Callan - Wet Job

Bringing back a popular show can be enormously tempting. It worked once, so why wouldn't it work well again? I wasn’t keen on the idea of a revival and reviews from others set my expectations low, then lower again, so I had put off watching this for some time.

Wet Job does start reasonably well and the set up with the Section manipulating Callan is good. How he came to retire is left rather murky, allowing us to plough on with the present. The idea of an old job coming back to haunt him seems the best way to drag Callan back into the espionage world. The new Hunter fits in well. He's just as upper class and slightly removed as the others, and I think Hugh Walters does a reasonably decent job in the part. If Wet Job was a way of testing the waters for another series, I would have been pleased to see Walters again.

Callan's current occupation, running a military memorabilia shop, fits well as Callan was always depicted as having a great deal of knowledge as well as passion for the subject. The Nazi items on display seem a tad out of his area but perhaps he’s just decided to go with what sells well, as opposed to making friends with his local NF branch.

The scenes between Lonely and Callan are undoubtedly the best in the production. They both effortlessly slide back into their old roles and the two are wonderful together. I love how proud Lonely is at finally going straight and I only wish we could have got a look at the photo of his beloved. Gawd knows how he got her. It seems losing Mr Callan from his life has benefitted Lonely in the long run, which makes it all the greater shame that he honestly believes their meeting again is pure coincidence. While they do recreate much of their old on-screen rapport, I think scripturally their relationship is more reflective of the literary Callan, where James Mitchell depicts them as better friends. Callan treats Lonely much nicer here than he normally did in the TV series and Lonely himself has developed the confidence to stand up to Mr Callan a little. It’s lovely seeing Russell Hunter and Woodward so comfortable together.

In fact, I think Woodward is fantastic throughout. Despite those massive, ageing, we’re-definitely-in-the-1980s glasses, his old ‘Callan’ expressions shine through and there are intonations in his voice that immediately bring the character back into the room. Considering how physically different Woodward looks compared to Callan's last outing seven years earlier, I think easily establishing the character this well is important for the audience. This is probably the main thing that makes Wet Job slightly bearable because, well…

There is so much bad stuff. So, so, very much and so, so, very bad.

The script is a mess. After a promising start, it all goes to pot. Meres’ replacement, Thorne, is pointless and seems to be there to plug a gap that doesn’t need to be filled. Apart from tailing Callan and giving him a lift to Oxfordshire, he is utterly useless. He blags his way into Lucy Smith’s conspiratorial flat and learns precisely bugger all. It was undoubtedly an enormous mistake to believe that Anthony Valentine's wonderfully cold Toby Meres could be so easily replaced.

George Sewell could have been a marvellous villain but partway through his character decides to chuck out the whole plot so far, abandon his plan to kill Callan, and murder a Czech dissident with the KGB instead.

The KGB bloke. You need a high-profile enemy of the people to disappear in a foreign country on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Apparently you send a short fellow with a ‘tache who can barely use a gun.

There is also an awful lot of padding to bring this up to length as a TV movie. It's 80 minutes long, running in a 90-minute slot when broadcast, which seems like something today's advert-drenched prime time can only dream of. It needs to shave a good 20 minutes off though. Instead, things really start to drag, and we have too many minor characters like the KGB man and Lucy's communist friends that fail to make an impression. I was stunned to learn from Robert Fairclough and Mike Kenwood's The Callan File (an impressive and enthusiastically recommended tomb) that the Wet Job we got had already had 20 minutes cut. What did they cut for us to still end up with this monstrosity?

Who knows what was going on at ATV because the picture quality is noticeably worse than that of the Thames series a decade earlier. Everything in the studio seems to have a dark hue and I found myself squinting to make out details that should definitely be there. Yet outside on location everything is far too bright and sunny. Apart from the contrast between the two being terrible on the eyes, the brightness doesn’t suit the traditional dark colour palette of Callan at all. Bring back the grey and brown.

