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: 'High Wire' was the fourth episode of the first season,
and was first broadcast on 30 September 1961. Nick
Craig is sent to Belgium
to track down a British war criminal, Fred Rice (played by the late William
Hartnell in one of his rare
appearances in a TV show),
who was a member of Sir Andrew's special operations squad during the war.
Rice is an expert
safecracker and cat burglar,
and is suspected of supplying secret information to the enemy. He disappeared
after the war and
has not been sighted since.
Then his fingerprints are found at the scenes of a number of bank robberies.
Craig's investigation
leads him to a circus that
had performed at locations near each of the robberies. It turns out that
Rice is a part-owner of the
circus, where he performs
as an escapologist, the Great Samson, whose trick is to escape from a tank
filled with water while
handcuffed. Rice is being
blackmailed into committing the robberies by a group of criminals who threaten
to expose his true
identity. Craig rescues
him after one of the gang members sabotages the handcuffs used in his circus
show, and secures a
job at the circus. He reveals
that he knows about Rice's past, and urges him to not go on the gang's
last big bank raid. Craig
manages to bring the criminals
to justice while keeping Rice out of the hands of the law.
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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