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Nostalgia TV
Having been given the DVD set of The Professionals, I've spent the last couple of weeks wallowing in nostalgia. How I love their vision of seventies Britain, all litter and derelict warehouses. What extraordinarily ugly suits Bodie wears! And the "cool" cars are tiny, and ony have two doors, so they have to tip the seat back before they can shove the villains in! The plotlines mostly have more holes than a colander, but last night I watched a goodie and couldn't resist writing about it. (Cut because I don't think anyone on my flist is A Professionals fan, assuming they've even heard of the show).
This is a terrific episode. I luuurve Thomas Darby! If I had an absentee father who suddenly popped up after 25 years, I'd want him to be just like that. What a sweetie! No wonder Helen fell for him straight away. And for once, the "wider picture" plot is worked out in detail, with a proper McGuffin ("Red Spy at Night" is such a brilliantly plausible title for a bestseller) and minor characters that I was happy to spend time with. Aside from the adorable Darby, we've got Brigadier Stadden, he of the splendid eyerolls and energetic knees, who sits on secrets and delights in letting them trickle out one at a time; and Sorenson, who I have to admit is a bit of a ham (especially when he's limping through the graveyard with a leer on his face, while the music swells dramatically) but nonethless gets my attention because in another incarnation he was Howarth in the series To Serve Them All My Days and I was very much in love with Howarth back in the day. I felt rather sorry for the actress playing Helen, though – I suspect the casting notes read "Get a screamer" and that's pretty much all she gets to do from the moment O'Leary nabs her. In the solicitor's office you can see her running right out of motivation but, like a trouper, still flinging herself about and howling piteously while O'Leary completely ignores her.
This is a remarkably tautly constructed episode, where most of the action and dialogue functions not only at the level of the plot but also explores various themes. Beginning, of course, with that central Pros theme, trust. "The KGB respects trust" says Yevshinksy portentously, and the camera cuts to a tape recorder and an R/T, listening in on the conversation. These Soviets, lying through their teeth. But it turns out that it isn't the Reds listening in, but CI5. This whole encounter is a game and both sides know the rules, know when betrayals and double crosses are to be expected, indeed allowed ("Of course they had to protect the Banker" Cowley tells Bodie and Doyle when they complain about the Russians stopping them from catching up with O'Leary). There's quite a lot of understated stress placed on the idea of counterparts – in the way the two groups are positioned to mirror each other in the exchange of information, in the way Bodie and Doyle step forward to shake hands with their opposite numbers and, delightfully, in the way they end up echoing each other's lines – "Liverpool for the cup!" says Russian Thug B gleefully after nearly ramming their car, and Bodie responds wearily "Da". All this sets us up for Darby's conversation with Sorenson about the damage he inflicted as a double agent. In his defence, Darby says, with considerable dignity, that he has been a serving officer with the KGB all his adult life – in other words, he wasn't a traitor, because he had always been faithful to his own side, the Soviets. And the episode seems to accept this as a valid moral argument, because Sorenson doesn't dispute it – he accepts that Darby had his own loyalties and was true to them – but instead focuses on the human cost of Darby's actions. It's not the fact that Darby betrayed his country that makes him hate him, it's the fact that he betrayed individual people, who suffered terribly in consequence.