I've held back on what I believe is the worst aspect of the production and I only wish he had because the composer's incidental music on Wet Job is enough to make you want to cut off your ears, put them through a shredder and boil them in acid. Callan never really needed incidental music and the damning silence in scenes often spoke louder than a hundred of these electronic noise machines ever could. It sounds cheap, poor, and none of it, not one single note, is appropriate for the tone of the programme. If this wasn't enough, he, that ruinous bastard Cyril Ornadel, never lets up. There is not a moment of silence that he won't fill. It's infuriating. I just wanted it to end.

Wet Job is a poor revival for Callan. Cut the music, tighten the script and make it on film instead of whatever videotape atrocity ATV are utilising and I think it could have been great. It has nothing to do with the passage of time - indeed, Woodward makes a considerably better older Callan than I would have expected - and everything to do with what's gone on offscreen. Wet Job is frustrating because it feels like such a waste and it's a shame that Callan's final television outing is so far off the series' high standards.

# is for 1990

A few years ago I stopped binge-watching television. It wasn't an entirely conscious decision. I had begun viewing a few programmes and they were so good that I wanted to drag out having 'new' episodes of them for as long as possible. I didn't want to race through them, be done with it and then move onto something new next month. This was made easier because I now owned quite a lot of shows and there is always something else to watch. Eventually, it just became a habit to watch one episode of a programme each week, perhaps less and occasionally more, but no longer entire series in a day.

The problem with this method is that I recently realised I have a lot of unwatched or barely-watched DVDs on my shelves. In fact, I can cover at least one for almost every letter of the alphabet. So, partly because I like doing things in order, I've decided to work my way through them all in alphabetical order.

Before we get onto the alphabet proper, I had the little matter of a series without any letters in its title: 1990.

"Ninety-Eight Four plus six" proclaims the quote on the cover, from the series creator, Wilfred Greatorex. It was this sort of description that intrigued me in the series. I had never heard of 1990 until Simply Media announced its DVD release, and I sat up and took notice because since watching Callan I have sat up and took notice on anything concerning Edward Woodward.

The first series has now sat in cellophane of my shelf for over a year, partly because I  know little about it. I subsequently realised that the reason it had been neglected was there was nothing pushing me towards it.

We live in interesting times. No one actually wants to live in interesting times. They may think they do but life is much easier if we live in dull ones. Have there ever been any? We live with words like freedom, censorship and that newer phrase 'fake news'. 'Big Brother' is an old favourite. It has entered such common parlance that I'm certain many people who use the term now are not aware of its connection to George Orwell's 1984. The fact that people continue to be tricked, lied to, and, increasingly, watched by their governments means 1984 has never and I suspect will never lose its impact.

I find the most sinister-seeming depictions of 1984-esque societies are those in which the transformation is shown to happen gradually. It reinforces the idea that this could all too easily become us. From this episode, 1990 appears to be going down that path. This is not a full on, smack-you-sideways-in-the-face blatant, totalitarian regime. That would be far too dull and I'm keen to see where it goes as I'm intrigued by the "plus six" part of Greatorex's quote.

So far, 1990 appears to present us with a very subtely delivered future. While 1984 was set 35 years ahead when it was published, 1990 is only 13 years on from the year of its original broadcast. Setting things in the future is always problematic and even the near future is tricky. Happily, the show doesn't give a dramatic take on fashions - the one thing always liable to be embarrassing when viewed years later.

I think the sets are going to be interesting throughout the series. Apart from a single modern government office, the rest of the sets don't look any different from something I'd expect to see in the 1970s. I'm curious as to whether the show will do anything with them or continue to play it safe. Possibly because I have spent so much time with predominantly studio-bound 1960s' drama recently, I was impressed with the amount of location work and there are some interesting shots. Being set in London helps as so much of it can be relied on to stay the same and certainly for only 13 years into the future.

One thing 1990 completely misses is the prevalence of people smoking. Despite the number of smokers beginning to fall during the '70s, I don't think many had perceived this yet by 1977 and 1990's creators certainly hadn't. They didn't predict anyone cutting down at all by 1990 as people are still sparking up all over the place.

They also didn't predict the demise of the typesetter in newspaper printing. With technological changes, newspaper copy no longer needed to be manually set in place by the end of the 1980s.

