Department S

Department S

1969
Department S
Department S

Department S

7.2 | en | Drama

Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse.

View More
AD

WATCH FREEFOR 30 DAYS

All Prime Video
Cancel anytime

Watch Now

Seasons & Episodes

1
EP28  The Soup of the Day
Mar. 17,1970
The Soup of the Day

LOCATION: Liverpool, England DATE: May 2nd Department S is called upon to investigate a most unusual burglary: four men break into a warehouse and break through a stone wall, all to steal one crate of Portugese fish soup. The crime becomes more confusing when the stolen soup cans are found discarded less than a day after they are stolen.

EP27  The Bones of Byrom Blain
Mar. 10,1970
The Bones of Byrom Blain

LOCATION: Marling Dale, Cheshire, England DATE: April 4th When a chauffeur opens the door for his passenger, a diplomat named Byrom Blaine, he discovers a skeleton instead. The Department is called in, but they cannot stop other diplomats from turning into skeletons -- including Sir Curtis.

EP26  A Small War of Nerves
Mar. 03,1970
A Small War of Nerves

LOCATION: Wiltshire, England DATE: April 20th Greg Halliday is fed up with his work as a chemical engineer creating weapons that can obliterate the population of large cities. He leaves his job with a canister of the deadly chemical. The Department is out to find him before others who want the chemicals get to him -- or before Halliday uses the weapon himself.

EP25  A Fish out of Water
Feb. 24,1970
A Fish out of Water

LOCATION: Beruit, Lebanon DATE: March 22nd The body of an Interpol agent is found near the shore shortly after he arrives in Beruit for vacation. Stewart is upset, not because the man was a friend, but because Sir Curtis accepts the report that the death was accidental. Stewart rejects that, claiming his friend was an expert diver. Stewart must control his emotions and work around his supervisor's order to not work on the case in order to discover the truth.

EP24  Spencer Bodily Is Sixty Years Old
Feb. 17,1970
Spencer Bodily Is Sixty Years Old

LOCATION: London, England DATE: May 8th A man commits suicide beneath a tree in a park. He has no identification and is completely untraceable. To complicate matters, the coronor's report indicates the dead man is 60 years old -- even though his physical appearance makes him appear to be in his 20s. Before the Department can question the autopsy, the corpse is stolen.

EP23  The Mysterious Man in the Flying Machine
Feb. 10,1970
The Mysterious Man in the Flying Machine

LOCATION: Paris, France DATE: March 8th A man murders another man on a flight. He then orders no one to move and opens the airplane door, jumping -- to the floor of a warehouse. Other men aboard the ""plane"" chase and shoot the killer in the warehouse. The Department is called in to learn who would build such an elaborate set in order to murder someone.

EP22  The Duplicated Man
Feb. 03,1970
The Duplicated Man

LOCATION: Foreign Office, London DATE: February 16th. A plane carrying a British MI5 agent explodes over the English Channel. Witnesses on a boat crossing the Channel see the plane explode and are certain no one survived. Sir Curtis, however, is confident the agent jumped from the plane prior to the explosion, and sends the Department out to find the agent. The Department’s activity catches the interest of Russian agents, who are also certain the agent “who was also working for the Russians” is still alive.

EP21  The Perfect Operation
Jan. 27,1970
The Perfect Operation

LOCATION: City of Southwark Hospital, London DATE: October 24th A British government official suffers a brain hemorrhage. While in surgery, his surgeon is replaced by another man. Instead of killing the official, the substitute doctor completed the operation. The Department must find out why, while Jason disputes the official government records that state the official has never been to Istanbul.

EP20  Death on Reflection
Jan. 20,1970
Death on Reflection

LOCATION: Bond Street, London, England DATE: January 18th Sir Curtis attends an auction. A mirror that he suspects is worth no more than £2,500 goes for £9,000. He is perplexed as to why, and even more concerned when the man who bought the mirror at auction is murdered.

