"Actor: Allan Surtees"

• The Professionals Mk I | DVD | (22/10/2018) from £12.88   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Long-awaited, long-overdue: The Professionals as you have never seen them before. Bodie and Doyle need little by way of introduction, but if the series had at all escaped you since its debut in 1977 their boss George Cowley, head of CI5, couldn't put it more succinctly than his opening gambit: anarchy, acts of terror, crimes against the public. To combat it I've got special men experts from the army, the police, from every service. These are The Professionals . Featuring the perfect ensemble cast of Martin Shaw, Gordon Jackson (completely against type here) and the much-missed Lewis Collins, the series ran for 57 action-packed episodes and made an immediate impact on British and then international audiences which has sustained 40 years. But the series has never looked this good. Painstakingly restored from the camera-original negatives the series could have been made yesterday. No matter how many times you have seen The Professionals, this is a new experience, like seeing it for the first time. FEATURES ON THIS NEW EDITION: Brand-new restorations of the first 13 episodes from the camera-original negatives Brand-new 5.1 tracks from original sound elements Remastered original as-broadcast mono tracks Remastered music-only tracks featuring Laurie Johnson's original scores Photo galleries featuring hundreds of rare and previously unseen images Reinstated original main and end titles Without Walls documentary from 1996 featuring interviews with the creative driving force behind the series PDF material featuring scripts and memorabilia Archive footage featuring additional material, advert break bumpers, US sales trailer and more English HOH subtitles

• The Professionals - Vol. 4 | DVD | (05/04/2004) from £5.49   |  Saving you £0.50 (9.11%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Thrown together to join George Cowley's new C15 organisation....Hard men no patience nor time for subtleties. Charged with combating terrorists criminals and corruption wherever they find it. Capable of using any means necessary. The only people they can trust are themselves... Close Quarters: Can the Klu Klux Klan really be acting in Britain? It seems so after a lawyer trying to defend some black tenants is threatened. When Bodie is hospitalised during their investigation

• The Professionals | DVD | (30/12/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £149.99

  Perhaps the most easily parodied action series of its era, The Professionals was the one about the gruff but fatherly counter-terrorist top cop Cowley (Gordon Jackson) and his favourite surrogate sons, the curly haired ex-copper Ray Doyle (Martin Shaw) and taciturn-but-pouting ex-mercenary William Bodie (Lewis Collins). As set out by series creator Brian Clemens (veteran of the more fantastical Avengers), their job was to stop threats to the government, visiting dignitaries or the general public "by any means necessary". What this boiled down to was dashing about, leaping out of cars, getting into thump-happy fistfights, leering at every "bird" who passed by as if they were trying to prove something, wearing eye-abusing late-70s leisure wear well beyond the sell-by date, potting baddies with guns hauled out of their smart shoulder holsters, and occasionally choking back manly tears when another of the trio was wounded. All three leads were professionals of another stripe--the sort of actors who could soar with a good script and do their best to sell a weak one--and they were generally set against a parade of top-flight British character acting talent along with sundry sit-com/pin-up refugee disposable girlfriends and suspects. One strange, if understandable, element of the premise is that CI5 tackle all manner of Greek, Middle Eastern, Soviet and radical nutcase groups--with the odd racist Klansman, corrupt civil servant and dubious big business tycoon thrown in to prove they're not fascists--but almost never have anything to do with the Irish terrorist groups who were the main focus of the organisation's real-life counterparts from 1977 to 1983. --Kim Newman