Pros Watch - A Stirring Of Dust
I tried to post this Monday and then there was a family crisis type thing that I had to try and sort out (not a chance, sadly!), then I tried to post this yesterday and there was an other-half job crisis type thing (oh dear, doesn't everything just happen at once? And how come my computer is the only one everyone can use??!) and now I think I have 10 minutes spare and I can’t help peering over my shoulder. Hmm - all quiet. Ominous, I think. However, I'm determined to post this so hopefully all will stay peaceful for a bit... *g*
The DVD says: “A sort of homecoming… A traitor has recently returned to Britain, but no one’s pleased to see him. Indeed, if Bodie and Doyle don’t find him before those he betrayed do, then he’s a dead man…”
That last sentence is rather clumsy, but old dusty spies and general espionage sounds rather exciting…
Oh those white cliffs of Dover and a happy old bloke gazing at them from the ferry. A big car draws up - hmm… looks like around the back of London Bridge, near the Thames. (Quick check - not far off! It was Chambers St, SE16), Love the way the car dips when the big bloke gets out - too many pies, Tovarich? Military drums - love the three baddies walking up and then you see Cowley, and the drums do an extra special flourish on seeing Doyle and Bodie. Ta-da-da-dahhhh!
Cue... Theme!!
The only thing lacking from Thomas Darby’s spy kit are dark glasses as he gets off the ferry. Still, back to the warehouse and the exchange of secrets. But the exchange going on behind Cowley’s back is much better - love the lowered voices and oh-so-casual topics - this is standard ‘around the water cooler’ office gossip - except their office is a dusty broken warehouse, and the colleagues are comrades with guns. Love it. Also love Doyle’s expression and grin at calling Bodie a ‘moron’ - you get a real sense of affection.
I wonder if this was the pictured scenario should Kim Philby (a British Intelligence gent who turned out to be a spy for the KGB) ever had tried a come back… however Thomas Darby is dying, apparently. Perhaps that is what the British public at the time wished of Philby!
I love the way B & D presume the Russians don’t understand them - all that ‘Liverpool for the cup’ and ‘keep taking the pills’! And then the walk back to the car - oh that exchanged smile when Bodie says ‘it didn’t seem to me like you were getting much’ to Cowley - such rude minds these lads have!
Oh-ho! The writers meant Kim Philby all right! Look at Cowley’s speech:
‘Furnell, MacNaught and Tom Darby, the arch defectors twenty years ago… Tom Darby was always the big one. Colonel, KGB. Undercover since his university days. Hard-core double agent. Top man in our own Section 9, SIS…’
And in real life? Burgess, Maclean and Philby were the arch defectors twenty years ago (to when the ep was filmed). Philby was the ‘big one’, undercover since his University days (he went to Cambridge), can definitely be described as a ‘hard-core double agent’ - and he was the top man of our own Section D, SIS - then head of Section V, and finally appointed as head of Section IX - counter-espionage against the Soviet Union. The Russians must have been thrilled.
Back to ep… Lots of nice little looks between B & D in this scene - love the way it all swirls underneath Cowley’s radar.
I love it when Lew grins… he just looks so boyishly unashamedly happy.
And Cowley’s ‘wrong!’ to Bodie’s reminisces of junior school (in 195--?), and Doyle’s sudden grin and the way he fights to straighten his face, and then that look up…
I also like the way Bodie gestures to which side of the car they should go in -
- why did they do that, and why didn’t Doyle just follow Cowley around, being nearer that side? Maybe they have favourite sides of the back seat… oh - but Doyle is next to Cowley on the back seat. *scrubs brain quickly*
The spy seats opposite the vicar in a train...
- of course! I always bump into vicars on trains - blooming menace they are.
Cowley knows Darby is in, and has put a red clothes line on it… oh, red close down. So that means the press cannot report it (a ‘D’ notice then?). Aye, the ‘fourth’ man… (In real life speculation was about ‘the fifth!’) - like Doyle’s ‘so who’s he?’ question - well, exactly! I do love the background through the car window as they travel through London - motorcyclists, a lorry carrying cars, red buses - somehow London looks more like London back then - a postcard place of red phone boxes.
