One of the most celebrated adventures of Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor is 1985's Vengeance on Varos, a cynical and sadistic tale of surveillance, ratings wars and capitalism. The last time I watched it, a couple of years ago, I was underwhelmed by a dreary story of ugly people sneering at each other as they whirred around brown corridors in electric golf karts. The Sun Makers without any of the wit or playfulness.
But in 1985 I already knew the name of scripter Philip Martin. I had watched his Brechtian BBC Birmingham crime drama Gangsters in the early weeks of 1978. I was fourteen then and didn't really "get" it. But it stayed with me because there was something illicit and adult about it. Over the last week, I've been re-watching Series Two on Youtube.
Quite honestly, I've never seen Series One nor have I seen the original Play For Today instigated the series. I don't know how much I want to.
2nd bus is for EK, about to pass what is now the Buchanan Galleries car park, 1978
Each episode of Gangsters opens with a colourful, Bond-ish title sequence, where silhouetted ladies are juxtaposed with images of drug paraphenalia and the hero's manure-caked face. The theme song is growled and shrieked by "Chris Out of Time" Farlowe: "Go and hiiiiide in your dreeeeeams about GAAAANGSTERS!!!"
That hero, John Klein (Maurice Colbourne) is an archetypal Seventies Tough Guy who screws all the female characters (note: not shags. That's too lagered- up New Lad and Ladette, too Nineties. Screwing is what people do in the 70s when they're not bugging offices, forming terrorist cells or Streaking. It's such a cynical, joyless term and so apt for such a jaded, burned-out era.).
Anyway, Kline and his "lady", Annie, an ex-junkie, are trying to set up a restaurant in Birmingham, which is a grim, ugly., decaying place and the battleground for two drug-dealing factions: the Triads and the local Asians. (I made two business trips to Brum in the early Noughties when I was working in the call centre industry and stayed in the Jewellery Quarter, where many of the series' scenes were shot.. It was still an eyesore of a place, although Glasgow looks just as bad, above) The story involves a web of shifting allegiances and criminal activities, with some comedy kung fu and post-Structuralist narrative tricksiness thrown in for good measure.
Kilen appears to be modelling himself on Bogart in Casablanca and is menaced by insane giggling killer Double Petal (who carries a picture of Cagney ) in a cinema in one episode while Bela Lugosi drowns onscreen in 1939's The Human Monster. Anne has a bizarre, halting job interview which she finally ends with " And cut the dialogue there"- just like the first episode of Varos. She even walks right off the set in the final episode, demanding drinks for the crew. Meanwhile, several scenes depict Martin dictating the script to a typist as the action happens.
The episodes are given chapter titles- "While Beauty Sleeps", "Enter The White Devil" - and "To Be Continued " ends each programme, giving it a pulpy, melodramatic feel which is at odds with the drab look of the city and the adult subject matter.
Unusually, for UK tv drama of the time, much of the story is carried by the multi-ethnic cast. Alibe Parsons, who appeared in the second series of Space: 1999 (as "Alibe") plays soignee Glam Rock American intelligence agent Sarah Gant, who seems to be playing all sides off each other. Lily Li Tang is played by Chai Lee as a manipulative Daughter of Fu Manchu-type who exploits her sexuality and finishing school wiles. Saeed Jaffrey steals most scenes as the screamingly camp Rafiq; the fruity delivery of all his lines suggest he's sending up the whole thing.
White Devil. Sort of.
The martial arts elements also seem to part of a far more camp sensibility, including the silent, supernatural assassin Red Stick and most bizarre of all, author Philip Martin himself as the lethal White Devil, who is impersonating W.C. Fields. In the most daring and inexplicable coup of the series, Martin aka "Larson E. Whipsnade" assassinates Kline, just as Bruce Lee was rumoured to have been killed, with one touch. Killing off your leading man is a strange step, halfway through the final episode.Even more so when it's performed on screen by the author himself.Anne and retired police man Zia Mohyeddin finally defeat Lily and her Triad goons but White Devil escapes with the enigmatic Mrs. Gant. In the final scenes, Mohyeddin's character has his illusions of an idyllic, Imperial England smashed in an encounter with some Rent-a -Punk football holligans on a concrete footbridge. It's a pedestrian (no pun intended) conclusion straight out of Weller's Down In the Tube Station at Midnight.
Because of television drama sensibilities from over thirty years ago, there are real longeurs in each episode and the motivation of many characters is obscure without, I expect, some familarity with Series One. What I find interesting about it however are the non-naturalistic elements. My senior students have little idea of Surrealism and aren't accustomed to any Post-Structuralist devices. They're more familiar with the narratives of games or the thrill-ride scares of action or horror franchises and yet CGI and 3D make everything look even less real. It would be liberating to see Hollywood shake off the fad for Naturalism. I'd be interested to know what you think of this tv obscurity.
Next: Doctor On The Job
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