Contrasting with the two sets of men on each "side" in the opening scene are the real bad guys of the piece, not the KGB, but the freelance assassins – "jackals" Cowley calls them contemptuously, and it's not just a pop culture reference, but carries the weight of moral disgust – and the man who's hired them. Unlike Bodie, Doyle and their Russian counterparts, these are people who owe allegiance to no-one but themselves, who are in the game for profit (it's not clear exactly how The Banker benefited from financing Darby, but since the KGB are planning to incarcerate him in Lublianka, they clearly don't regard him, unlike Darby, as a "good and faithful servant"). There's a lot of emphasis on teamwork in this ep. All the wonderful backchat between Bodie and Doyle points up how well they know each other, and there are lots of little moments when the two of them communicate non-verbally but with perfect understanding, beginning with the slightly odd moment when Bodie doesn't get into the car through the door he's standing next to, but signals to Doyle that they should change places, and culminating in their entry to the solicitor's office, where the entire attack is planned and carried out using hand signals and facial expressions. This contrasts with the complete lack of teamwork shown by the jackals – they may work together, but they aren't a unit, each man is in it for himself, and sure enough divided they fall. They disagree about how safe they are and leave each other alone, thus enabling Doyle to take out Callenari. (On a side note, I like the little games of chance the lads play, allowing fate to decide which of them will go in first – it has the slightly haunting implication that chance will also decide the outcome of the action, that every time it ends in triumph rather than disaster they're bucking the odds. And of course it's also a beautiful illustration of their relationship, as well as being great fun to watch – it's typical of this episode that everything that happens fulfils several functions).
Most Pros episode titles are straightforward references to the plot, but this one is unusual in that it plays consciously with the "Stirring of Dust" theme. Not only does Cowley pick up on Bodie's complaint about dust getting up his nose, he explicitly turns it into a metaphor for the past rising up and affecting the present. Darby is returning and suddenly issues twenty years dead are burningly relevant. But it stirs up more dust than even Cowley realises – no-one, least of all Darby, has reckoned with Darby's own personal ghosts, The Survivors, coming back to haunt him. And what a dusty lot they are – Stadden, Sorenson, Elsa – all of them with dessicated faces, all of them damaged and withered. And all of them ghosts, in the sense of not being able to let go of the past, of still living there rather than in the present their bodies inhabit. When Stadden rings Sorenson, the camera pulls back to show a tiny, bare room, devoid of any personal knick-knacks, apart from the gun in the bedside cupboard. It's as if Sorenson has been sitting there for years, just waiting for this particular phone call. The only thing he lives for is the chance to take revenge on Darby. And Elsa, too, seems trapped in the past, which is still so vividly present for her that she can't bear to speak of it.
The episode constantly reflects on the interaction between past and present. Darby arrives back in England, to find a country different from the one he remembers. There's a lovely shot of him disembarking from the ferry, in dapper trilby hat and trenchcoat, surrounded by youthful backpackers with enormous rucksacks. He's a bit like a ghost himself, lingering on in the present but really belonging to the long-gone past. He's forgotten everyday details, like which London train station serves Hertfordshire, and he's completely out of touch with current affairs – he doesn't even know about North Sea oil. The fact that he's dying is nicely echoed in the fact that one of his conversations is with a vicar – part of whose job is to help people across the boundary between life and death – and it's significant that his only encounter with his daughter takes place in a graveyard, where his mistress lies buried. It's a good performance by the actor – his reactions in these early scenes are a bit slow, a bit muted, as if his illness is consuming most of his energy. He doesn't "come to life" until he meets Helen.
Darby's expecting trouble. He knows what sort of forces are ranged against him, and he's confident that even in his weakened state he can take them on. He tells Helen that he still has an "instinct". But the camera gives him the lie by moving up to show us Sorenson, creeping up on his with a gun (in a lovely bit of foreshadowing, Sorenson is thwarted when a hearse blocks his view – just as death will frustrate his plans when he finally gets hold of Darby). This is the one thing Darby hasn't reckoned with at all – that the ghosts of his own past will rise up to haunt him, as he himself has risen up to haunt the KGB and The Banker. Not only does he not spot Sorenson in the graveyard, he subsequently walks right into him, though he has no trouble spotting and avoiding Lewis, who is the kind of adversary he's expecting.
