my opinion are British television at its very finest, centred around a marvellous sustained performance by Alfred Burke which stands comparison with anything to be seen anywhere in film, TV or theatre; and scripts of high intelligence, firmly grounded in the downbeat experiences of everyday English life, yet psychologically profound.

The support acting rises to the occasion too, in all the episodes I have seen - Pauline Delaney's performance in Series 4 for example.

By all accounts the show was widely popular when originally broadcast, and it is a mystery to this viewer why repeat broadcasts are so very seldom seen.

No sensationalism, no mindless action, no mediocre plot twists for shock value, no condescending preaching, no axes to grind and no ham fisted attempts to push political agendas. This show is a revelation for us mired in this loathesome modern world.

The show conveys more reality to what life is really like than reality television ever did which is not so ironic given how phony and jaded reality tv is. Television during the era of Public Eye was theatrical and this show, shot almost entirely on video instead of the then standard, video in studio/film on location is no different.

Alfred Burke is an actor I barely saw in other shows. He makes Frank Marker all his own and he seems to have had no trouble doing it. Frank Marker is a likable but seedy inquiry agent, a title he prefers instead of private detective. It's the work that makes him seedy. Unglamorous realistic plot lines. Sometimes Marker gets more trouble than he expects but alot of the trouble you would not expect to see other fictional private eyes to get into in old movies or novels. Marker's character is fully fleshed out as well as the many characters that come and go over the course of the series. Edward Woodward once noted that television during this era was written in a way where you get a complete picture of all the characters in each show because they are fully realized in the writing. They aren't ciphers for the actors to fill in the blank based on their lines. That detail in writing is lost in 95% of today's television which is a shame.

The show moves about and has some interesting locations. The Thames series began in 1969 with Marker in Brighton, then Windsor, Walton and later Chertsey. During the ABC years, it was London and Birmingham.

The '69 season has a story arch for the Marker character instead of being focused mostly on a case per episode like the rest of the series. Much of the focus before '69 went to the supporting characters since the details of each case unfolds through their time on screen. The series returns to this format for all of the remaining episodes from '71 to '75. The cases are believable and the endings are often unique and surprising. There is one episode where Marker is hired to discover who is blackmailing a woman. She is threatened to have some secret about herself revealed to her husband who travels alot for his work and is not around. Much of the episode, we as the viewer try to guess what could be her secret since the woman isn't sure herself. We also follow Marker playing a cat and mouse game with the people he suspects are behind it all. It turns out her husband was an excon and the blackmailer knew him from prison, saw he had done well financially since his release and decided to pretend to have something on his wife to get some money out of them. Marker and the husband learn this after setting up a payoff and staking out the dropoff to see who picks up the money. The husband, feeling the anticipated anger also feels conflicted given that the wouldbe blackmailer is a fellow excon who clearly was not doing well since being released. An unexpected act of kindness occurs instead of an expected act of violence. Conflicted sums up how many of these episodes end. Like life, not much is cut and dry. These stories are no different.

The Thames television episodes are out of print on DVD but are probably still in rerun and on streaming sites somewhere but the ABC series during the first 4 years are almost entirely gone. That is roughly 40 episodes which were on tapes that were wiped as per the policy in those days for much of British television and unlike Doctor Who or the Avengers, I think it unlikely these missing episodes will turn up in some dusty film cans in an abandoned TV studio in Bangladesh or Tanzania. Appreciating what still exists from this series isn't difficult. As I said, entertainment is not of this quality anymore. So much focus is centered on everything EXCEPT what's most important, the quality of the story.

Public Eye was a fine series and deserves a place in the British TV Hall of Fame. Luckily, it's available on DVD, and the British channel Talking Pictures TV shows it regularly.

It was part of Alfred Burke's brilliance in the part that Frank Marker was a character with no real character traits. We knew nothing about his background, a mystery which was never solved for us by the writers. Originally, the character of Marker was going to be a tough, Lee Marvin figure, but casting Burke was an inspired move on the part of the producers. With his lined, seen-it-all face and his sensitive, laconic manner, Burke rooted the concept firmly in reality. Marker dealt with the dark, petty underbelly of the world, and was only ever a few pounds short of bankruptcy. It seemed only natural that one day he would be arrested (framed for handling stolen goods) and go to prison (ending the original ABC TV series). When he emerged some time later (Thames TV taking over production), Marker has quit Birmingham for seedy Brighton for a masterly 1969 series entirely penned by Roger Marshall. Here, Marker is dealing as much with the repercussions of his own lonely, solitary character as he is with the shadow of prison. Later (with the advent of colour TV), the character moved from there to the more upmarket locale of Windsor, where for a time he became partners with the sharp, ambitious alpha-male Ron Gash.

Marker always eschewed the term "detective" in his dealings with clients, preferring the term that real British private eyes use, "enquiry agent"; at a stroke, this narrative move cut Public Eye off from all other detective series and encouraged a more downbeat approach. In this, it followed its source: Anthony Marriott was a real-life enquiry agent whose techniques and experiences were the basis of the show. A movie made from the material might have been a British classic.

One other point: the haunting bluesy theme for some reason is rarely mentioned, was never released on record, and is not credited on IMDb.com. It is by veteran TV bandleader Bob Sharples (under the pseudonym Robert Earley).

I really wish the first 3 seasons of this were available today as the rest are an understated, measured joy, especially season 4.

Really, it is all down to Alfred Burke (well, and Pauline Delaney in season 4) who puts in an understated, measured performance that is a joy to watch. Frankly, at the moment, I can't think of a better low rent police/crime TV star. OK, there are dud episodes. OK, the foils after Pauline Delaney are never as good But Burke just keeps on giving.

I think a lot of credit must go as well to the creators/writers who set a just so mood. Even down to perfectly matched theme music.

Thoroughly deserves t better known than it is.