The Professionals rewatch s1

[sarren]

Watching the eps on Britbox, two of the s1 episodes carry a warning that says something like how the content met the broadcasting standards and mores of the time but viewers might find it offensive.

Watching s1.4, Killer With a Long Arm tonight, have realised that they are actually censoring content as well. The closing scene has Bodie and Doyle in Cowley's office looking through the scope of a high powered rifle and debating whether something is '36-24-34', Cowley comes in and looks through the scope and the viewer sees that they are perving on a woman in her underwear. He then jokingly reprimands them for an incomplete report and says 'she's 5'7", 130 pounds, and a blonde.' What he really said, was 'a natural blonde'. Apparently that crude joke was one step too far?

That episode was always of my faves, lots of Bodie and Doyle content, including them talking about how a ghetto is people taking care of each other, which made the two of them a mobile ghetto (at 10:10 mark), and the plot is still engaging. It's just now I have to ignore all the sexism towards all the women all the time, not just in the way the men talk to them, but in the way the writers write them. Lol, the one female conspirator in the gang sucked up to the imported assassin, tried to seduce him, was sent out to do the food shopping then panicked when she saw a friendly policeman and ran away flailing only to be dramatically run over.

Oh well, I'm just hear for the Bodie/Doyle content :)

Comments

[tehomet]

By chance, I saw the last half of that episode only a few weeks ago! The series is in reruns on some random English TV channel and I happened to be in the room wrapping presents and too weak for Bodie and Doyle to switch it off. All your points about the rampant misogyny of the times, I agree. And that censorship you mentioned was there too. I'm not defending the series on that score (obviously) but I do remember thinking when I was a kid that it was cool that CI5 had female agents as well as male ones.

That particular episode holds a certain special place in the dark recesses of my brain. I first watched it back when I was seven or eight, I think, and it was a new series that my mother liked. You know the part near the end of that episode where Bodie busts into the flat, Doyle hesitates to shoot, and when Bodie gives out to Doyle about that, Doyle's voice cracks when he defends himself, "If I had fired from the door and missed - who was standing in the window?"? That wobble in his voice sparked in my tiny cranium. I've been a Bodie and Doyle fan ever since.

[sarren]

Yep, cos we grew up when it was exciting to see women in kickass, 'equal' roles. Actually, it never stops being exciting, we just have higher expectations as to what that means :)

And yep, THAT SCENE. Literally when the episode started I turned to my housemate and said with the emotional intonation: "Since when do you miss?"

[tinny]

the mores of the time, huh... /o\

Some things really don't stand the test of time.

[sarren]

Ikr, and this used to be one of my fave shows growing up, before we knew better. I'm literally here for Bodie and Doyle relationship this time, and maybe writing a fic snippet, but I'm not sure how far I'll get, given the basic premise is they're above the law and the end justifies the means, I'm only 4 eps in and they've threatened to torture 1 suspect for information and to blow the head off another to get his brother to give up :( This REALLY doesn't stand the test of time~