For balance, the one thing 1990 does manage to get right is the use of home video recorders, which actually contributes to the plot in the episode I watched. Home videos were only just coming out in the mid-1970s and they couldn't have realised that machines would get a lot smaller, but it's still a nice detail.

"Everybody records everything these days."

Moving on to the plot, in this episode, the leader of the opposition makes a televised speech, professing how much he believes in what the present government is doing. Journalist Jim Kyle (Edward Woodward) is watching and is not convinced. The opposition leader disappeared a while ago and Kyle is sure the speech has been faked somehow. When he writes an article on the broadcast, the typesetters refuse to set it and the newspaper's editor finds himself snookered by the union leader. Meanwhile, there is an underground newspaper making its way around and Kyle tries to make contact with it, hoping they will be able to help his investigations into the opposition leader. The government are also keen to get in touch with those behind the newspaper. They have words with Kyle, who is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not one of their favourite people.

Due to the DVD manufacturer's annoying trait of putting disc 1 on the right and disc 2 on the left (*shakes fist*), I actually ended up starting with episode 5 and only realised afterwards. Despite this, I had no trouble following it. 1990's world-building comes through in the plot and it will be interesting to go back and watch the actual first episode. I hope they don't spend too much time on backstory because it really isn't needed - this reality speaks for itself and that has impressed me.

I like Kyle; I think he's going to be gutsy and dogged and I don't expect him to come out of it unscathed, if indeed he comes out of it at all in the end.

An additional inclusion on these DVDs is a wonderful BBC2 Drama ident that I hadn't seen before. I'm also keen on 1990's great minimalist titles.

Callan - The Good Ones Are All Dead

Remember when I looked at Callan's Armchair Theatre and said how nice it was to see a German on 1960s’ telly who didn’t turn out to be a Nazi? Well, it’s back to business as usual in The Good Ones Are All Dead. We’re told Strauss is a Nazi from the start and Callan’s task is to bring him in as the Israeli authorities are rather keen to have a few words. Quite possibly 'What would you like for your final meal?'

This is officially Series 1, Episode 1 of Callan. The events of A Magnum for Schneider are referenced but with it being broadcast five months previously they are thankfully not dwelt on. Hunter convinces Callan to work for the Section again, partly by blackmail but he also convinces Callan to take more of an interest by bringing up the fact that during the war Callan’s parents were killed by a V2 bomb. This Strauss fellow had a lot of responsibility for the launch of the V2 bombs after being involved with the concentration camps. It surprises me that this is what convinces Callan. It’s not like Strauss stood there and gunned down Callan’s parents in cold blood. The V2 bombs were launched from the other side of the Channel. Attributing blame to one guy for them seems quite a stretch. It’s hard to judge Callan’s perspective because for one we don’t know what he did in the war, if anything. His age is difficult to gauge. If we’re being generous then Callan sports a sensible short haircut. If we’re being harsh I’ll point out Edward Woodward’s receding hairline. Receding hairlines aren’t the be-all and end-all of course, as some of you may be glad to hear. Callan seems like he’s seen a lot, done a lot, knows a lot and obviously had enough. He’s been around a while but just how long is hard to say. I remain sceptical of this reasoning but I suppose it ties in with Callan becoming emotionally involved in things.

Callan takes his bookkeeping skills off to work for Strauss who is now called Stavros. His accent sounds more French than Greek to me. It doesn’t take much to work out that Stavros is shagging his secretary. Is she his secretary because they’re shagging? There are no references to a wife or children so it isn’t that bad but he is a good twenty years older than her. Callan isn’t certain that Stavros is actually Strauss so goes off to do some snooping.

He does a neat spy thing of spotting a hair laid across the handles of the doors to Stavros’s bedroom. In Dr No you see James Bond pull out a hair, lick his thumb and stick the hair across his wardrobe doors. When he comes back the hair has gone and he knows his room was searched. Stavros has used a long hair or possibly a cotton thread so it can lie across the handles. Callan picks it up and remembers to put it back when he leaves. Inside the room, he finds nothing except for a large safe hidden in the wardrobe.