In their conversation in the car, Sorenson tells Darby that what he resents most about him is that he doesn't "bear wounds". It's as if he could accept the suffering that Darby inflicted on him in the course of his duty, if only Darby himself had also suffered. It seems, though, that Darby has led a charmed life – a comfortable retirement in Moscow, no painful interrogations, no friends shot. And yet Helen says of her father "Whatever he did, he's paid for it." Which of them is right? I think it's Helen – but with the caveat that Darby only realises this as a result of his return to England. Stadden scoffs that sentimentality is a failing in spies, but what he really means by sentimentality is affection, love, the great human emotions that make life worth living. Darby's return to England shows him the things he had lost without even realising - look at his reaction when Helen tells him "My mother loved you till the day she died." Look at his whole interaction with Helen, the daughter he's never seen before, and will never see again. Darby had to give up all human connections when he left for Moscow – he was faithful to his masters, but the price was any kind of personal happiness. And the confrontation with Sorenson forces him for the first time to look at the human cost of his actions twenty years ago, to realise the suffering he has caused, a realisation symbolised by his sudden recognition of Elsa. Sentimentality may be a weakness in spies, but it is salvation for human beings. Thomas Darby dies a human being, who has finally accepted the truth about his past and the errors he has made. And The Survivors, too, discover "sentimentality" when faced with a person, not a monster. Darby dies before they can kill him, but they rather think they wouldn't have done so anyway – the implication is that they, too, have finally faced their past and thus found peace in the present.
There's another way, too, in which past and present intersect. Cowley, who normally plays the Old Man to Bodie and Doyle, here plays Apprentice to Stadden's Master. It's no coincidence that Bodie and Doyle remind us that Cowley's favourite quote is "Never send a boy on a man's job" (a quote that first cropped up in Everest Was Also Conquered, when Tony Whatsisface is killed on his first assigment) – in this episode, Cowley starts off as the "boy" to the older generation's "men". Stadden is far more knowledgable than him. In true cryptic-guru fashion he's got all the answers, but Cowley has to ask the right questions before he'll dole them out. There's something very pupil-like in the scene where Cowley figures out about Helen, eagerly telling Stadden all sorts of things the old man clearly already knows, but which Cowley himself is just working out as he goes along. By the end, though, the pupil has outdone the master – it's Cowley who has the manuscript and he refuses to let Stadden see it. And Stadden acknowledges Cowley as his successor when he calls him "Guardian of a Thousand Secrets" – exactly the role he himself was playing at the start of the episode.
This is a terrific episode. I luuurve Thomas Darby! If I had an absentee father who suddenly popped up after 25 years, I'd want him to be just like that. What a sweetie! No wonder Helen fell for him straight away. And for once, the "wider picture" plot is worked out in detail, with a proper McGuffin ("Red Spy at Night" is such a brilliantly plausible title for a bestseller) and minor characters that I was happy to spend time with. Aside from the adorable Darby, we've got Brigadier Stadden, he of the splendid eyerolls and energetic knees, who sits on secrets and delights in letting them trickle out one at a time; and Sorenson, who I have to admit is a bit of a ham (especially when he's limping through the graveyard with a leer on his face, while the music swells dramatically) but nonethless gets my attention because in another incarnation he was Howarth in the series To Serve Them All My Days and I was very much in love with Howarth back in the day. I felt rather sorry for the actress playing Helen, though – I suspect the casting notes read "Get a screamer" and that's pretty much all she gets to do from the moment O'Leary nabs her. In the solicitor's office you can see her running right out of motivation but, like a trouper, still flinging herself about and howling piteously while O'Leary completely ignores her.
