ORIGINAL WAS a top MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE UK-style Bentleys and fist-fights spy thrillah, with JOEL FABIANI, ROSEMARY NICHOLS and most importantly PETER WYNGARDE, a long-time swarthy baddie in THE SAINT who mutated off into JASON KING. Crazy big band music and seventies graphics, fingers on typewriter keys, etc. King was chief investigator of Department S, the branch of Interpol which specialised in solving unsolvable cases. His other pastime was writing detective fiction featuring a character called Mark Caine, whom King used to pretend to be to help him solve the cases. Long hair, droopy ‘bandito’ moustache, King was a vain, seventies playboy who wore clothes only Noel Edmonds would wear nowadays (and does) and managed to irritate his fellow detectives with his unconventional antics. Thanks to this programme Wyngarde became the most popular man in Germany. Viewers fed up with Roger Moore’s Saint kicking the giblets out of up to three blokes at a time then straightening his tie with not a hair out of place, were charmed into this one because King always got the boot in the baddie’s face first, but invariably he was given a good hiding and passed out artfully reaching for a fag or some brandy. Baddies were identifiable by their short-back-and-sides. Swilled brandy, wore frilly shirts, kaftans, and eau de cologne; quite an admission in those pre-Brut days. Entertained glamorous but oddly sexless women (they all were then, except FELICITY KENDAL who appeared as a young Frenchwoman). The spin-off concentrated even more on the debauched and hedonistic lifestyle of our hero who by this time was a freelance, with an even greater selection of implausible plots in glamorous locations (how many times has that panoramic view of Monte Carlo been used?).
Arthur Nibble
February 4, 2010 at 1:54 pm
As the after shave advert used to say – “Peter Wyngarde smells…..great!”
Felicity Kendal as a French woman? Up goes the blood pressure again!
Richard1631978
March 27, 2018 at 7:25 pm
Hopefully her being french was better than her efforts to be American in Honey For Tea
Paul
February 4, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Tie-knots grew visibly wider as the series progressed
Glenn Aylett
September 11, 2019 at 9:23 pm
Well you had Jason King in his vivid purple shirts and ties, which added to the fun. Also a crimefighter who was a sozzled lounge lizard was quite unique and who once had the great line to someone who wanted to expel him from a foreign country that he refused to travel economy class back home had something going for him. Come on, ITV 4, you know you want to re run Jason King, so why not.
richardpd
September 12, 2019 at 1:28 pm
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) has been re-run recently, so there’s hope.
Both series were made at the same time, & shared both personnel & cars. The white Vauxhalls are the ones that stand out.
Glenn Aylett
September 12, 2019 at 9:01 pm
Randall and Hopkirk used Vauxhall Victors, when they were new and cutting edge, but a car that was often used a decade later in The Professionals and usually destroyed as they were completely worthless. Similarly sixties Jags had the same fate in The Sweeney.
I think shows like Jason King, The Persuaders and The Protectors were the last of their kind, a sort of continuation of the hedonistic sixties, but come 1974, when the economy went into recession and things weren’t very hedonistic, then it was tough police shows where cops bashed heads and someone like Jason King was out of place. Certainly no more trips to Monte Carlo when there was an armed robbery happening in Shepherd’s Bush
Richardpd
April 6, 2024 at 12:49 pm
I can’t remember the BBC buying this up when they purchased a job lot of ITC shows in the early 1990s. Bravo did screen it around the same time when they were an oldies channel.
Peter Wyngarde lived an interesting life, spending most of the Second World War in a Tenko style interment camp & picking up a taste for acting while performing in morale boosting concert parties. This lead to him becoming a professional actor & gradually working his way up the cast lists.
Originally the character of Jason King was going to be a middle aged man smoking a pipe & wearing a tweed jacket, but Wyngarde persuaded the production team to make the character a dandy.
It’s telling that the solo Jason King series was at the tail end of the ITC thriller era by being made in 16mm film as they weren’t bothering to market it in the USA.
Wyngarde never seemed to be able to escape the character of Jason King, especially after being caught cottaging in the toilets at Gloucester Bus Station left him stuck in bit parts!
During the 1990s he had a slight revival thinks the above repeats & nostalgia for the era, but soon lost credibility by getting on the wrong side of the post Dunblane debate on gun ownership!
George White
April 6, 2024 at 2:32 pm
Department S didn’t sell to the US particularly well (it played in Canada, but in the US, only reached 28 out of 200-odd markets/stations, including major stations in NYC and LA, while the likes of the Baron, Dangerman/The Prisoner, the Saint, the Champions, Strange report, the Zoo Gang, the Persuaders got network runs). By 1972, aside from a few aforementioned shows, it was mainly syndication/network access aimed shows like The Protectors and the Adventurer.
Richardpd
April 7, 2024 at 11:13 am
One of the big changes with British programming being sold in the USA was the growth of PBS stations & the BBC starting to make programmes in colour, which lost ITC their niche somewhat.
Glenn Aylett
April 7, 2024 at 7:35 pm
It was one of the last shows of its kind, a glamourous private detective with plenty of money, a love of the the finer things in life, beautiful women and exotic locations. By the depressed mid seventies, Jason King would have been very out of place and probably retired into tax exile in Monte Carlo.
I can remember when The Avengers was revived in 1976-77, and the campness, the fantasy elements and humour were really dialled down in favour of harder edged stories and more realism as befitted the times. Still enjoyed The New Avengers, but it lacked the charm of the sixties series and Steed had a smaller role.
Richardpd
April 7, 2024 at 9:52 pm
I imagine it was because Patrick McNee was too old to do many action scenes & Mike Gambit would have handled them.
Supposedly Peter Wyngarde preferred making Department S to Jason King, as he found he had to carry more of the story along, & wanted Joel Fabiani as a sidekick to share the load.
Glenn Aylett
April 8, 2024 at 1:36 pm
@ Richardpd, adding Mike Gambit added a new dynamic to The Avengers, he was a hard man probably more suited to The Professionals, but having a second male crimefighter, spoiled the unique relationship Steed had with his female companions. I suppose, though, London in 1976 was no longer swinging, the camp vibe of ten years earlier wouldn’t have worked and The Avengers were working in a nastier era.
Sidney Balmoral James
April 8, 2024 at 8:36 pm
Wyngarde was a fascinating, rather prickly character – and I believe turned down work in the 80s and after, when he could have done with the money – didn’t like guying the Jason King image. Was Alan Bates’ boyfriend for a while. Also, was in the same prison camp as J. G. Ballard. I wish someone would do a remake of Night of the Eagle – which is rather botched in execution – you could make a cracking modern film with that concept – a campus where witchcraft is used to further one’s career, or destroy those of your enemies, and a man forced to abjure his scepticism to confront it.