I found this very watchable, in fact rather more-ish. Dystopian SF thriller series made in 1977 and set in 1990. In a run-down Britain a lot like the real late 70s extrapolated, journalist Edward Woodward tries to stop a nasty and repressive government becoming a flat-out totalitarian one and has a Pimpernel-style sideline in helping people escape abroad. Parts still strike a chord and raise a cynical smile today ('to safeguard freedom' MPs are exempt from the draconian laws inflicted on the rest of the nation, for example.) Connoisseurs of retro-futurism will enjoy things like a car-phone the size of a small fruit machine but the landscape is largely grey and 70s brutalist (and the phone is in an Austin Princess.) There are some good future-shock jokes - 'Oxfam are raising funds for us in India' and we've sold off the Crown Jewels (both only a matter of time.) One thing they got vastly wrong but which must have been a daring act of lese-majeste is that there is a King on the throne only 13 years in the future. Woodward and friends are likeable and the situations are interesting. There's wiggle-room and a vestige of due process in the repression; things are just short of Orwellian, iron fist in velvet glove, in a way that also rings true: fascism (actually extreme socialism) with a saccharine smile in a polite British face. It's how it would happen or some might say did. The hero has a Deep Throat mole in the civil service, and his would-be squeeze is a woman high up in the security apparatus who may be trying to be human or may be using him for her own ends; this could have been schlocky or camp but their relationship is an entertaining mix of the cerebral and the playfully flirtatious. It's not just them who have charm and humour and appear to like each other, something missing from the dead-eyed robots on TV now. We care about even minor characters; as a result things get awfully tense at times. Modern TV drama commissioners, please take note. (Also that there's a whole universe of untapped possibilities outside child abuse, terminal disease and serial killing.)That said, it gets darker as it goes; Woodward has some splendid victories but is sometimes powerless to help people, and ultimately it's less an adventure series than a shrewd and at times pretty grim study of the misuse of the levers of power - often 'soft' power - all the ways that freedom can die without people actually being shot (no need to imprison people when you can stop them from working; if you don't toe the line your wife and kids will suffer too) and how people variously knuckle under, go along to get along or courageously and self-sacrificingly resist. Anyone living in communist Eastern Europe would have recognised all of it; and similar pressures are to some degree still at work here, now. There are nice touches such as the surveillance room in the baddy HQ looking like a Benthamite panopticon, or a haunting moment dramatizing how poison in the political world seeps into our private ones when a dissident neglects his child because he's obsessively watching the news.

I was 16 when this was shown on the BBC,Woodward was a star after Callan but this series is not well known. I hardly saw it when it was on. So I was happy to buy the series 1 DVD. It is both very good and very obvious and clichéd. 1970s Britain was a rough place,the country was split politically,there was much talk of anti democratic behaviour from left and right. There were strikes yes but Britain was a fairer place in 1978 than 1968 but the reaction was the election of the Tories in 1979.1990 is a sort of Daily Mail readers worst nightmare of what the Labour government was like. There are many mentions of civil servants with good pensions and government bully boys. But all governments contain a danger of oppression and the bureaucrats often do behave badly in real life,the road to hell is paved with good intentions.This has some great writing and acting and the series hints at the truth that George Orwell revealed that bullies are bullies because they like doing it,not because of political commitment.It is almost funny to recall that some people celebrated the victory of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 as a victory for freedom but soon miners were not allowed to drive from Kent to Yorkshire and the police were being well paid to restrict human rights during the sometimes violent miners strike.

I really enjoyed this. So much that I found the book.All the laws that were used to make a Police State were on the Statute Book. Most probably still are! Things like printed matter having to have a Printed and Published by. Which allowed the authorities to suppress dissidents. They even got the Car Licence Plates right. That was lucky as, as far as I know, the change had not been decided on at that time!I saw it on TV at the time and would love to see it again.I think of this as Edwood Woodwards best post-Callan part.

This series scared the crap out of me at the time and was the most real portrayal of what could happen here in Britain under a despotic government.And guess what? It's happening, the bureaucracy, surveillance, scapegoatig class war, trila by jury being reduced, disclosure of "previous" which will pejudice juries and others. CCTV, smart cards without which you will become a "non-citizen", State accomodation for "public sector workers" (oppose the state and lose your home), intrusive bureaucrats and officials monitoring our offspring. Get the books and see what I mean.Hopefully. the entire series will be released on video or DVD or perhaps repeated on terrestrial TV..In 1990 there was a control freak Home Secretary obsessed with regulating everything and with Blunkett and what he is doing to our justice system will realise Wilfred Greatorex's nightmare.If the centres for asylum seekers don't pan out they could become the New Labour ARCs (Adult Rehabilitation Centres)