The Last Of...

So long, Mrs. Peel… Emma and Steed kiss goodbye in the Avengers episode The Forget-Me-Knot (1967)

… old so-and-so

Saying goodbye is never easy, not even when the person involved is a celluloid or televisual creation. I’ve always been keenly aware of the effect that a departing character can have on any established television series. As viewers, we invest our time in a favourite piece of television, and it can be hard to let go of a character whom we have grown to love or, indeed, hate…

Star Trek very nearly went into its second series without Mr. Spock, or certainly without Leonard Nimoy in the role. In retrospect, the idea of anyone else playing Spock is absurd, since it was the performance and not the character that audiences warmed to. Fortunately, we were spared this unthinkable revamp, but it hasn’t always been the case.

An early example I recall is the transition between Emma Peel and Tara King in The Avengers. I’d been allowed to stop up extra late on Saturday nights in the summer of 1967 because my mum liked The Avengers and thought it would appeal to me. It did. But when it returned for its next series, I noticed that it ‘wasn’t the same girl any more’ (or words to that effect: aged just six, I had little grasp of the names of either the actors or the characters). What I did notice was that the series wasn’t quite the same any more. I was, strictly speaking, too young to have noticed such niceties, but Emma appealed to me in a way that Tara did not. Emma Peel had been sharper, less fluffy, had a nicer voice, a nicer face. She even drove a better car.

The most famous re-casting of the 1960s didn’t even register with me. We didn’t watch Dr. Who at the time, which with its weird music and Daleks was simply too scary for a Saturday teatime, especially when Jimmy Clitheroe was on the other side.... so when William Hartnell regenerated into Patrick Troughton, it meant nothing to me. I probably saw it happen courtesy of Blue Peter, which I never missed, but I can only speculate as to what the fans must have felt at the time. A friend of mine who grew up with Hartnell tells me now that she didn’t buy into the Troughton thing at all, but all I knew about it was a story in the Daily Sketch some time in 1967, that attempted to drum up some scandal out of Hartnell’s not reckoning Troughton in the role he’d abandoned. I didn’t join the Doctor’s adventures until Jon Pertwee’s debut, and at the time, I couldn’t care less about what he’d looked like in the past. Once again, though, I did notice (and rather regretted) the departure of a cast regular, in the form of Caroline John as Liz Shaw (whom I rather liked), replaced for the second Pertwee series by the effervescent Katy Manning in the role of Jo (too silly, scatty and 70s for my tastes).

In fact, I’m not sure that there was ever a cast substitution on television that didn’t leave me pining for the old line-up. James Beck couldn’t do anything about his untimely departure from Dad’s Army, but the series was never quite the same without him, and the attempt to introduce a replacement character in the form of the dire Talfryn Thomas was misguided to say the least. Are You Being Served was never the same show after the departures of Messrs. Mash, Lucas, and most keenly missed of all, Arthur Brough as Mr. Grainger. And as for On The Buses without Reg Varney... a veil, please.

Drama series were no less prone to the replacement of key cast members. In the worst cases, a new actor was simply brought in to fill the shoes or space-boots of another. As Travis in Blakes Seven’s first series, Stephen Grief was totally on the money. When Brian Croucher – a face I knew from his many ‘thick-ear’ appearances in the likes of The Sweeney – was drafted in to replace him, the series was diminished in stature for me. Space Commanders don’t, or shouldn’t speak in ‘Saarf London’ accents. Space doesn’t have a south. Or a north, for that matter…

I was too young to watch Softly Softly in the 60s, and not sufficiently interested to pick it up during the 1970s, but when I finally started to see episodes on UK Gold in the 1990s, I was keenly aware of the absence of Stratford Johns in the series’ most famous role – that of Detective Chief Superintendent Barlow. Barlow, and his sarky sidekick John Watt had been the whole point of Softly Softly, when the detectives were promoted out of their original home in Z Cars, and continuing the series without such a key character seemed, again, a diminution. Barlow had left in 1972, continuing on his own in Barlow at Large and, later, Barlow, while Task Force soldiered on without him. Sure, we still had old hands John Watt and the amiable Det. Insp. Harry Hawkins; and other long-serving regulars like dog handler PC Snow, and rotund red-headed Sgt. Evans were present and correct. There were some cracking scripts, as good as any the series had produced to date. But no Barlow. The big, round hole he left in the format is a palpable presence in those episodes.