This is a remarkably tautly constructed episode, where most of the action and dialogue functions not only at the level of the plot but also explores various themes. Beginning, of course, with that central Pros theme, trust. "The KGB respects trust" says Yevshinksy portentously, and the camera cuts to a tape recorder and an R/T, listening in on the conversation. These Soviets, lying through their teeth. But it turns out that it isn't the Reds listening in, but CI5. This whole encounter is a game and both sides know the rules, know when betrayals and double crosses are to be expected, indeed allowed ("Of course they had to protect the Banker" Cowley tells Bodie and Doyle when they complain about the Russians stopping them from catching up with O'Leary). There's quite a lot of understated stress placed on the idea of counterparts – in the way the two groups are positioned to mirror each other in the exchange of information, in the way Bodie and Doyle step forward to shake hands with their opposite numbers and, delightfully, in the way they end up echoing each other's lines – "Liverpool for the cup!" says Russian Thug B gleefully after nearly ramming their car, and Bodie responds wearily "Da". All this sets us up for Darby's conversation with Sorenson about the damage he inflicted as a double agent. In his defence, Darby says, with considerable dignity, that he has been a serving officer with the KGB all his adult life – in other words, he wasn't a traitor, because he had always been faithful to his own side, the Soviets. And the episode seems to accept this as a valid moral argument, because Sorenson doesn't dispute it – he accepts that Darby had his own loyalties and was true to them – but instead focuses on the human cost of Darby's actions. It's not the fact that Darby betrayed his country that makes him hate him, it's the fact that he betrayed individual people, who suffered terribly in consequence.
Contrasting with the two sets of men on each "side" in the opening scene are the real bad guys of the piece, not the KGB, but the freelance assassins – "jackals" Cowley calls them contemptuously, and it's not just a pop culture reference, but carries the weight of moral disgust – and the man who's hired them. Unlike Bodie, Doyle and their Russian counterparts, these are people who owe allegiance to no-one but themselves, who are in the game for profit (it's not clear exactly how The Banker benefited from financing Darby, but since the KGB are planning to incarcerate him in Lublianka, they clearly don't regard him, unlike Darby, as a "good and faithful servant"). There's a lot of emphasis on teamwork in this ep. All the wonderful backchat between Bodie and Doyle points up how well they know each other, and there are lots of little moments when the two of them communicate non-verbally but with perfect understanding, beginning with the slightly odd moment when Bodie doesn't get into the car through the door he's standing next to, but signals to Doyle that they should change places, and culminating in their entry to the solicitor's office, where the entire attack is planned and carried out using hand signals and facial expressions. This contrasts with the complete lack of teamwork shown by the jackals – they may work together, but they aren't a unit, each man is in it for himself, and sure enough divided they fall. They disagree about how safe they are and leave each other alone, thus enabling Doyle to take out Callenari. (On a side note, I like the little games of chance the lads play, allowing fate to decide which of them will go in first – it has the slightly haunting implication that chance will also decide the outcome of the action, that every time it ends in triumph rather than disaster they're bucking the odds. And of course it's also a beautiful illustration of their relationship, as well as being great fun to watch – it's typical of this episode that everything that happens fulfils several functions).
Most Pros episode titles are straightforward references to the plot, but this one is unusual in that it plays consciously with the "Stirring of Dust" theme. Not only does Cowley pick up on Bodie's complaint about dust getting up his nose, he explicitly turns it into a metaphor for the past rising up and affecting the present. Darby is returning and suddenly issues twenty years dead are burningly relevant. But it stirs up more dust than even Cowley realises – no-one, least of all Darby, has reckoned with Darby's own personal ghosts, The Survivors, coming back to haunt him. And what a dusty lot they are – Stadden, Sorenson, Elsa – all of them with dessicated faces, all of them damaged and withered. And all of them ghosts, in the sense of not being able to let go of the past, of still living there rather than in the present their bodies inhabit. When Stadden rings Sorenson, the camera pulls back to show a tiny, bare room, devoid of any personal knick-knacks, apart from the gun in the bedside cupboard. It's as if Sorenson has been sitting there for years, just waiting for this particular phone call. The only thing he lives for is the chance to take revenge on Darby. And Elsa, too, seems trapped in the past, which is still so vividly present for her that she can't bear to speak of it.
