Public Eye

So, I finally remembered what I was going to post about today, but then decided it wasn't really a Friday sort of thing to post about.  Basically, over the past few weeks I've been watching the 1969 series of Public Eye, which I was given on DVD as a birthday present.  If you don't know, Public Eye was a long-running private eye series made by ABC-TV, then Thames TV, from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, which aimed to give a more realistic portrayal of the life and work of an enquiry agent in the UK.  It was incredibly popular, yet today is almost forgotten.  Anyway, this was the first time I've seen any of the series since I was a kid in the seventies, (my father always watched it), and it was quite an experience.  I'd forgotten just how good it was.  The 1969 series was interesting because it was a private eye series in which, for most of the seven episodes, the main character wasn't actually working as a private eye.  At the end of the previous series the main character, Frank Marker, had gone to prison for receiving stolen goods after being set up by a dodgy solicitor.  This series follows his attempts to 'reintegrate' with society following his release on parole after serving a year of his sentence.  Over these seven episodes Marker finds himself trying to deal with the stigma of being an offender, the demands of the probation service and just trying to stay out of trouble against the backdrop of a slightly seedy out-of-season Brighton, all in glorious black and white (except the last episode, which was recorded in colour as a test prior to the ITV network's move to colour transmission in 1970). 

Obviously, central to all of this is Alfred Burke as Marker, who delivers a towering performance - never flashy or showy, but utterly convincing and compelling.  Marker is a loner, a single man in his forties who simply likes being on his own and being allowed to simply get on with his life.  Which is why the strictures placed upon him by the terms of his parole are a constant problem for him.  Other characters, particularly those representing the establishment, seem perpetually perturbed by the fact that he apparently has no family or friends, nor any desire to make friends with anyone.  As Marker notes himself, he has never gone out of his way to make friends and is perfectly content with this situation. He is 'self contained' and self reliant.  Watching Burke's performance reminded me of why I had liked the series as a kid - Even then, I had a high level of identification with his character.  I also have always been irritated and frustrated by people who seem to feel threatened by those of us who prefer our own company and don't like to be constantly hemmed in.  Burke's evocation of these aspects of Marker's character is superb.  In the last episode, for instance, he perfectly captures the almost irrational irritation loners feel when we suspect that people (in this case his landlady) are assuming that they know us well enough to make plans on our behalf. 

But ultimately Marker is a detective, whether he is actually working as one or not.  He just can't resist investigating - whether it is tracking down a missing wife on behalf of a fellow con, looking into the theft of a fellow worker's pay packet at the builder's firm he is working at whilst on probation, (a crime which he is suspected of committing and for which he loses his job, even when shown to be innocent), or trying to find out why a fellow lodger tried to commit suicide.  Eventually he is drawn back into the world of private enquiries, spending a couple of episodes working for another detective's agency, before, in the last episode, setting up on his own again.  All in all, this was a superb series.  Obviously, it is very much of its era, much slower paced than modern TV dramas and featuring that slightly jarring mix of videotaped studio scenes and filmed exteriors, but it remains a powerful character study, graced by great performances and scripts.  But there you go - I said it wasn't a Friday sort of post and I've gone and posted about it anyway.  It must be good!