I don’t get sick often, but over the years I’ve discovered that when I do, I quite often end up with an embarrassing addiction to something. No, I’m not talking about Codral tablets or peach flavoured decongestant syrup, I mean ancient bad-arse television shows that were dated even before they left the decade they were made in. Last time round it was classic Trek. This time I ended up mainlining The Professionals, a show so utterly anachronistic and mysogenist that you could probably run the dialogue as a stand up routine at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and bring the house down. We bought season one a few years back, watched an episode or two, then abandoned the box on the shelf where it belonged. One day last week, after a solid eight hour binge beginning with quality historical documentaries and traveling through Next Gen, I eyed off that old boxed season one with caution, then slammed it in the deev thinking, as we always do, that it’s OK, I can stop any time. Come last night and I’m shivering in my trenchcoat barefoot, hanging round the back of EzyDVD in that small gap between the men’s urinals and the dumpsters, forty dollars rolled up in my fist, pounding on a paint flecked door mumbling ‘Dave says you got season two’ through the rusty letter slit. Those fucking dealers always keep you waiting…
18 Comments
Yeah. It has a great deal going for it, misogyny aside. Especially since just before they reached the end of season 1 Shaw and Collins realised they didn’t actually hate each other’s guts and ended up with a really good working relationship.
I reckon Spooks was entirely seeded by this show
i used to watch it religiously on a saturday night in the early-mid 80s.
so did I. And I thought it the height of sophistication!
45-37… cover me, bodie!
i take it it doesn’t hold up so well to the ravages of time?
it doesn’t… but is strangely compelling. I intend to buy and watch all 5 seasons
I have all five seasons on DVD. I used to record them from UKTV for my folks, who also really enjoyed them.
Sometimes sendit.com have them going really cheaply.
And for everything you wanted to know about The Professionals, and a lot you probably didn’t, there’s this – http://www.personal.u-net.com/~carnfort/Professionals/
thanks for the tip!
I loved the show… when I was a teenage right wing lout.
yeah, it’s very loutish
How did The Sweeney compare?
All I know about it is from Black Books “On his birthday, Manny stays up all night watching The Sweeney and drinking espresso. Thinking he’s a seventies cop, he manages to go from eyeing old men suspiciously in the bookshop to being trapped at the local police station helping a real detective put the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine on a local villain.”
Ha! Yeah, I love that episode of Black Books. I haven’t rewatched The Sweeney since I was a kid so I have no idea how well it does or doesn’t stand up
Perhaps the next time you’re sick…:-) Although I don’t wish anything on you, my friend!
I don’t suppose there’s a law against bingeing on old Brit tv shows when I’m well… it just always seems like I oughta be doing something more constructive.
*nods*
As Lou Reed sas, first thing you learn is you always got to wait.
And yeah, you are on the hard stuff now – pure police flavoured testosterone, with none of the ironic stuff that dilutes Life On Mars.
Next time, you should really just try the cough syrup.
I snaffled all four seasons for a kindof steal from the UK — nostalgia rules 🙂