Dempsey and Makepeace reunite!

[Glebe]

Actually according to Wiki it first aired in 1985 so a bit premature with the 40th anniversary celebration there. I feel a slight bit of a fraud starting this thread because I wasn't a huge watcher of the series but I remember watching bits of it as a kid, it was definitely a TV staple and I find it a bit nostalgic and hauntological! Gets repeated on ITV4 sometimes.

Glynis Barber was (still is!) very pretty, prior to DaM she was of course Soolin in Blake's 7. Just looking on Wiki apparently Michael Brandon made an appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger, wasn't aware of that. As mentioned in the interview, Barber and Brandon would eventually marry and are still together.

Porridge's Tony Osoba was also in it, and I see Colin McFarlane was also in the main cast (oddly, Wiki makes no mention of Mcfarlane's Fast Show appearances).

Happy 39th anniversary Dempsey and Makepeace!

[Gulftastic]

Our next door neighbours named their border collie in honour of the show but mispelled it as Demsey, bless 'em. They were simple folk.

[dissolute ocelot]

Yeah they say 40 years since production started, not since it first aired.

I loved it as a child, all that glamour and exoticism (both the tuff Noo Yawk cop and the posh Englishwoman). Back in the days when TV cops shows were more interested in people running round with guns, than elderly detectives being endearingly cranky in historic villages. Better times. I'm sure it's shit, but don't want to tarnish the innocent memories.

Brandon may have given the sense of someone not very successful in the US who came over here to snaffle up all the roles for a tough New Yorker. He seems to have done OK, continuing to play an American in British stuff. He was Jerry Springer in the Opera before David Soul. And did narration for the US version of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. He was even in Dr Who as an American general in The Stolen Earth. He had also dated Kim Novak (12 years his senior) and Lindsay Wagner before Barber.

Hope the white Ford Escort Cabriolet is still OK.

[Egyptian Feast]

I loved it as a child, all that glamour and exoticism (both the tuff Noo Yawk cop and the posh Englishwoman). Back in the days when TV cops shows were more interested in people running round with guns, than elderly detectives being endearingly cranky in historic villages. Better times. I'm sure it's shit, but don't want to tarnish the innocent memories.

Don't go back. I fucking loved it when it was first on but caught a couple of episodes when RTÉ repeated it in the late 90s and it was awful.

I thought Dempsey was the coolest guy in the world in 1985. I have a memory of watching a TV movie with the family, which turns out to be A Vacation In Hell (1979), where a bunch of tourists get stuck in the jungle and Michael Brandon, the Burt Reynolds in Deliverance of the group, breaks his leg and later falls to his death as they're trying to stretcher him over a waterfall. I went fucking mental, screaming about Dempsey dying. Stupid little cunt. Twenty Seven, I was.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I loved it so much when I was about 8 or 9 that I named my Russian Dwarf hamster Dempsey. Rewatched a bit just now and it looks dreadful.

[jamiefairlie]

Actually according to Wiki it first aired in 1985 so a bit premature with the 40th anniversary celebration there. I feel a slight bit of a fraud starting this thread because I wasn't a huge watcher of the series but I remember watching bits of it as a kid, it was definitely a TV staple and I find it a bit nostalgic and hauntological! Gets repeated on ITV4 sometimes.

Glynis Barber was (still is!) very pretty, prior to DaM she was of course Soolin in Blake's 7. Just looking on Wiki apparently Michael Brandon made an appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger, wasn't aware of that. As mentioned in the interview, Barber and Brandon would eventually marry and are still together.

Porridge's Tony Osoba was also in it, and I see Colin McFarlane was also in the main cast (oddly, Wiki makes no mention of Mcfarlane's Fast Show appearances).

Happy 39th anniversary Dempsey and Makepeace!

" Porridge's Tony Osoba was also in it"

It was the law for all TV shows then.

[jamiefairlie]

Our next door neighbours named their border collie in honour of the show but mispelled it as Demsey, bless 'em. They were simple folk.

Was it on his name tag or something? Not sure where else you'd see a pet's name actually written down.

[Gulftastic]

Was it on his name tag or something? Not sure where else you'd see a pet's name actually written down.

It was. They were very proud of their pedigree dog on an estate full of mutts, like our smashing dog.

[Blumf]

like our smashing dog

Named of the quintessentially 60's film starring Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham?

[monkfromhavana]

" Porridge's Tony Osoba was also in it"

The name of his character was Mr. Exposition as that was all he did.

[Brundle-Fly]

Different times.

[Glebe]

Fuck, that's real?!

[gilbertharding]

I'm sure there were a couple of stories where Tony Osoba's character* was brought slightly to the fore.

