Harry W. Junkin

3 December 1969 (IMDb) or 27 January 1970 (epguides.com)

16 February in London, England. Specifically the Foreign Office in London, England.

A man leaves the foreign office carrying a duffle bag. He goes back to his flat and puts a painting of the Virgin Mary in his briefcase. He then telephones his lady friend to say that "it is tonight". She tells him to be careful.

He is driven to an air field where a plane is waiting to take him to Paris, France. His chauffeur has a sly grin on his face and a gun in his hand but he hasn’t done anything yet.

The plane is over the Channel when it explodes. A boat load of people look on in horror.

The man’s girlfriend hears the door bell and answers it. It is her recently exploded other half. "I thought it had gone wrong" she said. "I thought you were dead."

"It went perfectly" he replies, "I am dead."

Is his man alive or dead? And if he is dead, why isn’t he dead? Who can get to the bottom of it? Send for Sullivan and hope he brings his colleagues with him.

Harvey appears to have jumped from the plane with a parachute but the plane wasn’t equipped with parachutes. Explain that… oh they did. He took it on board in a diplomatic bag.

But how would a man who works in an office know how to use a parachute? Explain th… oh right. During the war. Yes. That’s credible I suppose.

Three years ago Harvey paid £1,600 pounds in cash for a small picture of the Madonna. Where did a civil servant earning £3,100 a year get that much in cash? That’s better – that’s slightly intriguing. Easily explained but at least it is left to dangle for a few minutes before being slapped down by facts.

Seventeen minutes into the episode they decide it needs perking up. Stewart goes to find Jason who is choosing clothes for a forthcoming lecture tour. No, seriously. Here he is in something modest and understated.

A very celebrity-lite episode. The only person worth mentioning is Basil Dignam as the same Foreign Office official we met in the last episode. Returning characters who don’t featuring in the opening titles are as rare as Jason King in denim (i.e. I think it only happened the once).

Sir Curtis says Harvey must’ve jumped from the plane before it blew up. Annabelle says "With a parachute?" and he replies "He’d hardly be alive if he jumped without one." She gives him such a look.

Annabelle is asked if she’s ever been broke. "It’s my permanent state" she says. How could this be? She never goes anywhere or does anything except work. The overtime alone must be enough to keep her in short skirts and hair products. Not to mention she drives a sports car.

She has another moment of denseness when the diplomatic bag is found washed up on a beach by a boy walking his dog. "No parachute" she says when Stewart empties it out. Obviously not, dear, as he would’ve used it when he jumped. The chances of him putting it back in the bag while floating in the Channel are remote. Take her away from her computer and she flounders.

Annabelle is given the job of programming the computer to search through the London telephone directory to find anyone matching the profile of the missing man. In a clever dramatic twist, Stewart’s instructions as to what she should do are contrasted immediately with the comedy Russians planning to do exactly the same thing. Everyone is convinced – for no reason – that the missing man is still in London.

Annabelle mentions while in the plane that she doesn’t like heights.

There is a very weird moment when she’s about to go and question the missing man’s mother and won’t leave until Stewart has kissed her goodbye. If they were aiming for simmering sexual chemistry between them, someone forgot to switch the gas on a long time ago.

She spoke to Harvey’s mother, stole a small antique from her and tells the chaps that she (the mother) worried about her son at university. "Drink?" asks Stewart. No. "Girls?" asks Jason. No. "Boys?" he asks with alarm. No. She tells them it was Marxism. They are appalled.

The lady friend thinks the dead man looked better with a moustache. She said it was sexy. I disagree but in the interests of completeness I feel I ought to mention it. Strange woman.

Call me names if you like but the X Files would’ve been a much better show if they’d shot Scully more like this.

Jason effectively sums up the audience’s unrest when he asks why Department S are wasting their time on this silly case. They are meant to investigate the inexplicable. Stewart replies weakly that Sir Curtis volunteered their services.

He goes to speak to a mechanic at the air field. Everyone is now obsessed with knowing where the parachute came from. He wears the most bizarre ensemble – a sheepskin coat, an orange polo neck sweater and a purple and black scarf with gold piping. The mechanic says he went over every inch of the plane during a ten thousand mile service and there was no parachute on board.

Jason does another parachute jump to prove something or other. It is an excuse to use the same footage of Peter Wyngarde jumping out of a plane that they shot for another episode.

In "Her Majesty Regrets" Jason had Mark Caine fake his own death. He disappeared and adopted a whole new identity. Jason notes – and this sounds significant – that new identities take a long time to establish.

Harvey’s mother has apparently read one of Jason’s books. She thought it showed "warm promise". He threatens to send her a full set.

Sir Curtis was sarcastic to Annabelle so Stewart gets to be sarcastic to Sir Curtis. "Do you want another highly significant fact?" asks his boss. "I’m just crazy about highly significant facts" replies the soon to be unemployed investigator.

Stewart and Annabelle have this silent conversation while being filmed by some men in a "Joe’s Television Service" van. We can’t hear what they’re saying but knowing the backstage murmurings it was probably something along the lines of ‘we finally get some time away from that prima donna and it’s the dullest episode we’ve ever done’.

These three men watch the film – they identify Department S and work out that they are on the trail of Harvey. The one with the beard says they will have to kill someone (Harvey or Stewart). The one in the middle is so shocked by this that he tries to sit down but misses his chair completely. We have slapstick commies. Just what the episode needed.

Stewart – prompted by Jason’s little pep talk – starts doing some proper investigating. He’s heard that nine times out of ten someone changing their name will pick one with the same initials. So Stewart Sullivan would be, say, Sam Smith or Annabelle Hurst would be Alice Holmes. He spells it out for us just in case we don’t know what initials are.

When Jason crash lands at the end of his parachute jump, Stewart does another one of those laughs. Ever since he got high on liquid oxygen in "The Man From X" he’s been as giddy as a small goat.

Though this time I think even I’d crack a smile.

There is no light – he jumped from a plane because he was a double agent and set up a new life as an antique dealer. He got the parachute on board by bribing the mechanic. That’s how clever this plot was.

The only vaguely surprising thing was Smith – the dubious government official – faking the results of the fingerprint test and claiming it proved Heywood wasn’t Harvey. Just for a moment we began to wonder whether Smith was the double agent rather than Harvey. But he just did it because he’s a shades-of-grey government chap and would rather the Russians killed Harvey than an official arrest and scandal.

Harvey saves everyone the bother by jumping off a roof.

It is not impossible that I missed something crucial but I don’t think I did. I don’t think there is any reason why Department S believe Anthony Harvey is still alive. We the audience know because we get to see stuff but Department S have absolutely no reason to suppose he escaped from the plane. No one has seen Harvey, no one has found any evidence at the crash site and no one saw a man parachuting from the plane. Sir Curtis is just convinced he’s still alive and everyone goes along with it.

Their finding him rests entirely on him choosing an alias with the same initials. I don’t know whether this is based on genuine psychological findings or was just made up to fill a hole in the plot.

With nothing baffling at the beginning, a middle which even saw Jason dismiss the episode as not worthy of them and a plot so linear you rest a spirit level on it, this isn’t a very good episode. It makes a certain sense and the actual mechanical detective work is probably better than usual but it is dull and unimaginative and unworthy. Just as Jason said it was.