They don't make them like that any more...

Thanks to Freeview and DVD, I’ve recently been re-watching some of the classic TV shows of the 1960s and early Seventies – The Avengers, The Saint, Department S, The Protectors and The Champions. All of these, as far as I can see, have two things in common.

Firstly, whenever a character drives somewhere, even in the middle of London, he always finds a parking space immediately outside the place that he is visiting. He never has to pay to park and never gets a ticket. Also, he never locks his car, and presumably always leaves the key in the ignition as his car can easily be stolen by anyone who jumps in.

While all that strains credibility, it’s not likely to be a major plot problem if anyone tried to do a modern remake (perish the thought). The second point of commonality, however, is potentially more serious.

In the Sixties and Seventies, there were no mobile phones. Apart from the Champions, who had the handy gift of telepathy, any character wanting to contact another had to find a telephone box and then hope that the contactee was at home or in his office. Many of the plots revolved around the fact that hero A was unable to contact hero B; hero A would then go off on his or her own and inevitably get into trouble. There was a good example of this in an episode of Department S which I watched the other night; Annabelle gives Jason a good talking to for going off on his own and getting beaten up; she then does precisely the same thing, although, to be fair, in her case she did have the foresight to leave a scribbled note in the empty office so she could be rescued at the last minute (of course).

So many of the plots from these shows just wouldn’t work nowadays. But I still enjoy these programmes, although for different reasons in each case; The Avengers and Department S for the humour and quirky plots, The Saint because I like the books, The Protectors because they packed everything into half-hour episodes, and The Champions – well, I’m not so sure now about that one...