The episode constantly reflects on the interaction between past and present. Darby arrives back in England, to find a country different from the one he remembers. There's a lovely shot of him disembarking from the ferry, in dapper trilby hat and trenchcoat, surrounded by youthful backpackers with enormous rucksacks. He's a bit like a ghost himself, lingering on in the present but really belonging to the long-gone past. He's forgotten everyday details, like which London train station serves Hertfordshire, and he's completely out of touch with current affairs – he doesn't even know about North Sea oil. The fact that he's dying is nicely echoed in the fact that one of his conversations is with a vicar – part of whose job is to help people across the boundary between life and death – and it's significant that his only encounter with his daughter takes place in a graveyard, where his mistress lies buried. It's a good performance by the actor – his reactions in these early scenes are a bit slow, a bit muted, as if his illness is consuming most of his energy. He doesn't "come to life" until he meets Helen.
Darby's expecting trouble. He knows what sort of forces are ranged against him, and he's confident that even in his weakened state he can take them on. He tells Helen that he still has an "instinct". But the camera gives him the lie by moving up to show us Sorenson, creeping up on his with a gun (in a lovely bit of foreshadowing, Sorenson is thwarted when a hearse blocks his view – just as death will frustrate his plans when he finally gets hold of Darby). This is the one thing Darby hasn't reckoned with at all – that the ghosts of his own past will rise up to haunt him, as he himself has risen up to haunt the KGB and The Banker. Not only does he not spot Sorenson in the graveyard, he subsequently walks right into him, though he has no trouble spotting and avoiding Lewis, who is the kind of adversary he's expecting.
In their conversation in the car, Sorenson tells Darby that what he resents most about him is that he doesn't "bear wounds". It's as if he could accept the suffering that Darby inflicted on him in the course of his duty, if only Darby himself had also suffered. It seems, though, that Darby has led a charmed life – a comfortable retirement in Moscow, no painful interrogations, no friends shot. And yet Helen says of her father "Whatever he did, he's paid for it." Which of them is right? I think it's Helen – but with the caveat that Darby only realises this as a result of his return to England. Stadden scoffs that sentimentality is a failing in spies, but what he really means by sentimentality is affection, love, the great human emotions that make life worth living. Darby's return to England shows him the things he had lost without even realising - look at his reaction when Helen tells him "My mother loved you till the day she died." Look at his whole interaction with Helen, the daughter he's never seen before, and will never see again. Darby had to give up all human connections when he left for Moscow – he was faithful to his masters, but the price was any kind of personal happiness. And the confrontation with Sorenson forces him for the first time to look at the human cost of his actions twenty years ago, to realise the suffering he has caused, a realisation symbolised by his sudden recognition of Elsa. Sentimentality may be a weakness in spies, but it is salvation for human beings. Thomas Darby dies a human being, who has finally accepted the truth about his past and the errors he has made. And The Survivors, too, discover "sentimentality" when faced with a person, not a monster. Darby dies before they can kill him, but they rather think they wouldn't have done so anyway – the implication is that they, too, have finally faced their past and thus found peace in the present.
There's another way, too, in which past and present intersect. Cowley, who normally plays the Old Man to Bodie and Doyle, here plays Apprentice to Stadden's Master. It's no coincidence that Bodie and Doyle remind us that Cowley's favourite quote is "Never send a boy on a man's job" (a quote that first cropped up in Everest Was Also Conquered, when Tony Whatsisface is killed on his first assigment) – in this episode, Cowley starts off as the "boy" to the older generation's "men". Stadden is far more knowledgable than him. In true cryptic-guru fashion he's got all the answers, but Cowley has to ask the right questions before he'll dole them out. There's something very pupil-like in the scene where Cowley figures out about Helen, eagerly telling Stadden all sorts of things the old man clearly already knows, but which Cowley himself is just working out as he goes along. By the end, though, the pupil has outdone the master – it's Cowley who has the manuscript and he refuses to let Stadden see it. And Stadden acknowledges Cowley as his successor when he calls him "Guardian of a Thousand Secrets" – exactly the role he himself was playing at the start of the episode.