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
