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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Drama
    Drama TV Shows - 1970s 2 Mins Read

    Sandbaggers, The

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    1 9 7 8 – 1 9 8 0 (UK)
    20 x 60 minute episodes

    From Yorkshire Television came this TV Drama series about the special operations team of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), headed by Neil Burnside.

    The SIS agents are known as ‘sandbaggers’ (Willie Caine is Sandbagger #1) and specialise in covert operations around the world.

    The series put the spies in grey suits, gave them short haircuts and short tempers, cut out the car chases, sex and swashbuckling and unexpectedly made a pinup of Roy Marsden.

    But they upset the Foreign Office by flashing the phone number in the opening titles – a joke by writer Ian Mackintosh, a former Royal Navy officer and once a spy himself.

    The meat of The Sandbaggers came from the office-based dialogue. There were deals with CIA ally Jeff Ross (Bob Sherman), confrontations with direct superior Peele (Jerome Willis), and personal attachments to sandbagger Laura Dickens (Diane Keen) – a liaison destined for a brutal end.

    Burnside’s only real friend was Willie Caine (Ray Lonnen), his longest-serving operative.

    The end of The Sandbaggers was shrouded in mystery. During production of season three in 1979, the small plane in which Ian Mackintosh was flying went missing over the Pacific Ocean.

    Remaining scripts had to be handled by other writers, and arguably of a lower quality, the series was curtailed. The final episode ended with Caine shot on assignment in Malta, his fate unknown.

    Neil Burnside 
    Roy Marsden (1)
    Richard Vernon (2)
    Dennis Burgess (3)
    Willie Caine 

    Ray Lonnen
    Sir Geoffrey Wellingham 

    Alan MacNaughton
    Diane Lawler 

    Elizabeth Bennett
    ‘C’ (Sir James Greenley) 

    Richard Vernon
    Matthew Peele 

    Jerome Willis
    Jeff Ross 

    Bob Sherman
    Mike Wallace 

    Michael Cashman
    Laura Dickens 

    Diane Keen
    Marianne Straker 

    Sue Holderness
    Alan Denson 

    Steven Grives

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