Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Izzy Adkins The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

jimpayne1967 Department S has a rather poor reputation these days and probably has the worst reputation of the ITC action shows of the mid to late 60s and very early 70s. It has not to the best of my knowledge been shown on British television- terrestrial or digital channels- since the late 1990s whereas almost all of the others are shown regularly on ITV4 even now. There are reasons that have precious little to do with the quality of the actual show that see it being regarded almost as the runt of the litter it was part of and aside perhaps from The Persuaders the programme - or at least its most famous character- is the most parodied of the ITC action showsIt certainly isn't the best of those programmes - the Prisoner and probably Man in a Suitcase are better - but on a recent viewing of several episodes I would suggest that it is far from the worst. Unlike the roughly contemporaneous Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and the Champions the show is not based on a ludicrous premise and although the stories are hardly gritty realism a la Line of Duty they do just about possess some credibility. Some episodes such as the opener Six Days, series 1's The Man in the Elegant Room and Series 2's The Shift That Never Was are pretty solid thrillers and whilst series 1's The Pied Piper of Hambledown feels like a Steed/Peel era episode of the Avengers it is still very good.There are faults in the show obviously. The team's boss, Sir Curtis Seretse (played by Denis Alaba Peters) is a far more interesting leader than Anthony Nicholls' Tremayne in the Champions ever was but he is underused and the female member of the team Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) often seems marginalised. She is not there as eye candy in the way that Alexandra Bastedo and Annette Andre often seemed to be in R & H (D) and the Champs respectively - but whilst it's a decent enough idea to have a hardworking, female computer expert as something like the brains of the operation her character is pretty under-developed. Joel Fabiani as the straight man - but not quite- of the team, Stewart Sullivan is actually okay most of the time precisely because although Fabiani plays him straight there is obviously a humorous fellow in there. There are hints of some feelings between Annabelle and Stewart but mostly Sullivan is a professional and the show is the better for that.The show is best remembered though because of the character Jason King played by Peter Wyngarde. When those smart-aleck comedians make allusions to the show what they refer to is King/Wyngarde. With his crushed velvet Zapata moustache the character is very much of his time visually but actually that was how men who though they had style looked those days- even big rough, tough footballers like Derek Dougan tried to look like our Jason (though not perhaps on the pitch). A very unfortunate incident in Wyngarde's private life inevitably makes King's predilection for glamorous females seem a bit unlikely but trust me until the follow up series 'Jason King' ( which really was terrible) and the aforementioned incident women really did fancy Wyngarde and men thought he was way cooler than, say, staid old Roger Moore. And the thing is Wyngarde is mostly great as King. Few actors have ever been as convincing as Wyngarde at playing an almost permanently sozzled character and he delivers some sharp lines as though they were his own. He might now be seen as being a ludicrously camp figure but most of the time he plays it as straight as he can- a vain, flawed, erudite man living on his wits and who knows, not even very deep down, he is no super-hero. Department S is not a great programme and having had the courage to give the team a black leader and a female lead who is not just there because she looks nice it didn't do enough with what were for the time bold ideas. Fabiani and especially Wyngarde get the best lines and the best scenarios and look to be having a whale of a time making it and they make it watchable. The best thing about the show should not be the most scorned thing about it- quite the reverse

loza-1 I missed this at the time it was made, and have just watched it for the very first time. It belongs to the ITC-type shows that the family would watch on a Sunday evening, although I don't think this one was given a prime TV slot in the UK. It is not so well known as The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Baron. The difference with Department S is that - Randall and Hopkirk apart - the other shows tend to be about the adventures of loners. Department S and The Champions started to introduce teams.And what a team. We have a man of action in Stuart. American, in order to sell it across the Pond. We have Annabelle, the good-looking female, with legs that go all the way up to her computer-operating brain. Then, the masterstroke. We have all kinds of mysteries to solve, so the team is complimented by someone who can produce ideas that are totally off the wall. Jason King. He is decadent, drives a Bentley with Swiss number plates, never misses the opportunity of picking up a pretty girl. Then there are the received pronunciation, the lived-in face, the expensive cigarettes, the flamboyant attire, the glass of spirits or champagne in his hand. In fights he is master of attack, delivering desperate hay makers; but he can't defend himself, and usually ends up senseless on the floor. He writes thrillers. Sometimes cases are solved because he can remember something that he wrote in one of his novels. Sometimes a solved case is published as his latest thriller. As an artist, he comes up with ideas that the other two would never even think of. The fourth member of the team - its head - is more mysterious. He is played by a Gambian actor. He has been knighted, so he is a diplomat from an African country that is a member of the British Commonwealth. He works for Interpol and the United Nations. It is clear that Department S is only a small part of his career, so his on screen time is very short. But he is important enough to enter the VIP lounges of the world's airports, and has enough status to pull strings to get things done, and to protect Department S if need be. Although he does little in the day-to-day running of Department S, he does have an understanding of Department S's purpose. For example, when everybody was saying that a prominent civil servant was blown up in a plane, he is the lone voice who says that the civil servant is still alive, using a gap on the wall where a picture had been as evidence. I found him the most interesting character of the four.In an attempt to combat those viewers who can guess the denouement early on, the ITC scriptwriters came up with the most incredible mysteries, which had credible solutions. I have to admit that I didn't guess a single one, so all hail to the scriptwriters. They even foresaw the internet! Although Department S is not so well known as many of the other ITC classics, it is well scripted, well acted, well directed, and can hold its own with the best ITC thrillers. It led to a spin-off featuring just Jason King. Although everybody loved Peter Wyngarde's portrayal, the Jason King series was not so successful, which underlines my observation that Department S is about a team and their casework, however flamboyant one of their members might be.Watch it and enjoy it.

ubercommando With all due respect to Joel Fabiani and Rosemary Nicolls and their characters, Department S will be forever associated with Peter Wyngarde's Jason King.Most people remember him as this camp, flamboyant and debonair womaniser cum detective in the mould of Austin Powers but that will do a disservice to the character: He's far more nuanced than that.Jason King is lazy (he often lets Stewart fight all the bad guys and only chips in at the end), he is egotistical (his appreciation of people is based on whether they've read his novels or not), a lot of his detective work is speculation without facts to back them up and he sulks whenever Annabelle is right...and she often is. He's clearly a man having a mid-life crisis and drink drives but.......Jason King is brilliant. If Wyngarde had played him purely as a dashing hero, it wouldn't have worked but he shows King often as a paper tiger, led by his libido, love of finery and prone to grandstanding (and it gets in the way of his detective work at times) but he has some of the best lines and put downs in TV history. And by not playing him as whiter-than-white, the chemistry and interactions between the three lead characters is all the better for it.Watching it again on DVD recently, you get to see just how much depth Wyngarde put into Jason King.

gtbarker Department S was one of the first TV programmes I can remember watching and loved it for it's strange plots and interesting characters. I waited for years to see it again and I am delighted to say it has just started a re-run on a UK satellite channel and it's just as good as I remember it. The character of Jason King is fantastic and the two straight-playing members of the trio are also very good. The whole thing looks fantastic, there are some wonderfully corny lines, excellent clothes, theme music that ranks among the very best and it all comes together to present us with something camper than a hut full of cub scouts (and if you ever wondered where many of the ideas for the X Files came from - look no further than Department S). Simply brilliant.