Lovely sun coming in from the left…’his life wouldn’t be worth a bent penny’. Nice!
Hmm, O’Leary has Bodie’s brown leather jacket on. And just how many men are hanging around in cream jackets?! Spies everywhere!
The slide show - old piccies. Why would Eileen Pierce be going for a walk down the back alleys? And every picture of ‘Arthur Pulford, solicitor’ shows him hanging around looking suspicious - although that is better than the purposeful marching in a bowler hat as done by Paul Cantwell.
Good old cabbies - give that one any longer and he’d have figured out Darby was a spy and ran him in to Scotland Yard.
I love Brigadier Stadden... reminds me of my old grandad!
...and the actor who played him had such a deep rolling rich voice. (Apparently he died three days after the ep’s transmission - this was his last role). And Stadden is still ruthless, despite the tartan blanket. He’d kill him… ‘sentimentality is a mortal handicap for spies’ - and I like the way Stadden knows more than they do - that Eileen Pierce is dead - and that Cowley need his information. And Doyle’s smile at the ‘new boys’ comment!
Stadden calls another old boy - gosh, working for the ‘civil service’ looks a straight route to living in a cardboard box when you retire by the looks of his room. No wonder everyone moans about their pension!
Forrester has been killed - and rather solid looking agent ‘Lewis’ finds the target photo - such a handy thing for assassins to carry around. Oh hello - Doyle has been off and had a perm mid-ep.
I like the way Cowley obviously has the ‘ears of a hawk’ to pick up on Bodie’s earlier dust comment - and Bodie’s rather startled look that Cowley had heard him! And the ‘you knew a bloody fool’ comment - woah Cowley, steady on!
Old boy spy (let’s call him Lurch) goes to see Elsa, old girl spy. She also lives a rather frugal existence as well… Helen finally meets her father - that’s some headscarf she has on. I quite like this actress in both her Pros roles - she is quite believable. Oh but Lurch is there! Still who cares. Bodie and Doyle are in the car…
...mmm. Love these lines:
BODIE: Ah, relax.
DOYLE: What, lift my mind onto a higher transcendental plane?
BODIE: Yeah.
It’s that ‘yeah’ - ‘course he meant that Doyle, what else? Derr… And ah, ‘Flirty Gert’ - there is a really loud train line around where they are parked - you can hear an express train going through. Doyle’s hair grows out his perm quickly...
Lurch is still trying his best. His best sucks, sadly.
Really nasty net curtains...
- the sort you’d spend ages trying to detangle the cat from yet another paw / head / tail incident.
But Doyle is in… although the creaking door gives him away - yet he smiles as he knows where that baddie is!
Whomp!
Whoops - whomp again…
I like the way Stadden tries to hide the fact there was a manuscript, at first, anyway. Red Spy At Night is a brilliant title (it was the name of a play by Robert King in 1972 - hmm, and a book in 1978! Not by Thomas Darby though…).
I never knew hit-men were so amiable to work together… Ooo but Doyle! All tied up… and look at that peach of a bottom!
...
...
Is there any point continuing? Ok, once last stare…
Right. Some sort of plot thing. Bodie sees Helen, and purposefully beeps his RT. The baddies know this means she is coming (naturally - all beeps mean that) and get ready. O’Leary is pretty mean - a nice chatty manner yet a right nasty piece of work.
But Doyle gets one of them…
A flying baddie is the signal Bodie needs to tear across the road and over the wall…
And Doyle’s angry muffled yell! Poor Martin’s finger… bet Lew was a bit antsy cutting that rope again!
Doyle is free - but the baddie has Helen.
Little pat from Bodie…
and the lads are all legs.
Running in sync…
Bodie being amazingly Bodie… (and in honour of LC's birthday... *g* Please click it twice to see full effect!)
Oh that Capri though… apparently Capri’s in general are a right bugger to drive, as they can’t handle corners very well - this wobbly skid just proves it!
