First viewed : 6 September 1981
This was an excellent thriller serial produced by Secret Army creator Gerard Glaister and featuring three alumni from that series in Bernard Hepton, Juliet Hammond-Hill and Stephen Yardley. Its writer Arden Winch also wrote an early episode of Secret Army.
Blood Money is set in the present day and starts with the kidnapping of a young aristocratic boy from his public school by a terrorist cell led by German Irene Kohl ( Hammond-Hill ). Her cohorts are former mercenary James Drew ( Yardley ), IRA-connected Danny Connors ( Gary Whelan ) and arrogant posh boy Charles Vivian ( Cavan Kendall ). They send a ransom note threatening to kill the boy unless their demands, cash and the release of other terrorists IIRC are not met. Hepton is the by the book Supt Meadows trying to find them with the not entirely welcome assistance of Secret Service chief Captain Percival ( Michael Denison ). I immediately recognised Denison as the much older version of Algernon in the film version of The Importance of Being Ernest which we just studied for English Literature O Level. Hepton's force included Nicholas Young trying to break into adult roles after his long stint as John in The Tomorrow People .
The series is all about tension, both that created by the kidnappers' deadline and the human tensions on both sides. Hepton has to rub along with outsiders who operate by a different set of rules while amongst the kidnappers, Drew and Vivian don't attempt to disguise their mutual loathing and Connors compromises the mission by forming a friendship with the captive boy.
The series was deservedly well reviewed but attracted a storm of criticism for the brutal cynicism of its denouement. Having lured the terrorists out of their bolt-hole by a phoney TV broadcast , Percival ( without Meadows being in the loop ) calls in the SAS to gun them down in the street in an eerily accurate preview of the Gibraltar killings seven years later. Having got to know them over six episodes, it was a real jolt to see them ( especially Connors ) obliterated without a second thought . That was, no doubt, the intention.
Winch wrote two more thriller serials featuring Captain Percival , Skorpion ( 1983 ) and Cold Warrior ( 1984 ) , the latter also re-introducing Dean Harris as Danny Quirk, the undercover cop who'd caught his eye in Blood Money. I was interested but they were broadcast while I was living in a hall of residence without my own TV, making me very reluctant to start serials with no guarantee I'd be able to follow them fully.
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