a5c7b9f00b Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie was a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, came to CI5 from the regular police force, and was more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship was often contentious, but they were the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases. What a fantastic series, I was just about born when the series first aired and apart from the obvious cars and clothes looking dated the rest is surprisingly fresh. While it isn't very PC it is quite a hard series dealing with drugs, personal losses and the full spectrum of criminal activity. Bodie, Doyle and Crowley make a perfect team with plenty of one liners thrown around between them. The episodes are well constructed, interesting and well balanced. At present I am halfway through series 3 and enjoying it greatly.<br/><br/>Its far far better than the Bill and the only current TV series that comes close is life on mars, which obviously is at least part homage to the Professionals as well as Sweeney.<br/><br/>Good series, good plots and great acting. I love The Professionals. Great acting all round from the excellent trio of Lewis Collins, Martin Shaw and Gordon Jackson. Gripping, complicated story lines and great action sequences...never a dull moment! Surprisingly undated (aside from the cars and clothes, obviously). Bodie and Doyle's gallows humour and irreverent banter is so true to life.<br/><br/>I did have issues with Bodie's racist attitude in the "Klansmen" episode. Not because I shy away from dealing with serious issues in drama (and in all other respects "Klansmen" tackles racism very directly and bravely). My main issue was just that I didn't feel it suited his character to start making pig-ignorant racist comments, it seemed thrown in by the scriptwriters simply to make a point. (SPOILER: Point being that, by the end of the episode, having been treated by a black doctor and nurse, Bodie is miraculously no longer racist). I didn't want to hear that kind of talk from Bodie because, with all his life experiences he just wouldn't think like that. By all means have other characters in the storyline use those terms in context, but not a "professional" like Bodie!<br/><br/>As for sexism. Na! Just harmless blokey banter. Nothing's changed over the last thirty years apart from the feminisation of the TV industry. Ask Andy Gray or Richard Keys...<br/><br/>Out of all the episodes I've seen, "Klansmen" (well Bodie's dialogue in "Klansmen") hit the only wrong note. As for my favourite episodes: Hunter/Hunted", "The Madness Of Mickey Hamilton", "In The Public Interest", "The Rack" and "Heroes" all stand out. But all the episodes are watchable thanks to Collins, Shaw and Jackson.<br/><br/>Now I wanna get a Capri! Yes, 'Hijack' where a consigment of East German silver is stolen was based on a real robbery in the early 80s. The character of Krivas in 'Where the Jungle Ends' is based on Costas Geirgiou, a notorious Greek-Cypriot mercenary from the Angolan civil war. The ' group in 'At Close Quarters' is clearly based on the German Baader Meinhoff terrorist group (also known as the 'Red Army Faction') and the assassins in 'Long Shot' and 'Mixed Doubles' are extremely similar to infamous international terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal. <br/><br/> Jon Finch was originally cast as Doyle but withdrew at the last moment as he did not wish to play an ex-police officer (ironically Finch was a former member of The Parachute Regiment and SAS, mirroring Bodie's background perfectly). He was replaced by Martin Shaw but when filming began the series' creator Brian Clemens felt that Anthony Andrews playing Bodie lacked chemistry with Shaw and that the two looked too similar. Andrews was dropped and replaced with Lewis Collins who had appeared together with Shaw in an episode of Clemen's previous series, The New Avengers.