Monty Berman's 'cult' detective series Department S ran from March 1969 until April 1970. The show was a great departure, and very much an 'update', to the rather staid looking ITC mystery-adventure programmes The Saint and Man In A Suitcase that had gone before. The department in question was that of Interpol, a specialist group managed by the first of many black TV cops (here African, Dennis Alaba Peters. Indeed, it is no short call to claim that Department 'S' was the precursor to the popular X-Files series, as more often than not the characters would come up against variations of 'paradox' mysteries that the X-Files phenomenon has so often specialised in. However, alien abduction and UFOs are one such problem that the folks at Interpol never encountered. The cases they were up against were usually caused by a natural occurrence, a calamity, disaster or a spontaneous crime that were far beyond the deduction skills of the police. The agents: Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) was a best-selling crime novelist, who possessed wonderful reasoning akin to Sherlock Holmes; Joel Fabiani played the young American action-hero Stuart Sullivan and Anabelle King's (Rosemary Nicols) computer skills kept the research abreast with James Bond-ian gadgetry. King proved that a man could still be a man and care as much about clothes as the ladies, and his peacock attitude -- along with the decent scripts -- made the show essential viewing for 1969's tuned-in audiences. Fashion and action in one package!
by Jon Mills
synopsis
