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.

Another of my most fondly remembered shows from my pre-teen years was this stablemate of other favourites like The Champions, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and others.

With a premise, as the DVD box-set claims, not a million miles away from the much later "X-Files" or "Jonathan Creek", only without the creepiness, the intrepid trio of flamboyant ladies-man novelist Jason King (archly played by Peter Wyngarde), straight-arrow Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) and attractive computer geek Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) get called in to solve the cases that MI5, the FBI or Surete reject.

Cue a series of well-crafted 50 minute adventures, often populated by the usual roster of ITC-series supporting actors, top and tailed with another superb theme-tune.

My brother has just bought me the DVD box-set of this show and unlike most DVD box-sets, this won't sit buried away in the cupboard but will certainly be watched, each and every one, critical judgement suspended as I transport myself back to my eight-year-old self lying in front of our family television, raptly gazing up at shows such as this.

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.

The reason why there are so many men called 'Jason' and to a lesser extent 'Stewart' are about, of a certain age. This popular series was highly influential in its time. So how does it stand up in 2006? The good points are,the leads are just great! the outfits, style and look of the series are still superb and when Dennis Spooner and his writing team's wonderful imagination is allowed to strain at the leash of the budget , then we get some wacky villains and ahead of its time plots and gadgets. Here we come to the main problem of the series, the stingy, always looking for ways to cut corners budget. You can see that Spooner wanted to take the series towards fantasy, while the producer was happy with B picture style crime. The result is when the producer uses his own ensemble pals of directors. some of the dullest and tatty (plot wise) episodes are produced. While in the hands of brought in directors we see Dept S at its best.

Rosemary Nichols apparently got the humph making this series and its not hard to see why , as an intelligent actress she is terribly underused, however we get to see her legs quite a bit, which is perhaps a delightful compensation?.

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.