Later on, Callan meets Lonely and describes the safe to him. Lonely turns out to be something of an expert on safes and knows exactly what sort it is. He’ll need a copy of the key. Callan also meets with a Jewish man, Berg, who was in a concentration camp run by Strauss and insists the man is definitely Strauss. "I must know why you're so sure," Callan says."I was his house slave for three months," Berg explains, telling Callan that he once broke a plate and Strauss broke three of his ribs. "When you fear a man, you watch him all the time." Callan is convinced.

Having copied Stavros's key using plasticine, Callan now has a key to the safe. When he gets into the safe he finds a trunk and rifles through it. An SS uniform, a Nazi party card, a gun and a bag containing gold nuggets are among the items. The SS jacket has a cyanide capsule sown underneath the lapel and when Callan checks the wardrobe he finds several other jackets that have one too. Callan is rumbled by the secretary, Jeanne, who confesses she has known Stavros/Strauss's past for a while and it was she who turned him in. When Callan calls into Hunter we learn that the gold nuggets are in fact gold fillings, a detail that sent a shiver down my spine. If you weren't aware, the Nazis extracted them from Jewish people in the concentration camps.

When Stavros/Strauss returns he finds Jeanne in the bedroom who tells him she thinks Callan is a thief as she caught him acting suspiciously. He sends Jeanne away and tells her to get on a plane to Cairo. Afterwards, Callan hears a noise and going into the corridor sees the bedroom door open. As he goes towards it Stavros appears behind him with a gun, wearing his SS jacket.

Callan informs Stavros/Strauss that he has been found out. When Stavros is told it is the Israelis who are on to him, his sheer terror is conveyed in his "Oh my god". He tries to bribe Callan - "You work for money?" - but no dice. Here follows a magnificent scene between the two of them. Callan tells him he must be handed over as it is what the Israelis want. Stavros insists "Strauss is dead!" For the past 23 years he has lived a good life and tried to be a good man. He has been racked with guilt and it was finding Jeanne that was his ultimate salvation. "You poor bastard - she turned you in!" Callan yells at Stavros, who then seems truly defeated. He tries to bite the cyanide capsule on his jacket but Callan stops him, crushing it on the floor.  I don't think I have ever felt slightly sorry for a Nazi before but Stavros seems truly repentant. He convinces me that he regrets what he did, wanting to become a better person. He appears to convince Callan too, or at least to elicit some pity, as Callan hands him one of the other jackets. As Stavros bites into the capsule, the camera stays on Callan, showing his racked expression as he turns his back on the deed.

Stavros's repeated insistence that his old self is long gone is what grabs me at the end of this episode. I also thought it was a brave move for the programme to portray an ex-Nazi so sympathetically. The war had only ended 22 years before so a proportion of the audience would have fought against the Nazis and some may well have been in concentration camps or had family that had been. This wasn't just an ordinary infantryman either; we're told he was an Obersturmbahnführer, the SS equivalent of a Lieutenant-Colonel - a fairly high rank. Despite the pity I feel for Nicholas 'Strauss is dead' Stavros, the one gap in his story is that he held on to remnants of his Nazi past. Stavros says it is a reminder of a time when he was looked up to and held in high regard, but surely if he regrets what he did to earn him that respect then he would throw it all away?

I haven't mentioned Toby Meres, Callan's colleague, though he does appear in this episode. In Armchair Theatre he was played by Peter Bowles but from now on it's Anthony Valentine. I was initially disappointed not to see Bowles again but I actually think Valentine is much better for what's required here. He intensely dislikes Callan and comes across somewhat callous.

This is an excellent series 1, episode 1 for the show, managing to tell us what we need to without repeating Armchair Theatre too much. "What is the Section for, Callan?" asks Colonel Hunter. "Eliminating people, framing, extortion, death... all the jobs that are too dirty for her Majesty's other security services to touch," Callan replies, sounding like he's quoting a handbook.