Lurch has found Darby. I like the way he says he thinks of him ‘whenever there is a chill in the air’ - a nice way to hint at old bullet / torture wounds without spelling it out. The Russians stop B & D’s car chase - how did the Russians know? Oh… the banker has called in the Russians, as the banker is top KGB bloke. Ok, got it.
Like Cowley’s ‘just beautiful, isn’t it?’ comment! I like his angry wiggle - (gosh, Cowley has an angry wiggle. And I like it. Worrying…). He is not best pleased with his top two agents.
Top two agents are not best pleased either.
I like the narration by the old spy about what possibly happened to Elsa… and Cowley knows full well these old spies can do away with Darby. ‘Not going to be playing tiddlywinks’ - another fab line!
Off to the solicitors… O’Leary is there going through it all. Helen sobbing in the corner… Oh, Doyle’s perm is back.
Love the way they play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ to decide who goes first.
Doyle loses…
O’Leary fires with his head down, but then Bodie counts to three, and - BAM!
‘That’s Helen Pierce - she’s pretty shaken’ - hahaha. Even Cowley points out that is a bit of an understatement, as she wails in the corner.
Bodie’s ‘is it?’ - perfect.
And Doyle looks all… …slanted light looks good on him. (heee! Doesn't she just?!)
Oh - it’s the marching bowler hat man - he is the banker! ‘Lewis’ does something right for once. Meanwhile Thomas Darby is in the hands of the old mob - like the way they sit there like a hanging party, with the clock slowly ticking in the background. So Darby is dead - natural causes (although he is still breathing by the way. That sort of dead). Shame Cowley didn’t let Stadden read the manuscript though…
Back to the dusty warehouse, this time with Darby’s coffin. And in the background is the awful ugly hotel that was Tony Logan-Blake’s office in Not A Very Civil Civil Servant… (between Cowley and Bodie).
And I love the shaking hands and ‘next time we’ll ram your bloody car’ and the ‘up the Moscow Dynamo’s’ lines! Nice ending…
I actually liked this episode a lot more than I recalled. The plot is good, and the lads look good, and Stadden and co are suitably impressive as the old guard. Mixed in with a bit of real life history, and this is a fave with me.
The DVD says: “A sort of homecoming… A traitor has recently returned to Britain, but no one’s pleased to see him. Indeed, if Bodie and Doyle don’t find him before those he betrayed do, then he’s a dead man…”
That last sentence is rather clumsy, but old dusty spies and general espionage sounds rather exciting…
Oh those white cliffs of Dover and a happy old bloke gazing at them from the ferry. A big car draws up - hmm… looks like around the back of London Bridge, near the Thames. (Quick check - not far off! It was Chambers St, SE16), Love the way the car dips when the big bloke gets out - too many pies, Tovarich? Military drums - love the three baddies walking up and then you see Cowley, and the drums do an extra special flourish on seeing Doyle and Bodie. Ta-da-da-dahhhh!
Cue... Theme!!
The only thing lacking from Thomas Darby’s spy kit are dark glasses as he gets off the ferry. Still, back to the warehouse and the exchange of secrets. But the exchange going on behind Cowley’s back is much better - love the lowered voices and oh-so-casual topics - this is standard ‘around the water cooler’ office gossip - except their office is a dusty broken warehouse, and the colleagues are comrades with guns. Love it. Also love Doyle’s expression and grin at calling Bodie a ‘moron’ - you get a real sense of affection.
I wonder if this was the pictured scenario should Kim Philby (a British Intelligence gent who turned out to be a spy for the KGB) ever had tried a come back… however Thomas Darby is dying, apparently. Perhaps that is what the British public at the time wished of Philby!
I love the way B & D presume the Russians don’t understand them - all that ‘Liverpool for the cup’ and ‘keep taking the pills’! And then the walk back to the car - oh that exchanged smile when Bodie says ‘it didn’t seem to me like you were getting much’ to Cowley - such rude minds these lads have!
