[Inspector Abberline]

The Professionals
50min | Action, Comedy, Crime | TV Series (1977–1983)


I've been re watching The Professionals just recently,another one of my childhood favourites I thought I would revisit,I do not usually watch a lot of television box sets,well not compared to some people on here any ways. And I have very little love for the endless modern detective shows or any of the endless and ceaseless merry go round of hyped shows i am supposed to watch, FFS leave me alone,I have my On the Buses and Allo Allo boxes I have no time for Game Of Thrones,and more importantly neither do I care. For a while we were lead to believe that The Professionals was a bit a bit racist ,slightly misogynistic and mostly to violent for the tea time viewing schedule as it was back then, Re watching the show,now again,there are a few episodes that are pretty heavy handed in the writing,Klansmen from the end of series one,is a pretty full on look at racism in 1980's Britain,and never shy's away from using the N word,but it also has some rather lazy stereotyping with Bodie getting stabbed by a gang of black guys,going into hospital,where he has a black doctor and a black nurse,and by the end of episode Bodie has been cured of his racism and ends up shagging the nurse.Seeing as the show was created by Brian Clemens famed for the Avengers (no not them) television shows you could of expected more stronger female characters in the episodes.Also Pamela Stephenson who I assume did this before her big break on Not the nine o'clock news,keeps popping up in about four episodes as four different charterers.As for the violence.I was mildly taken back by the amount of shootings and bloody gun shot wounds on show here,certainly a lot more harder than the comic book style violence of the A-team.Overall the show it self was a great bit of television made by Avengers Mk1 Productions for London Weekend Television ,although for years I thought this was a Euston Films production. It goes without saying that all three main actors Gordon Jackson ,Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins (sadly missed and should of made more films) had a great on screen chemistry together.