There is also some continuity as Hunter throws Callan's own file in front of him, which Hunter had moved into a different cover at the end of A Magnum for Schneider. Callan is annoyed as he reads it: "Red cover. Most urgent, marked for death." Hunter's expression is blank as he blackmails Callan into taking on the job: "You do this for me or I'll have you destroyed." I love seeing the contempt Callan has for Hunter. He uses the word 'mate' a lot, often in the tone of someone in a pub at ten on a Friday night, asking 'D'you fancy taking this outside, mate?' Callan doesn't take Hunter's threat well. He leaves it a while before returning to the subject. "I know you can have me killed. But... [he draws a gun] don't you push me too far, right... because I might just let myself be killed... only you won't be there to see it because mate I'll get you first. And I can do it. Believe me, I can do it. You ought to know." It is interesting that Callan knows and states how good he is ("very good") but he never comes across as arrogant.

Hunter says Callan's only good at killing people but in both Armchair Theatre and The Good Ones Are All Dead we see Callan kill only one person. I think Callan does show himself to be very good, if not excellent, at what he does but what he does is more than just murder. Perhaps those other things affect Callan just as much.

Armchair Theatre - A Magnum for Schneider

What I liked when I watched the episode of Callan in Network's ITV 60 box set was that it seemed so different from the similar adventure series I had seen from that period. I have only seen a handful of the early Danger Man episodes and though there are similarities, in that both Callan and John Drake are doing the messy jobs that no one else wants to do, Callan’s character intrigues me more because he’s a reluctant participant. John Drake’s world is, if not necessarily glamorous, then at least exotic. The Saint takes similar excursions to foreign climes, even if the cast rarely stepped outside the grounds of Elstree Studios. Callan lacks that escapism and in comparison, it’s a very dingy world. The Saint and The Avengers are both fun and bright even when they start off in black and white. The Prisoner is weird, psychological and taunting. The colourful and relentlessly upbeat nature of the Village is increasingly creepy once you discover what is actually going on. But nonetheless, I would hesitate to describe The Prisoner as ‘dark’ and yet that’s the first word that springs to mind for Callan. Classing it as an ‘adventure’ series is probably pushing it. Everything seems to happen in the shadows and the main character has a big problem with the morality of what he does. I’ve also never heard the word ‘bastard’ in any of the other series. And tension. Tension! So much tension. The music is used sparingly. Sometimes it racks things up but other times the complete utter silence is nerve-wracking. I get the feeling that if anyone in the studio had coughed they would have been instantly fired. Everything seems planned to give it as much realism as possible.

As I sat down to the first disc of my Callan – The Monochrome Years box set, I selected ‘Play All’ and was intrigued to see a caption for Armchair Theatre appear. Armchair Theatre were one-off plays but this one eventually spawned Callan it would appear. The title of the play is A Magnum for Schneider. A chocolate lolly? Champagne? Probably not.

We have a wonderful opening scene where we learn quite a lot quite quickly. We meet Colonel Hunter (Ronald Radd), a rather cold and dislikeable middle-aged man. We gather that Callan used to work for him, for ‘them’, but he felt things too much and it turns out this isn’t a particularly desirable characteristic when your job is killing people. It seems to have been a mutual agreement that he left the job but now they want him back. As he’s utterly bored stiff in his current job he decides to reluctantly take up the offer to kill one more man. I’m sure plenty of people know how he feels. Just because he can, Callan fires four bullets at a target and considers himself a touch off form as one misses.

Callan’s victim-to-be, Schneider, has the office across the hall. He’s played by Joseph Fürst, an actor whom I’ve only ever seen portraying bad guys. Nothing in the world can stop him in Doctor Who (in fact on Saturday 4^th February 1967 you could have watched him go to a watery grave in The Underwater Menace on BBC1 then later turn over to see him in this episode of Armchair Theatre!) and he plays a Professor working for Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. He does over-the-top quite well. Callan bumps into him in the hall, they start talking and find they have a shared interest in model soldiers. It’s a very natural conversation and they even exchange a joke about the war, which I really liked considering Germans on TV at this time always seem to turn out to be ex-Nazis. Schneider has some soldiers set up in his office (I love that he plays with his toy soldiers whilst at work!) and invites Callan in to see them. Callan is hesitant but eventually goes in. He’s already been told that he gets too emotionally involved in cases and here he is going to play soldiers with the bloke he’s meant to be bumping off! No wonder he’s been struggling if this is what he usually does.