Oh-ho! The writers meant Kim Philby all right! Look at Cowley’s speech:
‘Furnell, MacNaught and Tom Darby, the arch defectors twenty years ago… Tom Darby was always the big one. Colonel, KGB. Undercover since his university days. Hard-core double agent. Top man in our own Section 9, SIS…’
And in real life? Burgess, Maclean and Philby were the arch defectors twenty years ago (to when the ep was filmed). Philby was the ‘big one’, undercover since his University days (he went to Cambridge), can definitely be described as a ‘hard-core double agent’ - and he was the top man of our own Section D, SIS - then head of Section V, and finally appointed as head of Section IX - counter-espionage against the Soviet Union. The Russians must have been thrilled.
Back to ep… Lots of nice little looks between B & D in this scene - love the way it all swirls underneath Cowley’s radar.
I love it when Lew grins… he just looks so boyishly unashamedly happy.
And Cowley’s ‘wrong!’ to Bodie’s reminisces of junior school (in 195--?), and Doyle’s sudden grin and the way he fights to straighten his face, and then that look up…
I also like the way Bodie gestures to which side of the car they should go in -
- why did they do that, and why didn’t Doyle just follow Cowley around, being nearer that side? Maybe they have favourite sides of the back seat… oh - but Doyle is next to Cowley on the back seat. *scrubs brain quickly*
The spy seats opposite the vicar in a train...
- of course! I always bump into vicars on trains - blooming menace they are.
Cowley knows Darby is in, and has put a red clothes line on it… oh, red close down. So that means the press cannot report it (a ‘D’ notice then?). Aye, the ‘fourth’ man… (In real life speculation was about ‘the fifth!’) - like Doyle’s ‘so who’s he?’ question - well, exactly! I do love the background through the car window as they travel through London - motorcyclists, a lorry carrying cars, red buses - somehow London looks more like London back then - a postcard place of red phone boxes.
Lovely sun coming in from the left…’his life wouldn’t be worth a bent penny’. Nice!
Hmm, O’Leary has Bodie’s brown leather jacket on. And just how many men are hanging around in cream jackets?! Spies everywhere!
The slide show - old piccies. Why would Eileen Pierce be going for a walk down the back alleys? And every picture of ‘Arthur Pulford, solicitor’ shows him hanging around looking suspicious - although that is better than the purposeful marching in a bowler hat as done by Paul Cantwell.
Good old cabbies - give that one any longer and he’d have figured out Darby was a spy and ran him in to Scotland Yard.
I love Brigadier Stadden... reminds me of my old grandad!
...and the actor who played him had such a deep rolling rich voice. (Apparently he died three days after the ep’s transmission - this was his last role). And Stadden is still ruthless, despite the tartan blanket. He’d kill him… ‘sentimentality is a mortal handicap for spies’ - and I like the way Stadden knows more than they do - that Eileen Pierce is dead - and that Cowley need his information. And Doyle’s smile at the ‘new boys’ comment!
Stadden calls another old boy - gosh, working for the ‘civil service’ looks a straight route to living in a cardboard box when you retire by the looks of his room. No wonder everyone moans about their pension!
Forrester has been killed - and rather solid looking agent ‘Lewis’ finds the target photo - such a handy thing for assassins to carry around. Oh hello - Doyle has been off and had a perm mid-ep.
I like the way Cowley obviously has the ‘ears of a hawk’ to pick up on Bodie’s earlier dust comment - and Bodie’s rather startled look that Cowley had heard him! And the ‘you knew a bloody fool’ comment - woah Cowley, steady on!
Old boy spy (let’s call him Lurch) goes to see Elsa, old girl spy. She also lives a rather frugal existence as well… Helen finally meets her father - that’s some headscarf she has on. I quite like this actress in both her Pros roles - she is quite believable. Oh but Lurch is there! Still who cares. Bodie and Doyle are in the car…
...mmm. Love these lines:
BODIE: Ah, relax.
DOYLE: What, lift my mind onto a higher transcendental plane?
