Perhaps the most easily parodied action series of its era, The Professionals was the one about the gruff but fatherly counter-terrorist top cop Cowley (Gordon Jackson) and his favourite surrogate sons, the curly haired ex-copper Ray Doyle (Martin Shaw) and taciturn-but-pouting ex-mercenary William Bodie (Lewis Collins). As set out by series creator Brian Clemens (veteran of the more fantastical Avengers), their job was to stop threats to the government, visiting dignitaries or the general public "by any means necessary". What this boiled down to was dashing about,... leaping out of cars, getting into thump-happy fistfights, leering at every "bird" who passed by as if they were trying to prove something, wearing eye-abusing late-70s leisure wear well beyond the sell-by date, potting baddies with guns hauled out of their smart shoulder holsters, and occasionally choking back manly tears when another of the trio was wounded. All three leads were professionals of another stripe--the sort of actors who could soar with a good script and do their best to sell a weak one--and they were generally set against a parade of top-flight British character acting talent along with sundry sit-com/pin-up refugee disposable girlfriends and suspects. One strange, if understandable, element of the premise is that CI5 tackle all manner of Greek, Middle Eastern, Soviet and radical nutcase groups--with the odd racist Klansman, corrupt civil servant and dubious big business tycoon thrown in to prove they're not fascists--but almost never have anything to do with the Irish terrorist groups who were the main focus of the organisation's real-life counterparts from 1977 to 1983. --Kim Newman [show more]
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