This BBC series featured a group of spies who worked at “the Department” – a (fictional) British government espionage agency that travelled the globe in pursuit of rogue agents, double-dealers, defectors and other matters concerning national security.
Paul Daneman was the steel-nerved chief interrogator, Commander Ryan. Agents in the field were Commander Anderson (Julian Glover) and Lieutenant Saunders RN (Prentis Hancock).
The programme originally appeared four nights a week as an on-going early-evening serial with concurrent multi-part storylines. After a successful 36 episode first season, the show was scheduled in a prime-time slot and episodes were extended from 25 minutes to 50 minutes.
Michael Gwynne was introduced as head honcho Carson, a patrician smoothie in charge of security operations, whilst Tom Adams was introduced as Major Sullivan to replace Glover’s character.
Stories now concentrated on individual cases and were satisfyingly complicated – though never suggested that our lot were nicer than our enemies (although we behaved better).
Cmdr. Ryan
Paul Daneman Lt. Saunders
Prentis Hancock Cmdr. Anderson
Julian Glover Carson
Michael Gwynn Det. Supt. Clark
Peter Welch Major Sullivan
Tom Adams Det. Insp. Williams
Eric McCaine Trent
Kevin Stoney Rankin
Jon Laurimore
