Department S

1 9 6 9 - 1 9 7 0 (UK)
28 x 50 minute episodes

Flamboyantly moustachioed actor Peter Wyngarde played dandy Jason King, head investigator of Department S, an Interpol branch specializing in "unsolvable" crimes. Jason was also a part-time author of detective stories whose modus operandi was to approach each Department S case as though he were Mark Caine, his own literary detective creation.

This fanciful methodology continually irked his colleagues, the prosaic Stewart Sullivan and computer expert Annabelle Hurst.

The trio's boss was Sir Curtis Seretse (played by black actor Dennis Alaba Peters) and it was he who gave them their international assignments (usually murder or kidnapping mysteries with a strong element of the fantastic). For example, One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty investigated a pilotless plane, while The Pied Piper of Hambledown dealt with the mass abduction of an entire English village. The scripts were very polished and no matter how implausible the plots seemed, they were usually resolved convincingly.

Less successful was the 1971 - 1972 spin-off Jason King in which Wyngarde reprised his character as a solo crime-busting operative. King was as urbane and rakish as ever, with his turned up shirt cuffs, but the plots were very standard fare, slowed down by bed to bed girls.

Contrary to popular belief, Peter Wyngarde is, in fact, not Australian. He is the son of a French mother and English father and was born Cyril Louis Goldbert in 1928 in Marseilles, Southern France.