Heading back to work, his boss (Ivor Dean) reprimands him for being a few minutes late. There are only a couple of scenes between Callan and his boss in this episode but they’re good. They’re well written, showing us Callan’s contempt for his job and his boss. He takes the piss and the way he speaks to his superior is inappropriate at best. At worst it’s downright rude. I think Callan is supposed to have been there about six months and frankly I’m astounded he has kept the job that long. As a man with no track record or references we’ve been told that ‘they’ helped get him the job. I wonder if they purposefully chose him such a horrid job.

We get a scene in a pub. It’s small and grotty and so are some of the customers. Callan has come to meet one in particular. Lonely is so nicknamed because no one dare goes near him due to some serious body odour issues that Callan can’t resist repeatedly remarking on. Callan wants a gun and not-so-subtly passes Lonely an envelope containing £100. Quite where a bookkeeper has managed to quickly get £100 from, the equivalent of well over £1000 in 2016, is never explained. He must have savings from his days as an assassin because when we see Callan’s bedsit it’s clear that if he does have any sort of money he certainly is not spending much of it.

Callan isn’t at all sure about his assignment. He sleuths his way into Schneider’s office and later his flat, eventually finding some documents that prove Schneider has been selling guns to Indonesia. My knowledge of foreign affairs in that region is pretty slim. At a push, I could probably find Indonesia on a map. But helpfully this year I did see a BBC documentary from 1964 that followed the British Army in Borneo, which borders Indonesia. The army was in the jungle on the border defending Borneo against Indonesia, who were attempting to invade. I got the impression that the Indonesians they were fighting were more guerrillas than an officially organised army. The British government would understandably then have been none too keen on having someone in their country who was selling guns for people to shoot at its army. After seeing the documents, Callan’s mood changes and he agrees Schneider must die. This is a shame of course because Schneider, apart from illegally buying and selling lethal weapons, is rather a nice guy.

Colonel Hunter has been having Toby Meres (Peter Bowles) follow Callan. After Callan records a to-be-discovered-later tape stating that Colonel Hunter is behind the murder, he opens the door to Peter Bowles who whacks him over the head. When Callan wakes to a phone call from Hunter, he is told that the tape and a note left on his desk have been destroyed. Hunter tells Callan he was foolish but I disagree somewhat. Leaving evidence behind to cover his back if he was caught was a good idea. Not expecting Hunter to have someone keep an eye on him was the foolish part.

Schneider has invited Callan to come round to play toy soldiers for the evening. Hunter has instructed Callan to kill Schneider just before 11 o’clock. But Callan doesn’t. They are having far too much fun re-enacting historical battles. At 11 the doorbell goes and Schneider goes to have a chat with some policemen. His wife goes to bed only to find Toby in there, who coshes her one. Callan comes to see what all the fuss is about and is a tad peeved to see Toby. Between him and the rozzers on the doorstep, Callan is feeling the pressure a bit as Toby urges him to hurry up and shoot Schneider. With the coppers shooed away Schneider returns, finds Toby and is onto Callan too. He takes Toby’s gun and is suspicious that Callan doesn’t have one.

But of course, he does – it’s down his sock. He retrieves the gun, waits until Schneider is about to shoot Toby, then at the last moment quickly brings it out and pulls the trigger. It’s all very sudden and a fantastic moment. Though it is slightly spoilt by Fürst's over the top, highly unrealistic death. Once shot, he manages to toss his gun in the air and dramatically launch himself at a lamp.

After berating Callan for taking his time, Toby asks, “Are you alright?” “Yes,” Callan replies, wearily. But we’re not entirely sure he is.

When Callan asks Toby if it was he who hit him over the head before Toby laughs, apologises and admits it was. Callan isn’t laughing though and whacks him one back. With Toby out cold, Callan wipes his own prints from the gun and leaves it in Toby’s hand.

From a phonebox, Callan calls Hunter. He’s worked out Hunter sent the policemen around, expecting Callan to be caught with a smoking gun. He tells Hunter that Toby is still at the flat. “Oh well it's not important. You could get him out I suppose.” But Callan won't be going to fetch Toby. Callan feels used. “I don’t think I want to work for you, Hunter. It may sound very naive and all that but I did like Schneider. I hate you.”