Department S (1969)
Department S
1969Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse.
Seasons & Episode
LOCATION: Bedfordshire, England DATE: July 3rd A tanker is involved in an accident. A witness swears he saw a woman in the back of the tanker, but when the police look there is no one inside. The tanker, however, is not carrying fuel, but rather is elaborately rigged as a living space. A search for the missing woman leads Jason to an old friend, and eventually to France.
LOCATION: London, England DATE: June 20th Four men dressed in various costumes are gunned down in a cellar. The gun of one had been fired, the bullet turning up in the body of a man found in the trunk of a submerged car. Stewart pays a call on a crime broker to see who hired the men and how the crimes relate to a house in St. John's Woods, where a woman is being kept sedated because she thought she saw four men wearing disguises committing a robbery in the house.
LOCATION: Hambledown, Hampshire, England DATE: April 16th A woman goes to bed early, taking a sedative, to get enough sleep for a beauty contest. When she wakes up the next morning her entire village is deserted. The only clues Department S can find are a man with a shotgun in a home on the outskirts of the village and a freshly-painted mailbox post.
LOCATION: London Airport DATE: April 30th Sky Tripper 190 requests auto land clearance at Heathrow Airport in London. When boarded, the plane is totally empty. While investigating Stewart locates the body of the pilot, and Annabelle sees a reclusive industry CEO boarding the plane in a photograph.
LOCATION: Islington, London, England DATE: May 12th A real estate agent, taking a man to see a warehouse, discovers a room constructed inside the warehouse. Worse, a dead body and a babbling man are locked inside the room. Stewart tries to interrogate the man, but he is killed before anything can be made of his babbling.
LOCATION: Colindale Golf Course, Scotland DATE: June 6th Stewart attends a golf tournament in Scotland. The tournament leader is found dead near the course. The Department is unofficially involved until someone breaks into the dead man's living quarters and steals his golf clubs.
LOCATION: Bay of Naples, Italy DATE: August 14th Assassins attack a limousine with a land mine, but the “man” killed turns out to be a mannequin. Jason nicknames the mannequin “Charlie Crippen” while the Department sets to find out who did the attack, and who the real target is.
LOCATION: The Costa del Sol, Spain DATE: July 31st A man goes scuba diving while his friend waits in the car. The man returns from the dive with a fish, and his friend shoots him. Before he dies he is able to return fire with a spear gun, killing the shooter. A policeman happens upon the scene and finds the diver's catch: a plastic fish with $100,000 inside.
LOCATION:The Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain DATE: September 12th A car, apparently out of control, rushes to its doom in a mountainous, uninhabited area of Madrid. And its only occupant is a tailor's dummy sitting at the wheel. The chief clue is the expensive tie on the dummy, a British-made tie that Jason notices on someone else in town.
LOCATION: Cap d'Antibes, France DATE: August 16th A man takes enormous risk by sneak onto the grounds of an estate. He steals nothing, taking the gamble instead to glue a classic theatrical comedy mask onto a sleeping man's face. The man wakes and sees the mask, dying of a heart attack trying to remove it. Since the man was a friend of Sir Curtis, he wants the Department to investigate who performed "this bad joke"--and why.
LOCATION: Rome, Italy DATE: September 26th A small package has the key to the disappearance of $5 million taken in a robbery. The man charged with delivering the package to a man in Paris is curious, so he opens the package to find three flowers and a cryptic passage from a book. He does not know what the message means, only that people involved in the robbery are being murdered, including the prime suspect in the robbery.
LOCATION: Stepney, London, England DATE: October 10th The police are called to investigate a manufacturing company manager’s claim that no one showed up for work on a Wednesday in spite of neighbors’ claims that everything at the plant appeared to be perfectly normal. The shift substitution somehow ties to the opening of a nuclear-powered generating station.
LOCATION: Southern France DATE: July 19th A man's home is invaded by armed intruders intent on killing him. He has a heart attack and dies before they can, however. The two men go to the morgue to see the body, where they put two bullets into the corpse. Department S investigate the shooting of the body of a man who bears a striking resemblance to a notorious criminal who allegedly died three years earlier.
LOCATION: London DATE: January 4th John Burnham’s wife was murdered in the parking garage as they were leaving for the evening. However, John continues to see Mary and receive phone calls from her. Who killed Mrs. Burnham and why is a matter of utmost importance for the Department to solve, since, as Sir Curtis tells Stewart in giving him the case, “John Burnham is an important man to the world.”
LOCATION: London, England DATE: February 2nd A couple, necking in a car, are shocked to find a man in a spacesuit coming at them. He falls dead before he reaches their car. The Department wants to know what a man in a spacesuit was doing in London at night, and how it might tie to a planned robbery.
LOCATION: Bond Street, London, England DATE: January 18th Sir Curtis attends an auction. A mirror that he suspects is worth no more than £2,500 goes for £9,000. He is perplexed as to why, and even more concerned when the man who bought the mirror at auction is murdered.
LOCATION: City of Southwark Hospital, London DATE: October 24th A British government official suffers a brain hemorrhage. While in surgery, his surgeon is replaced by another man. Instead of killing the official, the substitute doctor completed the operation. The Department must find out why, while Jason disputes the official government records that state the official has never been to Istanbul.
LOCATION: Paris, France DATE: March 8th A man murders another man on a flight. He then orders no one to move and opens the airplane door, jumping -- to the floor of a warehouse. Other men aboard the ""plane"" chase and shoot the killer in the warehouse. The Department is called in to learn who would build such an elaborate set in order to murder someone.
LOCATION: London, England DATE: May 8th A man commits suicide beneath a tree in a park. He has no identification and is completely untraceable. To complicate matters, the coronor's report indicates the dead man is 60 years old -- even though his physical appearance makes him appear to be in his 20s. Before the Department can question the autopsy, the corpse is stolen.
LOCATION: Wiltshire, England DATE: April 20th Greg Halliday is fed up with his work as a chemical engineer creating weapons that can obliterate the population of large cities. He leaves his job with a canister of the deadly chemical. The Department is out to find him before others who want the chemicals get to him -- or before Halliday uses the weapon himself.
LOCATION: Marling Dale, Cheshire, England DATE: April 4th When a chauffeur opens the door for his passenger, a diplomat named Byrom Blaine, he discovers a skeleton instead. The Department is called in, but they cannot stop other diplomats from turning into skeletons -- including Sir Curtis.
LOCATION: Liverpool, England DATE: May 2nd Department S is called upon to investigate a most unusual burglary: four men break into a warehouse and break through a stone wall, all to steal one crate of Portugese fish soup. The crime becomes more confusing when the stolen soup cans are found discarded less than a day after they are stolen.
Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S was Sir Curtis Seretse.