Unlike most of you, I never watched it at the time (I was probably at Air Cadets on a Friday, and in any case we were a BBC house, and further more, we only ever watched stuff my parents could stand), so I've only ever seen it in the context of the 2020s.

It's good to see the Royal Docks (in every episode) right after they closed but before they were redeveloped. Makes a change from the locations seen in the Sweeney, Minder, Professionals.

The theme music is quite good, but they don't make the creative use of library music as those other shows - if there's exciting action, a bit of the theme music cranks up in the background - and that's your lot



* he's a black man

[gilbertharding]

Glynis Barber was (still is!) very pretty, prior to DaM she was of course Soolin in Blake's 7. Just looking on Wiki apparently Michael Brandon made an appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger, wasn't aware of that. As mentioned in the interview, Barber and Brandon would eventually marry and are still together.

She was also in Jane - the tv version of the popular wartime comic strip. I mean - have a read about that if you want to get some 'different times' feelings. It was broadcast on BBC2 just after tea time, and the principal gag was that she was a secret agent and all her clothes fall off.

[studpuppet]

She was also in Jane - the tv version of the popular wartime comic strip. I mean - have a read about that if you want to get some 'different times' feelings. It was broadcast on BBC2 just after tea time, and the principal gag was that she was a secret agent and all her clothes fall off.

And as an eleven year-old, very good it was too! Like the Famous Five, but with lingerie...

[Glebe]

She was also in Jane - the tv version of the popular wartime comic strip. I mean - have a read about that if you want to get some 'different times' feelings. It was broadcast on BBC2 just after tea time, and the principal gag was that she was a secret agent and all her clothes fall off.

Not heard of that, but I immediately thought of the film Jane and the Lost City (which features Jasper Carrott) and looking it up that is indeed based on the same thing!

[gilbertharding]

And as an eleven year-old, very good it was too! Like the Famous Five, but with lingerie...

*cough* inspirational, yes.

Not heard of that, but I immediately thought of the film Jane and the Lost City (which features Jasper Carrott) and looking it up that is indeed based on the same thing!

Never heard of that - but I see that the actress who played Jane opposite Carrott lived her life to the full - though it doesn't say anything about her end: if it's not too morbid to want to know.

[studpuppet]

Not heard of that, but I immediately thought of the film Jane and the Lost City (which features Jasper Carrott) and looking it up that is indeed based on the same thing!

Wow - this passed me by at the time. Maud 'Octopussy' Adams as a Nazi villain, Robin Bailey I think playing the same role as he had in the BBC version, along with Graham Stark as the butler (Max Wall in the BBC one).

[George White]

Yeah they say 40 years since production started, not since it first aired.

I loved it as a child, all that glamour and exoticism (both the tuff Noo Yawk cop and the posh Englishwoman). Back in the days when TV cops shows were more interested in people running round with guns, than elderly detectives being endearingly cranky in historic villages. Better times. I'm sure it's shit, but don't want to tarnish the innocent memories.

Brandon may have given the sense of someone not very successful in the US who came over here to snaffle up all the roles for a tough New Yorker. He seems to have done OK, continuing to play an American in British stuff. He was Jerry Springer in the Opera before David Soul. And did narration for the US version of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. He was even in Dr Who as an American general in The Stolen Earth. He had also dated Kim Novak (12 years his senior) and Lindsay Wagner before Barber.

Hope the white Ford Escort Cabriolet is still OK.

He had a kind of Rick Dalton-type career, maybe not of the Rick-type actor, but the kind of shaggy-haired androgynous type who followed the clean-cut cowboys, mostly called Michael (Sarrazin, pre-movie star Douglas). He was in a film called Lovers and Other Strangers with Bea Arthur that was something of a hit, then did a few forgettable films including Jennifer on My Mind - which is basically Love Story but with drugs, where Brandon is the lead and Robert DeNiro his sidekick, and then he went to Italy to do Dario Argento's 4 Flies on Grey Velvet. Then apart from FM (1978) and A Change of Seasons (1980) with Bo Derek and Anthony Hopkins, mostly US TV jobs, and then after Dempsey, moves to the UK, and becomes a Rentayank.

[Glebe]

Graham Stark as the butler

Not his only butler role!

and then he went to Italy to do Dario Argento's 4 Flies on Grey Velvet.

I feel like I should know that, must have forgotten!

Bruce Boa was in an episode of DaM on ITV4 the other day!

[studpuppet]

Not his only butler role!

Graham Stark and Dandy Nichols eh? Not to mention Diana Dors and Lulu in previous videos - old Stuart was streets ahead of Morrissey in championing parochial, off-the-boil UK stars of the past...

[Glebe]

Caroline Munro as the sexy journalist too!