EP19  The Man from X
Jan. 13,1970
The Man from X

LOCATION: London, England DATE: February 2nd A couple, necking in a car, are shocked to find a man in a spacesuit coming at them. He falls dead before he reaches their car. The Department wants to know what a man in a spacesuit was doing in London at night, and how it might tie to a planned robbery.

EP18  The Ghost of Mary Burnham
Jan. 06,1970
The Ghost of Mary Burnham

LOCATION: London DATE: January 4th John Burnham’s wife was murdered in the parking garage as they were leaving for the evening. However, John continues to see Mary and receive phone calls from her. Who killed Mrs. Burnham and why is a matter of utmost importance for the Department to solve, since, as Sir Curtis tells Stewart in giving him the case, “John Burnham is an important man to the world.”

EP17  Last Train to Redbridge
Dec. 30,1969
Last Train to Redbridge

LOCATION: London DATE: November 22nd A subway arrives at its final destination for the evening. A conductor finds a car filled with dead people, and he is overcome by something in the air and dies as well before he can leave the car or notify anyone. As Annabelle is escorting the widow of one of the victims from the morgue, the widow is abducted at gunpoint. Jason further complicates matters by being abducted by the people responsible, while Stewart and Annabelle try to figure out why the massacre happened and who was behind it.

EP16  A Ticket to Nowhere
Dec. 23,1969
A Ticket to Nowhere

LOCATION: Heathrow Airport, London, England DATE: December 6th A pilot coming in for a landing spies a man on the runway. He is unable to miss the man, killing him. Jason, at the airport to fly to Paris, stumbles onto the situation by befriending the deceased's niece. In Paris, the Department is charged with the task of finding a missing scientist who has perfected an advanced form of brainwashing. When Jason finally arrives in Paris, he realizes the man discovered on the runway dressed in pajamas is their missing scientist.

EP15  Dead Men Die Twice
Dec. 16,1969
Dead Men Die Twice

LOCATION: Southern France DATE: July 19th A man's home is invaded by armed intruders intent on killing him. He has a heart attack and dies before they can, however. The two men go to the morgue to see the body, where they put two bullets into the corpse. Department S investigate the shooting of the body of a man who bears a striking resemblance to a notorious criminal who allegedly died three years earlier.

EP14  The Shift That Never Was
Dec. 09,1969
The Shift That Never Was

LOCATION: Stepney, London, England DATE: October 10th The police are called to investigate a manufacturing company manager’s claim that no one showed up for work on a Wednesday in spite of neighbors’ claims that everything at the plant appeared to be perfectly normal. The shift substitution somehow ties to the opening of a nuclear-powered generating station.

EP13  Les Fleurs du Mal
Dec. 02,1969
Les Fleurs du Mal

LOCATION: Rome, Italy DATE: September 26th A small package has the key to the disappearance of $5 million taken in a robbery. The man charged with delivering the package to a man in Paris is curious, so he opens the package to find three flowers and a cryptic passage from a book. He does not know what the message means, only that people involved in the robbery are being murdered, including the prime suspect in the robbery.

EP12  The Man Who Got a New Face
Nov. 25,1969
The Man Who Got a New Face

LOCATION: Cap d'Antibes, France DATE: August 16th A man takes enormous risk by sneak onto the grounds of an estate. He steals nothing, taking the gamble instead to glue a classic theatrical comedy mask onto a sleeping man's face. The man wakes and sees the mask, dying of a heart attack trying to remove it. Since the man was a friend of Sir Curtis, he wants the Department to investigate who performed "this bad joke"--and why.

EP11  Who Plays the Dummy?
Nov. 18,1969
Who Plays the Dummy?

LOCATION:The Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain DATE: September 12th A car, apparently out of control, rushes to its doom in a mountainous, uninhabited area of Madrid. And its only occupant is a tailor's dummy sitting at the wheel. The chief clue is the expensive tie on the dummy, a British-made tie that Jason notices on someone else in town.

