Philip Broadley

12 December 1969 (IMDb) or 10 February 1970 (epguides.com)

8^th of March in Paris, France, not England.

On board a flight to Athens, a man smokes a happy cigar. You couldn’t do that nowadays. A fellow passenger gets up and goes to the loo. He locks the door and takes out a gun. You can’t do that nowadays either.

He takes the gun into the cabin and sneakily (but noisily) shoots the man with the cigar. Personally I think they were both in the wrong but that doesn’t excuse murder.

The other passengers are appalled but he keeps them back with his pistol. He opens the plane door and jumps out to his certain death… oh wait… it isn’t a real plane. He is able to run away. They shoot several rounds in his general direction but he gets clean away.

Two comedy French policemen hear the shots and run to see what all the fuss is about. They find the body and – in the worst French accent I’ve heard in a while – pronounce him dead. They find a tape recorder and switch it off – so much for the noise of a plane in flight.

The whole thing is the sham to end all shams. But why? Why this plane fakery? It’s time to call in the British chick, the American guy and the one from another world. In short, Department S.

Who is the woman watching the warehouse in which the fake plane is housed and why should she leave this note for Jason – written in lipstick on the windscreen of his car?

Later, they find the girl murdered in her own bathroom. Luckily she had time to write one last message. But what does "Lucky le B" mean?

Five minutes into the episode, Jason is looking at the stars with a pretty astronomer. He makes a saucy remark about being in Virgo. She gets all technical while he tries to bite her neck.

Any who knows anything about Michel Faure, Hal Galili, Sue Gerrard, Clinton Greyn, Makki Marseilles, Hans Meyer, Virginia North or Antony Scott is a better man or woman than me.

For a series set in Paris, this is one of the few episodes to actually be set in France. Or rather to require the actors to say French things. Annabelle has to read out an address and from the glassy stare she adopts while saying it I suspect she was reading it phonetically from a cue card.

She’s not exactly disappointed at the prospect of "getting close" to a glamorous international gambler. The minx.

When she says she’s going on a date with the suspected bad guy of the piece, Stewart gives her a micro miniature camera with which to take incriminating photos.

And a lipstick with a microphone in the bottom. This has suddenly turned into James Bond except Q is American and Bond is wearing a swimsuit.

Her date – the glamorous international gambler and huckster – makes model aeroplanes as a hobby. She feigns interest beautifully considering they’re just plastic Airfix kits and not the works of art he makes out.

Annabelle in a bikini.

ANNABELLE in a BIKINI?!?

Our Annabelle?

In a bikini?

I’ve studied all the evidence and it is true.

And during all my investigations the sea hasn’t moved an inch.

Or rather anti-fancy – has Peter Wyngarde ever looked older and less glam than he does in this scene?

He has a talent for secretly writing car registration numbers on his cuff without anyone noticing. I imagine he learned this skill taking down ladies’ phone numbers without their husbands cottoning on.

Jason believes that dark eyed women are the most unpredictable.

He has acquired an electronic skeleton key. It has all mod cons – an on switch, a light and even a safety catch (?) – and he’s about to try it on a locked door when Stewart opens the thing with a nail file. The scene is backed by comedy music so we know the punch line long before it arrives. Poor Jason.

When going through the dark eyed girl’s flat, the first place Jason heads is the underwear draw. Figures.

During a slideshow where he compares a suspect to a goat, Sir Curtis tells Jason "Curb your flippancy, King".

He’s chatting up the pretty astronomer as "research" for his new Mark Caine novel. Or so he claims. He also claims his books aren’t all "bang bang" which might’ve been another sleazy chat up line.

Maybe it’s the harsh daylight of an obviously genuine cruise but Stewart looks to be setting a new record for drab, functional brown this week.

Stewart describes Jason as "the whiz kid" which is ironic. He adds that he’s meant to be the "leg man". Which earns a "Fancy!" from Jason.

Stewart must’ve been having a dim day because it takes Jason the whiz kid to suggest that they should go and look at the scene of the crime. He looks as if this never occurred to him.

He goes to a groovy café packed with gyrating young people and the limit – the absolute limit – of his efforts to blend in is beige.

He seems a little surprised when Annabelle kisses him on the cheek. They really have decided to inject a little sexual chemistry into the series and it was either these two or Jason and a full length mirror.

A little unintentional innuendo – the man in the plane was shot by someone sitting behind him and a henchman is murdered in the same way while sitting in his car. "Both shot through the back of the seat" says Sir Curtis. Well I chuckled. It sounds such a painful way to go. Very Edward the Second.

Things that are memorable about this episode – Annabelle sheds her boring image and wears a bikini and Peter Wyngarde has bizarre hair even by his standards. The teaser is quite interesting, though not as intriguing as the similar set up in "The Man in the Elegant Room". Once the opening titles are done and dusted it is a fairly tedious stroll around the French coast. Annabelle’s dinner with the gambler goes on for about ten minutes and is interminably dull. Department S get lucky again with a huge clue helping them out of their darkness. How the girl was able to write on the mirror after being murdered (when everyone else was shot and died instantly) is best not dwelt on. This was more generic ITC Euro-fare and only worth a couple of marks.