Pual D. Brazil gets all seedy for the big TV Cops weekend:
Recently, over at at Ray Banks' Saturday Boy blog, I was reminded of Frank Marker.
While we think of sixties and seventies TV cops as sophisticated post James Bonds , Marker, who was played by Alfred Burke in the sixties television series PUBLIC EYE was no Simon Templer or John Steed, I can tell you. Marker had a lot more in common with the character that Richard Burton played in the film The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or Edward Woodward’s Callan. In fact Marker is almost an amalgam of Callan and his occasional side kick Lonely.
Apparently, Public Eye ran for 10 years –from 1965 to 1975- and although I haven’t seen it since then I remember it quite well and very fondly. Marker moved from a dingy office in London to another flea pit in Birmingham and eventually to Brighton, and I can still picture him walking along a wind and rainswept sea-front, looking like someone from a Morrissey song.
Marker looked like a soggy mongrel and he was a walking hard luck story, getting knocked about by the police as well as criminals and even being framed and sent to prison.
As you can see from the picture, he was no Jason King!
NOTE:
Downtrodden private eye struggles to make ends meet.
87 episodes (28 black and white, 59 in colour) of 60 minute duration. ABC/Thames TV 1965-75.
2 comments:
Reading this has made me very aware of my great age - I remember watching Frank Marker. And Callan, with his snivelling informer, Lonely.
It all seemed a little more seedy for being in 'black and white' - we didn't get a colour TV until 1972.
As a huge fan of "Inspector Morse' I have always wanted to get my hands on a DVD of "The Sweeney" which looks liek it was a good one
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