EP10  The Treasure of the Costa del Sol
Nov. 11,1969
The Treasure of the Costa del Sol

LOCATION: The Costa del Sol, Spain DATE: July 31st A man goes scuba diving while his friend waits in the car. The man returns from the dive with a fish, and his friend shoots him. Before he dies he is able to return fire with a spear gun, killing the shooter. A policeman happens upon the scene and finds the diver's catch: a plastic fish with $100,000 inside.

EP9  The Double Death of Charlie Crippen
Nov. 04,1969
The Double Death of Charlie Crippen

LOCATION: Bay of Naples, Italy DATE: August 14th Assassins attack a limousine with a land mine, but the “man” killed turns out to be a mannequin. Jason nicknames the mannequin “Charlie Crippen” while the Department sets to find out who did the attack, and who the real target is.

EP8  Black Out
Oct. 28,1969
Black Out

LOCATION: London, England DATE: May 26th A chef goes to the opera in London. Three days later he is found by Mexican authorities in the desert, still his formal attire, unaware of what happened after he left the opera. A case of mistaken identity, leading the Department to Jamaica for turtle in the shell while Sir Curtis is off to America to witness a rocket launching. How are they connected?

EP7  Handicap Dead
Oct. 21,1969
Handicap Dead

LOCATION: Colindale Golf Course, Scotland DATE: June 6th Stewart attends a golf tournament in Scotland. The tournament leader is found dead near the course. The Department is unofficially involved until someone breaks into the dead man's living quarters and steals his golf clubs.

EP6  The Man in the Elegant Room
Oct. 14,1969
The Man in the Elegant Room

LOCATION: Islington, London, England DATE: May 12th A real estate agent, taking a man to see a warehouse, discovers a room constructed inside the warehouse. Worse, a dead body and a babbling man are locked inside the room. Stewart tries to interrogate the man, but he is killed before anything can be made of his babbling.

EP5  One of Our Aircraft Is Empty
Oct. 07,1969
One of Our Aircraft Is Empty

LOCATION: London Airport DATE: April 30th Sky Tripper 190 requests auto land clearance at Heathrow Airport in London. When boarded, the plane is totally empty. While investigating Stewart locates the body of the pilot, and Annabelle sees a reclusive industry CEO boarding the plane in a photograph.

EP4  The Pied Piper of Hambledown
Sep. 30,1969
The Pied Piper of Hambledown

LOCATION: Hambledown, Hampshire, England DATE: April 16th A woman goes to bed early, taking a sedative, to get enough sleep for a beauty contest. When she wakes up the next morning her entire village is deserted. The only clues Department S can find are a man with a shotgun in a home on the outskirts of the village and a freshly-painted mailbox post.

EP3  A Cellar Full of Silence
Sep. 23,1969
A Cellar Full of Silence

LOCATION: London, England DATE: June 20th Four men dressed in various costumes are gunned down in a cellar. The gun of one had been fired, the bullet turning up in the body of a man found in the trunk of a submerged car. Stewart pays a call on a crime broker to see who hired the men and how the crimes relate to a house in St. John's Woods, where a woman is being kept sedated because she thought she saw four men wearing disguises committing a robbery in the house.

EP2  The Trojan Tanker
Sep. 16,1969
The Trojan Tanker

LOCATION: Bedfordshire, England DATE: July 3rd A tanker is involved in an accident. A witness swears he saw a woman in the back of the tanker, but when the police look there is no one inside. The tanker, however, is not carrying fuel, but rather is elaborately rigged as a living space. A search for the missing woman leads Jason to an old friend, and eventually to France.

