Reviewed by Michael Edwards
Stars Peter Wyngarde, Anne Sharp, Ronald Lacey, Sebastian Breaks,
Simon Lack, Paul Stassino, Joanna Dunham, Leslie French, Clinton Greyn | Written by Various
UK certification PG | UK RRP £59.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 1300 minutes| Directed by Paul Dickson
A spin off from the 1969-70 British detective series Department S, Jason King follows the eponymous hero on his own adventures. Having left the department and his two more sensible and detective-like colleagues, King has set out to become an adventure novelist. It's a career that takes him to all sorts of glamorous locations (bear in mind that this is the 70s so that includes places like Greece and France), in each of which some sort of old nemesis is hot on his trail.
By making him a novelist, the series aims to open itself to a bit of the contemporary post-structuralism and potentially even a little of that soon to emerge postmodernism. King's own life and adventures are merged into that of his literary character Mark Cain and reality and fantasy collide, what's more.... who am I kidding. Let's face it, this is actually a series which takes the most popular character from a wildly popular (and now cult) series and gives him his own free rein. In this instance it means womanising, sexism a plenty and lots of pontificating in dangerous situations, all set to a bubbly jazz score.
There are a few inconsistencies in the character, necessary evils to carry the multifarious plots of 60 hour-ong episodes that comprise the one season that was made. He is less of a dandy than in Department S, and occasionally thinking straight for instance, and his empathy also expands and contracts from episode to episode, but it's not that big a deal. There's enough little plot twists, government interventions sending him on dangerous missions and little plays on his literary profession to make this watchable. Plus a big haired dude with a massive moustache from the 70s drinking, womanising and dropping witty one-liners is damn cool! Particularly when most of King's wit is derived from a self-conscious literary angle that allows the series to mock its own formulaic developments.
Overall this is a series with enough staying power for anyone nostalgic, drunk, or in need of a heavy dose of retro to give it a go. But it's certainly not a detective classic, the image quality isn't great and there's very little originality, even for the time, in the various intrigues King becomes caught up in.
EXTRAS **** Quite a lot of bits and pieces, some interesting and some, well, bizarre and pointless. Bizarre and pointless are the textless opening and closing titles and other 'textless material' (an infathomable selection of scenes), shown with the caption "These examples of textless material allowed foreign broadcasters to overlay their own captions", and a commercial break bumper - the bit you put in the middle of an episode before and after adverts!! Why?? More interesting are the many many image galleries provided, the episode of 70s chat show "Russell Harty plus..." with Peter Wyngardeand the "Wanna Watch a Television Series" documentary about Jason King, which have the usual tidbits of behind the scenes stuff but with an authentic 70s feel. Groovy.