Frequently
seen as a natural companion to The
Sweeney or the later Dempsey and Makepeace, The Professionals
was a hugely successful attempt by British TV to ape the action
and drama of
American police series. Even today, The
Professionals is remembered as a balls-out
testosterone-fuelled romp that didn't bother with
such niceties as moral dilemmas or police
procedure but did deal in huge hand-guns, Ford
Capris with squealing tires and a Kevin Keagan
look-a-like in very tight trousers. But does it
stand up to scrutiny for a modern audience?
Firstly, the series
is socially archaic. There
is one particularly ugly moment where Bodie and
Doyle seem to be putting pressure on a gay arms
merchant, threatening to out him if he doesn't
give them the information they want. Similarly,
the female parts are frequently tiny and tend to
fall foul of the writers' Madonna/Whore complex
and fall into the roles of victim or girlfriend a
little too easily. However, while this may have
been grounds for condemning the show in the 70's
it feels a little uncharitable to do so now. The
social attitudes on display here are no more
archaic and ridiculous than the ridiculous
fashions. In fact, it could well be argued that
the Professionals is an interesting piece of
social history.
Secondly, some argue that the series is stupid.
When you compare The Professionals to the likes
of The Sweeney you see no moral ambiguities and
no office politics. Bodie and Doyle are always
in the right and are always facing evildoers.
Their investigations are simplistic in that,
unlike Columbo, there's never a whodunit element
to any of the plots. However, if you look at the
enemies and the situations Bodie and Doyle face
you actually see some intelligence at work.
Rather than facing an endless horde of faceless
criminals, The Professionals features Soviet
Block defections, Communist terrorism and even
something that might nowadays be called
post-traumatic stress. Clearly while the
Professionals didn't do noir as well as The
Sweeney or detective work as well as the likes of
Columbo, it did try to confront issues and themes
that were topical at the time. But what of the
famed testosterone? Actually despite having a
reputation for mindless action, the pacing of The
Professionals is rather sedate. Not having
procedure or politics to fall back on, the
writers opted to have Bodie and Doyle jump
through meaningless hoops. Most of the episodes
are spent doing legwork and the action scenes
tend to be short and limited to maybe two per
episode. The meandering but undemanding plots
actually manage to make the pacing of series seem
sedate and slow and even dull at times. Far from
being a Seventies version of the Shield, The
Professionals actually resembles The Bill.
Despite its reputation for being stupid and all
about explosions, The Professionals actually
finds itself neither one thing nor the other.
The plots lack the depth or the complexity to
make the episodes work as drama and the pacing is too slow to
make the series work as an A-Team
style action series. This is a pity as there was
room for the Professionals to be more than an
empty low-fi action series.
The series benefited
from a gifted cast.
Experienced character actor Gordon Jackson
stepped from Upstairs Downstairs into the shoes
of the ever-grumpy Cowley. Meanwhile Doyle's
Martin Shaw would go on to play Judge John Deed
showing that he too had the talent to be a proper
character actor (in fact Shaw spent most of the
nineties complaining about his restrictive
Professionals contract preventing him from
spreading his wings). Despite the sedate and
meandering plots and the quality actors, the
writing for The Professionals remained stubbornly
functional. Despite being flabbily plotted, the
episodes refused to make room for sub-plots,
character development or even witty exchanges.
The characters of Bodie and Doyle are in fact so
poorly written that their lines are basically
interchangeable. Many fans argue that the third
series saw the Professionals "jump the shark" as
the actors started to demand more say in the
writing and it is easy to see why. If the
writers had engaged in only a tiny bit more
character development, the Professionals would
appear less flabby and a good deal less stupid.
Instead, the writing and the acting is reminiscent of that line
in The Lord of the Rings about too little butter spread out
over a slice of toast.
The Spartan nature
of the writing also extends to
the series' design. The Professionals is not
gritty, in fact at the time it was seen as
somewhat glamorous, but it nicely conveys a
Britain very different to the Britain of today.
The CI5 offices look like abandoned council
offices (complete with holes in the walls) and
the famous Ford Capris come in browns and greys
and look so fantastically cheap and unsexy it's
amazing to think that a whole generation grew up
wanting one.
The Professionals
is undoubtedly a series that
does not deserve its reputation. Hailed by the
nostalgia industry as 70's glamour and action it
is instead slow, cheap and decidedly dingy.
Despite having room for intelligence and an
awareness of the social and political issues
facing Britain in the late 70's, the writers
clearly wanted nothing more than to make low-brow
action TV but clearly did not have the resources
to make it. So where we should have glamour,
danger and action we have the odd car chase, the
odd fight and some truly fantastically ugly
clothes, buildings and cars. However, the dated
quality of the design and writing is not a
complete loss. Whereas many TV dramas attempted to be ageless,
The Professionals was clearly written to be something of the
now. The downside to this is that 25 years later it seems hokey
and dated but the plus side is that the series
manages to be an intriguing piece of social
history. Apparently in 1979 it was perfectly
acceptable to victimise someone for being gay,
apparently women were very much the weaker sex
and communism was a real global threat. If
you're looking for nostalgia then I can't think
of a better DVD box to buy because this series is
so "of its time" that it is almost funny.
However, if you're looking for decent
action-packed TV go and buy the Shield instead
because this is actually quite boring.
PICTURE & SOUND
The remastering process
has clearly worked quite
well. Comparison photos reveal that the colours
of the new DVDs tend less towards the grey and
give a sharper and more defined image. The sound
is also improved but still limited by the technology of the
day.
Star Rating = 2.
BONUS FEATURES
None. This is somewhat
disappointing given that
previous collections in the Remastered re-edition
series boasted interviews and featurettes. The
review DVDs came with no extras and the notes
contained no mention of them either. So it would
appear that this DVD collection comes with no
extras at all. Not a jot. Not a sausage.
OVERALL
The main value of
this DVD set is the nostalgia
market. However, unlike I Claudius or The Ascent
of Man, The Professionals has no real value as a
piece of TV in and of itself. The series is only
worth buying if you want to relive your old TV
memories. However, at £39.99, this DVD set is
only slightly less expensive than a DVD box set
release of a current series. It is too expensive
for a casual buyer or someone whose desire for
nostalgia is still at reasonable levels. The
remastering, while clearly well carried out, is
still only a remaster of a cheaply made 70's TV
series. It's hardly Citizen Kane. All things
considered, give it a miss.