EP1  Six Days
Sep. 09,1969
Six Days

LOCATION: Aboard Astair flight Golf-Alpha-Zulu-Echo-Bravo DATE: July 17th An airplane lands at Heathrow 30 minutes early, according to all indications on board. When the plane lands the crew is met by anxious airport officials, notifying them that they are not 30 minutes early, but six days overdue. Department S has a vested interest in the flight, because Sir Curtis was aboard. As they begin investigating, people start dying.

SEE MORE
7.2 | en | Drama , Action & Adventure , Sci-Fi | More Info
Released: 1969-09-09 | Released Producted By: , Country: United Kingdom Budget: 0 Revenue: 0 Official Website:
Synopsis

Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse.

...... View More
Stream Online

The tv show is currently not available onine

Cast

Peter Wyngarde , Rosemary Nicols , Joel Fabiani

Director

Producted By

,

AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime.

Watch Now

Reviews

jimpayne1967 Department S has a rather poor reputation these days and probably has the worst reputation of the ITC action shows of the mid to late 60s and very early 70s. It has not to the best of my knowledge been shown on British television- terrestrial or digital channels- since the late 1990s whereas almost all of the others are shown regularly on ITV4 even now. There are reasons that have precious little to do with the quality of the actual show that see it being regarded almost as the runt of the litter it was part of and aside perhaps from The Persuaders the programme - or at least its most famous character- is the most parodied of the ITC action showsIt certainly isn't the best of those programmes - the Prisoner and probably Man in a Suitcase are better - but on a recent viewing of several episodes I would suggest that it is far from the worst. Unlike the roughly contemporaneous Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and the Champions the show is not based on a ludicrous premise and although the stories are hardly gritty realism a la Line of Duty they do just about possess some credibility. Some episodes such as the opener Six Days, series 1's The Man in the Elegant Room and Series 2's The Shift That Never Was are pretty solid thrillers and whilst series 1's The Pied Piper of Hambledown feels like a Steed/Peel era episode of the Avengers it is still very good.There are faults in the show obviously. The team's boss, Sir Curtis Seretse (played by Denis Alaba Peters) is a far more interesting leader than Anthony Nicholls' Tremayne in the Champions ever was but he is underused and the female member of the team Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) often seems marginalised. She is not there as eye candy in the way that Alexandra Bastedo and Annette Andre often seemed to be in R & H (D) and the Champs respectively - but whilst it's a decent enough idea to have a hardworking, female computer expert as something like the brains of the operation her character is pretty under-developed. Joel Fabiani as the straight man - but not quite- of the team, Stewart Sullivan is actually okay most of the time precisely because although Fabiani plays him straight there is obviously a humorous fellow in there. There are hints of some feelings between Annabelle and Stewart but mostly Sullivan is a professional and the show is the better for that.The show is best remembered though because of the character Jason King played by Peter Wyngarde. When those smart-aleck comedians make allusions to the show what they refer to is King/Wyngarde. With his crushed velvet Zapata moustache the character is very much of his time visually but actually that was how men who though they had style looked those days- even big rough, tough footballers like Derek Dougan tried to look like our Jason (though not perhaps on the pitch). A very unfortunate incident in Wyngarde's private life inevitably makes King's predilection for glamorous females seem a bit unlikely but trust me until the follow up series 'Jason King' ( which really was terrible) and the aforementioned incident women really did fancy Wyngarde and men thought he was way cooler than, say, staid old Roger Moore. And the thing is Wyngarde is mostly great as King. Few actors have ever been as convincing as Wyngarde at playing an almost permanently sozzled character and he delivers some sharp lines as though they were his own. He might now be seen as being a ludicrously camp figure but most of the time he plays it as straight as he can- a vain, flawed, erudite man living on his wits and who knows, not even very deep down, he is no super-hero. Department S is not a great programme and having had the courage to give the team a black leader and a female lead who is not just there because she looks nice it didn't do enough with what were for the time bold ideas. Fabiani and especially Wyngarde get the best lines and the best scenarios and look to be having a whale of a time making it and they make it watchable. The best thing about the show should not be the most scorned thing about it- quite the reverse
