522 Bergerac

First  viewed : 18  October  1981

I  grew  to  like  this  in  time  but   was  very  hostile  towards  it  at  the  beginning.

In  one  sense  Bergerac  should  never  have  been  made. Its   roots  lie  in  the  shock  decision  of  Trevor  Eve  to  walk  away  from  Shoestring  after  just  two  series.  Producer  Robert  Banks  Stewart  had  to  re-write the  whole  premise , re-cast  and  move  the  setting  from  Bristol  to   Jersey.  Much  stayed  the  same, the  episodes  were  50  minutes  in  length  and  on  film  rather  than  VT, there  was  a  regular  supporting  cast   and  George  Fenton's  theme  tunes  were  so  similar  that,  even  now , I  still  get  them  confused. Also,  the  central  character  was  returning  to  work  after  battling  personal  demons.

That  leads  on  to  the  first  problem  with  the  series. Whereas  Eddie  Shoestring  had  had  a  nervous  breakdown  when  faced  with  the  encroaching  advance  of  computer  technology, an  interesting,  topical  idea,  Jim  Bergerac  was  a  run  of  the  mill  reformed  alcoholic  getting  over  a  messy  divorce, nothing  very  novel  about  that.  Further  to  that , Eddie   as  played  by  Eve  was  clearly  still  quite  vulnerable  whereas  John  Nettles's  Jim. once  back  on  the  job,  often    came  across  as  a  sneering, self-righteous  bully  and  was  nowhere  near  as  sympathetic.

Jim's  job  was  a  further  difficulty. He  was  not  a  private  eye  but  a  police  sergeant  working  for  the  fictional  Bureau  des  Estrangers   which  dealt  with  crime  where  non-residents  i.e  people  who  didn't  have  the  right  to  live  there, were  involved. So  whereas  Eddie   took  up  cases  involving  vulnerable  people  who  needed  a  champion, Jim  and  his  crew  often  seemed  more  like  gamekeepers  or  a  private  security  firm,  protecting  the  lives  and  property  of  the  over-privileged   few  who  had  bought  their  way  on  to  the  island. For  all  the  lovely  coastal  scenery  on  show,  Jersey  society  came  across  as  narrow-minded  and  selfish  as  personified  by  the  main  supporting  character,  Jim's  father-in-law  Charlie  Hungerford  ( Terence  Alexander  ).

Charlie  was  basically  Arthur  Daley  made  good, a  rather  vulgar  businessman  with  a  finger  in  many  pies,  some  of  them  still  shady , relishing  his  place  at  the  top  table. Though  not  without  some empathy  for  others , he  was  your  stereotypical  self-made  Tory.  In  some  way  or  other  Charlie was  involved  in  every  case  Jim  investigated.  The  other  regulars  were  Jim's  boss  Crozier  ( Sean  Arnold, previously  the  first  headmaster  in  Grange  Hill )  who  effectively  performed   the  same  function  as  Michael  Medwin's  character  in  Shoestring.  In  the  first  four  seasons  you  also   had  Diamante  Lil  ( Mela  White )   but  eventually  the  self-inflicted  problem  of  writing  a  barmaid  into  the  stories  when  the  main  character  was  teetotal  became  too  much  and  she  was  dropped. Semi-regular  at  first  was  Jim's  dislikable  ex-wife  Deborah  ( Deborah  Grant ) ; later , Dr  Who  girl   Louise  Jameson , had  a  five  year  stint  as  his   girlfriend  Susan.
Also  in  later  series,  Jim  got  a  couple  of  young  constables ,  Ben  and  Willy  ( David  Kershaw, John  Telfer ) to  push  around.

I  watched  the  first  episode  and  didn't  like  it  ( as  you've  probably  guessed ). It  just  felt  like  following  caviar  with  Turkey  twizzlers. However  my  mum  liked  it. Although  this   might  have  been  as  much  to  do  with  a  fondly-remembered  holiday  in  the  Channel  Islands  decades  earlier  as   the   storylines,  it  meant  that  it  was  always  on  so  it  was  inevitable  that  I  would  eventually  come  back  to  it.  From  looking  at  the  list  of  episodes  on  wikipedia  - which  doesn't  give  synopses  so  I'm  relying  on  the  guest  stars  column - it  looks  like  this  was  the  fourth  series  in  1985.

Things  had  improved. Bergerac   had  a  large  team  of  writers  and  they  seemed  to  have  been  encouraged  to  take  risks  with  the  format  so  there  were  episodes  with  supernatural  elements , some  quite  outlandish  plots  and  one  or  two  very  bleak  endings. The  one  that  sticks  in  my  mind  is  where  Jim  spends  the  whole  episode  keeping  a  pretty  young  witness  safe  from  hitmen  only  for  her  to  be  bumped  off   the  moment  he  passes  her  over  at  the  airport. The  last  shot  is  of  her  staring-eyed  corpse  hitting  the  ground. Jim's  spoiled   brat  of  an  ex-wife  featured  less  often  and  the  annoying  Lil  was   soon  dropped  altogether.

The  stories  I  recall  best  were  these

• Jim  tries  to  foil  the  planned  assassination  of  a  dodgy  foreign  general  by  an  SAS  man  running  loose  on  the  island. It  turns  out  he's  acting  for  the  Home  Secretary  ( Bernard  Hepton )  who's  really  a  crooked  arms  dealer. Jim  is  threatened  into  silence.
• The  one   where  a  nude  Jeremy  Clyde  turns  out  to  be  an  amnesiac  aristocratic  murderer   whose  buddies  try  to  help  him  escape  justice. The  episode  is  clearly  based  on  the   Lord  Lucan  affair.
• One  where  Nick  Stringer  plays  the  villain  and  ends  up  dangling  by  his  foot  from  a  crane. This  was  broadcast  barely  a  year  after  the  death  of  Michael  Lush  doing  a  suspiciously  similar  stunt  for  the  Late  Late  Breakfast  Show .  Had  he  died  just  to  save  the  Bergerac  team  a  few  bob ?
• The  anti-yuppie  episode  where  Jim  ludicrously  arranges  for   the  pushy  bitch  who's  been  giving  him  a  hard  time  ( Hetty  Baynes )  to  desert  her  wealthy  husband (  and  Jersey  ) for a  Scouse  chancer  played  by  Stephen  McGann
• A  number  of  episodes  where  Jim  has  a  flirty  cat  and  mouse  game  with  a  jewel  thief  played  by  Liza  Goddard
• An  old   London  cop  harasses  a  rich  islander  ( George  Costigan ) who  he  believes  has  got  away  with  an  insurance  scam  that  invalided  a  colleague. Jim  is  pretty  much  a  bystander  in  this  one.
• The  one  set  mainly  in  France  where  a  couple  of  students  unwittingly  interfere  with  the  plans  of  a nasty  explosives  dealer  played  by  Kenneth  Cranham
• One  from  the  final  season  with  Jim  working  as  a  private  eye  in  France   guarding  an  international  assassin  who  has  started  to  question  his  calling.

Later  episodes  often  took  place  in   England  or  France  ( the  setting  for  the  whole  of  the  final  season )  as  the  popularity  of  the  series  made  filming  in  Jersey  increasingly  difficult.  That  final  season  in  1991  was  a  brave  attempt  at  breaking  with  a  tired  format  and  doing  something  new  with  the  character  but  it  didn't  really  work  and  Jim  was  put  to  bed  in  a  Christmas  special  at  the  end  of  that  year  which  I'm  not  entirely  sure  I  watched.