PUBLIC EYE (1965-75)

-




Largely forgotten these days, despite a 10-year run on British television, Public Eye was a near-perfect exercise in understatement. The series starred Alfred Burke as a maverick inquiry agent, Frank Marker, a man whose jaded, lonesome existence is stylishly profiled in the monochrome opening titles, accompanied by a theme tune more muted than a funeral tie. “Marker wasn’t exciting, he wasn’t rich,” said Burke, of his creation. “He could be defined in negatives.” His cases are just as pedestrian: blackmail, corruption, infidelity, petty crime. “He gets people in the kind of trouble you can’t go to the police about, even if you’re innocent,” ran one 1965 trailer.

In the early series, Marker is as a bit player in his own drama. “The interesting people were the other characters,” said Burke.  At the end of season three, now sadly lost, he is wrongly jailed for fencing stolen goods. Marker comes into his own in the 1969 series, available on DVD. He is out of prison and relocated to Brighton, under the watchful eye of his parole officer. The six black-and-white episodes, set amongst the town’s peeling stucco and windswept seafront, and rich in B-movie realism, explore Marker the man. They reveal a quietly resilient and very English cult hero: a leaner Morse in Columbo’s raincoat. Brilliantly scripted by Roger Marshall and Anthony Marriott for ABC/Thames, Public Eye was an antidote to the square-jawed American sleuths and paved the way for grittier Brit-cop shows of the Seventies.

The Times, 15-7-71





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BATTLE OF EPPING FOREST

-
Image
Genesis (1973) The Story of the Song (Updated October 2017) I’ve been listening to the Genesis album  Selling England by the Pound  now for 40 years. One track that I have always had something of a soft spot for is “The Battle of Epping Forest”. Although there are objectively better and more musically satisfying tracks elsewhere on the album, “Battle” kept my attention as a teenager; and still does. I love the witty lyrics, the double entendres and the cartoon-like characters with Bash Street Kids-style names.  I grew up in East Anglia and often went down to London, so I knew roughly where Epping was on the map. To me, then, the song appeared rooted in the real world. It seemed to report on real events, real-time, unlike the myth-laden (but equally attractive) romance of “Dancing Out with the Moonlit Knight” or “Firth of Fifth” or the rustic whimsy of “I Know What I Like”. “Battle” was packed with words and colourful characters, with humour and menace – and it had
Read more

A TALENT FOR LOVING: THE BEATLES COWBOY MOVIE THAT NEVER WAS

-
Image
In 2009, a script for A Talent for Loving was auctioned at Bonhams . It was a treatment for a movie and was signed by all four Beatles. It apparently sold for a little under £8,000. I hadn’t heard of this movie before and was curious. What was it and why was it signed by the Beatles? It turns out that the Beatles’ involvement with A Talent for Loving goes back to early 1965, some months before their second feature film Help! was released. It was adapted for the screen by Evelyn and Richard Condon, from Richard Condon’s 1961 offbeat novel of the same name.  According to Wikipedia,  A Talent for Loving  tells the tale of a sixteenth-century Aztec priest who cut off his own hand and used the bloody stump to lay a curse upon a blasphemous Spanish conquistador and all his direct descendants. Three centuries on, in 1871, the beautiful young virginal daughter of a fabulously wealthy Texas rancher and gambler is its latest victim. The action centres around a cowboy race, run to decide wh
Read more

JUDEE SILL IN THE U.K. (1971–1973)

-
Image
Search up the American singer-songwriter Judee Sill on YouTube and the first two hits will probably be her appearance on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. It was her second time on the show and Judee is singing two songs from her second (and, as it turned out, last) album, Heart Food: The Kiss and The Pearl, introduced by 'Whispering' Bob Harris. Here they are. I love these clips. It reminds me what an important show Whistle Test was, back in the days when there was so little decent music on television beyond the pop charts. But also because this is pretty much the only surviving footage of Judee performing. Anywhere. Yes, there is some grainy black and white film of her playing somewhere in America. But this is in the studio and in colour. And it was in London. So who was Judee Sill? Her story is breathtaking and tragic. Read it here or better still go see the movie documentary Lost Angel if you can.  "Judee is probably this year's reigning queen of the non-s
Read more