Great Britain, 1990. A dystopian future (at the time) in which Britain is under the grip of the Department of Public Control (PCD), a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding roughshod over the population’s civil liberties.
The all-powerful PCD – a department of the Home Office under Home Secretary ‘Fancy’ Dan Mellor (John Savident) – has done away with individual rights and maintains control through ID cards, rationing, censorship, and electronic and physical surveillance.
Food and alcohol are strictly rationed (except for bureaucrats who know how to bend the rules), and independent thought is ruthlessly suppressed in special state-controlled brainwashing units cunningly disguised as humane rest homes.
Free speech is forbidden, and the rule of law no longer protects the weak and defenceless.
Journalist Jim Kyle (Edward Woodward) – who works for The Star, the last of the independent newspapers – is a secret dissident who battles the forces of the establishment by aiding the underground resistance movement to smuggle scientists, academics and victims of the PCD out of the country, facing imprisonment or death (or worse) at the hands of the PCD and its ruthless controller Herbert Skardon (Robert Lang)
Precariously, Kyle is a bit too keen for his own good on the lovely but lethal Delly Lomas (Barbara Kellerman), one of Skardon’s Deputy Controllers in the PCD, who acts as a somewhat resistant informant for Kyle, with her loyalties torn between him and her duty to the PCD.
Kyle also gets assistance from the aptly named ‘Faceless’ (Paul Hardwick), a top-level official with close ties to the PCD, who imparts top-secret information via the slightly ajar window of his green VW Beetle.
Kyle is eventually arrested and put on trial, although he is ultimately acquitted. In the final episode of the first series, Skardon strips Jim of his ID and Union cards, making him a ‘Non-Citizen’.
With no home, no food, no job and no money, Kyle is a broken man, wandering the streets in a daze, suffering the constant harassment of Herbert Skardon and his men.
When the series returned for a further 8 episodes in 1978, Home Secretary Dan Mellor had resigned and was replaced by the Thatcher-esque Kate Smith (Yvonne Mitchell).
Delly Lomas was also gone from the PCD, and her replacement, Lynn Blake (Lisa Harrow), just happens to be an ex-girlfriend of Jim Kyle.
The various dissident groups – known as ‘Pentagons’ – are growing stronger, but spend more time squabbling among themselves than actually trying to overthrow the government.
Meanwhile, Kyle continues to pound away at Kate Smith and Herbert Skardon, as he investigates severe food shortages, falls foul of terrifying Police Commissioner Richard Hallam (John Paul), is subjected to the horrendous Authorised Systematic Harassment (a brutal onslaught of bureaucracy which actually succeeds in breaking one of Kyle’s comrades), tries to put down an extortionist network which preys on workers, and gets involved with the Chess Championships . . .
In the two-part series finale, the Pentagons launch an assault on the PCD and the public suicide of a Pentagon member (in the form of a horribly graphic self-immolation) finally brings the rest of the world together in condemnation of the British government.
The PCD dissolves into infighting and recrimination, while Kyle is elevated to the status of revolutionary leader and Herbert Skardon finally gets his just desserts.
Jim Kyle
Edward Woodward Herbert Skardon
Robert Lang Dave Brett
Tony Doyle Faceless
Paul Hardwick Delly Lomas
Barbara Kellerman Marly
Honor Shepherd Lynn Blake
Lisa Harrow Kate Smith
Yvonne Mitchell Dan Mellor
John Savident Henry Tasker
Clifton Jones Police Commissioner Richard Hallam
John Paul
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The all-powerful PCD – a department of the Home Office under Home Secretary ‘Fancy’ Dan Mellor (John Savident) – has done away with individual rights and maintains control through ID cards, rationing, censorship, and electronic and physical surveillance.
With no home, no food, no job and no money, Kyle is a broken man, wandering the streets in a daze, suffering the constant harassment of Herbert Skardon and his men.
