THE PROFESSIONALS

BRITBOX ACTION DRAMA

Created by Brian Clemens, the man behind the rather more stylish 1960s hit The Avengers, this testosterone-fuelled caper starred Martin Shaw (right) as bubblepermed Doyle and Lewis Collins (far right) as ladies’ man Bodie in an endless array of leather jackets, invariably thrashing a

Ford Capri. They were operatives of CI5 – a cross between CID and MI5 – under their boss, Upstairs, Downstairs star Gordon Jackson. Shaw was rather sniffy about the show, which ran for 57 episodes from 1977 to 1981, regarding his character as onedimensional, but The Professionals became a cult hit in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

From Thursday