'I often considered going into service… as a valet, perhaps.' Soon to be late of Softly Softly: Task Force Sgt. Jackson (David Allister, left) provides a clean shirt for Det. Insp. Harry Hawkins

Only recently have I been able to appreciate the full English Barlow era of Softly Softly: Task Force via the recently-released DVDs. Yet once again comes the old disappointment of the disappearing favourite character. David Allister won’t be a familiar name to many (beyond a few advanced Dr. Who nuts who will know him from his appearances in a couple of 1980s serials), and his role in Task Force was semi-minor to say the least: a graduate copper with a posh voice and a highly efficient manner with paperwork, always with the facts of any case neatly filed away, just the kind of desk-bound type guaranteed to rub Barlow up the wrong way. And a nicely-judged performance it was too. Later in the 1971 series, the character (Sgt. Jackson) even gets a case of his own to solve, suggesting that we may be about to watch his career develop over subsequent stories. But no. The very next week, Jackson is promoted, out of the blue, to Inspector, and out of the series. Clearly this was a late script adjustment to accommodate the actor’s impending unavailability, and the same episode spends some time establishing a near-identical replacement character. Barlow and Watt can’t be bothered to give ‘Jacko’ a decent send-off, nipping off on a case instead of attending his leaving do – leaving Jackson to mutter ‘goodbye’ to an empty room as the episode ends.

Sometimes, it’s not so much the departure of a favourite character that we notice as the failure of a particular series to make good use of its best character/s. Simon Oates was a charming, charismatic actor who should have walked away with the role of James Bond. On TV, he was an occasional presence in series like Man in a Suitcase and The New Avengers, and he did, admittedly land a leading role in a movie. Shame it had to be a dud like The Terrornauts... Oates’ ship seemed to have come in when, in 1970, he was cast in the BBC’s new eco-thriller series Doomwatch. His character was very much of his time, an unreconstructed male chauvinist, replete with flowery shirts, cravates and all, yet Oates managed to invest this basically unlikeable cardboard creation with genuine warmth and humour. As if in revenge for being better than their scripts, the production team increasingly sidelined the character as the series wore on, culminating in a ludicrous, out-of-character episode that led to his semi-permanent departure from the format.

Some series have endeavoured (pun intended) to press on in the absence of the lead. Blakes’ Seven, famously, lost Blake after two series, and as to whether or not there were seven of them any more... Elsewhere, north of the border, Taggart became a Taggart-free zone; and Inspector Morse without Morse became, well, Lewis.

None of those departures troubled me unduly, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem fair when the character you’ve rooted for is written out, killed off or, worse still, recast. Perhaps it’s at times like this when TV gets a bit too close to home. The real characters in our real lives will one day be recast, or written out. I don’t just mean in the obvious ways, either. Favourite characters from a workplace can depart, changing the whole dynamic after they’ve gone. People move from being one of the ‘cast regulars’ to the status of a rarely-seen ‘special guest’ without you even knowing what’s happened. If television and film can do anything, they can compensate for the deficiencies of real life. When we warm to a certain character, we want more of them. We don’t want to see them horribly killed, or killed and brought back to life so many times we don’t care about them any more (Dr. Who writers, this means you!)

All of which probably brings me back to where I started, with Game of Thrones. I may not watch it, but I know from those who do that it’s no good forming relationships with characters for whom sudden death is an ever present prospect…

There’s probably some deep philosophical truth embedded in all of this. All I know is, I’m going back to watch all those Sgt. Jackson* episodes of Softly Softly: Task Force a second time. Life may be finite, but on DVD, everyone can live forever...

* I had hoped to be able to add a footnote to the effect that his character may be gone but David Allister lives on: sadly his Imdb resumé peters out around 2001, as do his many appearances in BBC radio plays. He may merely have been ‘written out’ into retirement, but who knows? Not the internet, that’s for sure…