BODIE: Yeah.
It’s that ‘yeah’ - ‘course he meant that Doyle, what else? Derr… And ah, ‘Flirty Gert’ - there is a really loud train line around where they are parked - you can hear an express train going through. Doyle’s hair grows out his perm quickly...
Lurch is still trying his best. His best sucks, sadly.
Really nasty net curtains...
- the sort you’d spend ages trying to detangle the cat from yet another paw / head / tail incident.
But Doyle is in… although the creaking door gives him away - yet he smiles as he knows where that baddie is!
Whomp!
Whoops - whomp again…
I like the way Stadden tries to hide the fact there was a manuscript, at first, anyway. Red Spy At Night is a brilliant title (it was the name of a play by Robert King in 1972 - hmm, and a book in 1978! Not by Thomas Darby though…).
I never knew hit-men were so amiable to work together… Ooo but Doyle! All tied up… and look at that peach of a bottom!
...
...
Is there any point continuing? Ok, once last stare…
Right. Some sort of plot thing. Bodie sees Helen, and purposefully beeps his RT. The baddies know this means she is coming (naturally - all beeps mean that) and get ready. O’Leary is pretty mean - a nice chatty manner yet a right nasty piece of work.
But Doyle gets one of them…
A flying baddie is the signal Bodie needs to tear across the road and over the wall…
And Doyle’s angry muffled yell! Poor Martin’s finger… bet Lew was a bit antsy cutting that rope again!
Doyle is free - but the baddie has Helen.
Little pat from Bodie…
and the lads are all legs.
Running in sync…
Bodie being amazingly Bodie… (and in honour of LC's birthday... *g* Please click it twice to see full effect!)
Oh that Capri though… apparently Capri’s in general are a right bugger to drive, as they can’t handle corners very well - this wobbly skid just proves it!
Lurch has found Darby. I like the way he says he thinks of him ‘whenever there is a chill in the air’ - a nice way to hint at old bullet / torture wounds without spelling it out. The Russians stop B & D’s car chase - how did the Russians know? Oh… the banker has called in the Russians, as the banker is top KGB bloke. Ok, got it.
Like Cowley’s ‘just beautiful, isn’t it?’ comment! I like his angry wiggle - (gosh, Cowley has an angry wiggle. And I like it. Worrying…). He is not best pleased with his top two agents.
Top two agents are not best pleased either.
I like the narration by the old spy about what possibly happened to Elsa… and Cowley knows full well these old spies can do away with Darby. ‘Not going to be playing tiddlywinks’ - another fab line!
Off to the solicitors… O’Leary is there going through it all. Helen sobbing in the corner… Oh, Doyle’s perm is back.
Love the way they play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ to decide who goes first.
Doyle loses…
O’Leary fires with his head down, but then Bodie counts to three, and - BAM!
‘That’s Helen Pierce - she’s pretty shaken’ - hahaha. Even Cowley points out that is a bit of an understatement, as she wails in the corner.
Bodie’s ‘is it?’ - perfect.
And Doyle looks all… …slanted light looks good on him. (heee! Doesn't she just?!)
Oh - it’s the marching bowler hat man - he is the banker! ‘Lewis’ does something right for once. Meanwhile Thomas Darby is in the hands of the old mob - like the way they sit there like a hanging party, with the clock slowly ticking in the background. So Darby is dead - natural causes (although he is still breathing by the way. That sort of dead). Shame Cowley didn’t let Stadden read the manuscript though…
Back to the dusty warehouse, this time with Darby’s coffin. And in the background is the awful ugly hotel that was Tony Logan-Blake’s office in Not A Very Civil Civil Servant… (between Cowley and Bodie).
And I love the shaking hands and ‘next time we’ll ram your bloody car’ and the ‘up the Moscow Dynamo’s’ lines! Nice ending…
I actually liked this episode a lot more than I recalled. The plot is good, and the lads look good, and Stadden and co are suitably impressive as the old guard. Mixed in with a bit of real life history, and this is a fave with me.