jc-osms Another of my most fondly remembered shows from my pre-teen years was this stablemate of other favourites like The Champions, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and others.With a premise, as the DVD box-set claims, not a million miles away from the much later "X-Files" or "Jonathan Creek", only without the creepiness, the intrepid trio of flamboyant ladies-man novelist Jason King (archly played by Peter Wyngarde), straight-arrow Stewart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) and attractive computer geek Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) get called in to solve the cases that MI5, the FBI or Surete reject.Cue a series of well-crafted 50 minute adventures, often populated by the usual roster of ITC-series supporting actors, top and tailed with another superb theme-tune.My brother has just bought me the DVD box-set of this show and unlike most DVD box-sets, this won't sit buried away in the cupboard but will certainly be watched, each and every one, critical judgement suspended as I transport myself back to my eight-year-old self lying in front of our family television, raptly gazing up at shows such as this.
Installation_At_Orsk I had never seen Department S until fairly recently when Top Gear did its spoof Sixties show "The Interceptors", which used the Department S theme music. Because I have a liking for the spy-fi shows of that era, I tracked down the DVDs of the series out of curiosity.And I'm glad I did, because while it's no classic and falls some way short of the likes of The Avengers and The Prisoner, it's still lively and entertaining thanks to the interplay of its three leads. Joel Fabiani's Stewart Sullivan is largely the straight man and muscle, but still maintains a deadpan humour - with a righteous anger whenever politics interferes with justice. Rosemary Nichols' Annabelle Hurst has a flirty relationship with Stewart, and while something of a computer nerd is still more than capable of taking care of herself in the field.Then... there's Jason King. Jason is the character known even by people who've never seen the show, simply because he's so outrageous. A chain-smoking dandy and fop who drives a Bentley even when trying to be inconspicuous and more often has a glass in his hand than not (he starts drinking when most people would be having their morning coffee and must surely be pleasantly buzzed, if not outright drunk, for 90% of his screen time), he's also arrogant, egotistical, rude, self-centred, lazy, hedonistic, snobbish, bitchy (poor Annabelle takes most of his cutting put-downs), a smarmy lech and is constantly outclassed in fights to the point where Annabelle chastises him for getting "knocked out AGAIN!" in quite an early episode. Yet despite all that, he's still utterly charming and magnetic because of Peter Wyngarde's effortlessly suave and confident performance. Played by anyone else Jason would seem like a buffoon - he was, after all, one of the inspirations for Austin Powers - but Wyngarde gives him class even at his most ridiculously pompous.The actual stories are mixed; some of the mysteries Department S are called upon to investigate are genuinely clever, while others (mostly those written by Philip Broadley) are bog-standard ITC crime plots involving bank robbers, smuggling rings or the Mafia with a 'bizarre' opening slapped on them to fit the format of "crimes too weird for the normal police to solve". Watching on DVD, ITC's penny-pinching also becomes evident - the same locations and sets appear again and again with only slight changes (watch for the corridor with a distinctive illuminated ceiling, which appears in almost every episode), and if you ever see anyone driving a white Jaguar, you know it's going to go over a cliff! ("Toonces, look ouuuuuut!") But overall it's a fun, lightly tongue-in-cheek adventure show that gets by on pure charisma.
gtbarker Department S was one of the first TV programmes I can remember watching and loved it for it's strange plots and interesting characters. I waited for years to see it again and I am delighted to say it has just started a re-run on a UK satellite channel and it's just as good as I remember it. The character of Jason King is fantastic and the two straight-playing members of the trio are also very good. The whole thing looks fantastic, there are some wonderfully corny lines, excellent clothes, theme music that ranks among the very best and it all comes together to present us with something camper than a hut full of cub scouts (and if you ever wondered where many of the ideas for the X Files came from - look no further than Department S). Simply brilliant.