The Professionals was a fair-to-middling 1970's TV actioner series concerned with the fictional government department, CI5 - apparently consisting of just 3 people - responsible for confounding the knavish plots of a variety of generic foreigners. It involved much thrashing about in a selection of British Ford motorcars of the day plus frequent running, shouting and shooting. At the top was veteran pro, Gordon Jackson, with a known face guesting in each episode.
This episode stands out on a number of counts: it is entirely domestic and seemingly smaller scale. It has quite an impressive complement of guest acting talent who acquit themselves well. It has a sharper more savvy script than usual dealing with corruption (government building contracts) in both usual and not so usual places. And the Ford Capri spends most of the time out of shot. This time the baddies are a very urbane very senior servant (Harold Innocent), a local councillor (played with great relish by Peter Woodthorpe) and an exceedingly rich landed Knight (Maurice Denham). The script additionally gives Gordon Jackson more interesting things to do such as insult and threaten a government minister. The cast also includes respected actors Lyndon Brook and Bill Fraser. All in all a considerably more ambitious production than usual and not a single Viva Zapata moustache in sight.
This episode stands out on a number of counts: it is entirely domestic and seemingly smaller scale. It has quite an impressive complement of guest acting talent who acquit themselves well. It has a sharper more savvy script than usual dealing with corruption (government building contracts) in both usual and not so usual places. And the Ford Capri spends most of the time out of shot. This time the baddies are a very urbane very senior servant (Harold Innocent), a local councillor (played with great relish by Peter Woodthorpe) and an exceedingly rich landed Knight (Maurice Denham). The script additionally gives Gordon Jackson more interesting things to do such as insult and threaten a government minister. The cast also includes respected actors Lyndon Brook and Bill Fraser. All in all a considerably more ambitious production than usual and not a single Viva Zapata moustache in sight.