Having spent months making figures to represent characters from a hokey old 1960s TV series, I thought I'd have a change, and instead make some figures to represent characters from a hokey old 1960s TV series.
For those unfamiliar with it,
Department S concerned an Interpol team charged with finding explanations for bizarre events, such as:
- The crew and passengers of an airliner think that they've reached their destination half an hour early; they're actually four days late.
- A man in a spacesuit drops dead of suffocation in a London street.
- An estate agent showing a client a supposedly empty warehouse finds it contains a barred and locked replica of a Georgian drawing room; inside are a corpse and a man so deep in shock that he cannot talk.
So who is going to sort out those mysteries?
Stuart Sullivan, head of Department S. A standard issue investigator-hero of the period. If he had been freelance and a few inches taller, he could have been the lead in one of those forgettable series that tried to copy the success of
The Saint.
Sir Curtis Seretse, Sullivan's boss, drops by to deliver some exposition while on his way to yet another conference.
Annabelle Hurst, data analyst. Usually to be found "feeding the facts into the computer", when it isn't her turn to be held hostage. Enjoys scoffing at the more outlandish theories of ...
Jason King, crime novelist and bon viveur and, later, star of his own spin-off series.
Department S was created by writer Dennis Spooner and producer Monty Berman, who also came up with
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and
The Champions. Like those series, it was made for Lew Grade's ITC productions, which also spent the Sixties turning out
The Saint,
The Baron,
Man in a Suitcase and
Strange Report as well as all of Gerry Anderson's sci-fi shows. Heady days.