Professionals epiosde 'The Rack'
'The Professionals' TV series was "Britain's answer to 'Starsky and Hutch'". Made in the late 70s and early 80s, it was a show about two friends, agents of fictional government department CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), Bodie (Lewis Collins) and Doyle (Martin Shaw).
The programme is perhaps better known for its theme tune, featured cars like Bodie's Ford Capri, the tight jeans of its two stars and Doyle's bubble-perm hairdo, than for its storylines. Yet despite the varying quality of the episodes, it had over 17 million viewers after its first seven weeks. A well-known and remembered show, it is currently available in the UK on DVD.
CI5's mission is to do what other police and security services cannot - fight crime by using occasionally criminal methods, or 'fight fire with fire', as CI5 Controller Cowley (Gordon Jackson) says in the first episode. So our heroes fight the bad guys by means like planting drugs on people to enable false arrest, and threatening to throw them off high buildings to extract information. They're not averse to a bit of gunfire, either; 'shoot first and ask questions later' seems to be their motto. Some might think an organisation like this as great a threat to freedom as the crime CI5 was set up to fight. This question is raised in the second series episode 'The Rack'. One of Bodie's informers, 'Nosey' Parker (Ken Campbell), reports ten pounds of uncut heroin has been received by career criminal John Coogan (Michael Billington).
Coogan, a retired professional boxer, is publicly known as a sporting hero, but has made himself a new career in crime, including drugs, extortion and prostitution. CI5 raid Coogan's mansion, but find no drugs. So they take Coogan and his younger brother (played by Chris Ellison, later to play DI Burnside in 'The Bill') in for questioning. But when Coogan's brother dies of a ruptured spleen, apparently caused by a punch in the stomach from Doyle during his interrogation, Coogan vows vengeance on CI5. He tells his lawyer "Just get them out from behind their badge or whatever - break them, make them ordinary people again - you take care of that and then one night, down some dark street, I'll take care of them my way." To enable this, his lawyer manages to get a committee set up to investigate whether CI5 has become a law unto itself, and should be shut down.
Coogan is someone you definitely wouldn't like to meet down any dark street. He is cold-blooded, usually in control of himself - after making an apparently emotional statement to the press at his brother's funeral, he asks his henchman, "Didn't overdo it, did I? " But when the control is lost, he has an extremely violent temper.
Bodie and Doyle discover that Coogan himself threw the punch that killed his brother, during boxing sparring practice, in retaliation for a blow which hurt him. And when Coogan discovers the identity of the informant who first led CI5 to him, he has him brutally beaten. When the committee looking into CI5 see the horrific extent of the informant's injuries, they realise it's still needed to fight this sort of violent criminal.
This is an uncommon role for Michael Billington as an out-and-out villain. But the way he plays this character is believable, and more than a little frightening. There is a sense of controlled menace in the Coogan character - that however quietly and calmly he speaks and behaves, at any moment the control could be lost and anger erupt into violence. This is definitely one of the best episodes of 'The Professionals', and highly recommended for Michael Billington fans.
(Another review here).