The
lowdown: 'Ghost Squad', despite its title, does not involve
a team of ghostbusters going around detecting the presence
of spirits from the other
side! Rather, it is one of the many ITC dramas from the 1960s and 1970s
featuring an elite team of
police/spies/secret agents
travelling the world righting wrongs and fighting the forces of evil. In
the case of 'Ghost Squad',
it was a team of elite Scotland
Yard detectives whose brief is to solve crimes that are too difficult for
the regular police. A
total of 52 episodes were
produced over three seasons, and broadcast on the ATV network between 9
September 1961 and
16 May 1964. The series
often featured Ghost Squad operatives going undercover to inflltrate criminal
organisations, spy rings
and the like. The operatives
were Michael Quinn as Nick Craig, Neil Hallett as Tony Miller and Ray Barrett
as Peter Clarke
(replacing Quinn for the
third season). The squad is headed by Sir Andrew Wilson, who was played
by Donald Wolfit.
The
episode: 'Quarantine at Kavar' was the 23rd episode of the second
season, and was first broadcast on 1 June 1963. The
Foreign Office sends Nick
Craig on a mission to the Middle Eastern state of Ramadan, where the government
is not aware that
it is sitting on a large
resource of thorium, which is used in nuclear fission. The Foreign Office
wants to ensure that Britain gains
exploitation rights to the
deposit. The British have sent a team of geologists to a small town called
Kavar, under the guise of an
archaelogical dig. A member
of the team has died, and Craig must retrieve the remaining members and
the photographic evidence
of the thorium deposit.
He is accompanied by Jean Carter, the secretary of the Ghost Squad's boss,
as she has some knowledge
of archeology. Arriving
in Kavar, they find that one member of the geological team is missing,
and is presumed dead, while they
endeavour to get a female
member of the team out of Kavar. Trouble is, the local Emir has decided
that he wants to marry her,
and tries to prevent Craig
and his team from leaving Kavar by firstly confiscating their vehicle and
then placing a quarantine on the
town. Roger Delgado plays
Major Sayid, the Emir's right-hand man, in a rare role in which he does
not have a beard! Craig recovers
the photographs but finds
that there is no thorium after all. Instead, the photographs reveal that
the local caves contain prehistoric
rock paintings, which is
certain to attract tourists to Ramadan, where foreigners are tolerated
but not welcomed.
The
verdict: 'Ghost Squad' is an entertaining series that despite
its age is still highly watchable today. It has a similar format
to many of the ITC programs
made during the era, and is a good example of the kind of TV shows that
they just don't make
any more. It featured many
guest stars who would later become famous for other roles, while writers
included familiar names
such as Robert Holmes, Leon
Griffiths and Brian Clemens. 'Ghost Squad' has not been broadcast on British
television since
the 1960s, but it is now
available on DVD.
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