Picking it Up

Bergerac opens in the air, with Jim Bergerac flying home to Jersey. The airline stewardess remembers him — a few months earlier he flew the other way, on crutches. It is a quiet way to reintroduce a wounded man, and Robert Banks Stewart's pilot, directed by Martyn Friend, wastes none of it. As the plane comes in, a stolen aircraft takes off against the traffic; the emergency van pursuing it is driven by Bergerac's friend and colleague, Detective Constable Tom Draycott. The van hits oil drums and explodes. Draycott dies of his burns before Bergerac can reach the hospital.

The grief is doubled by institutional frustration. Draycott had been seconded to a new department, the Bureau des Etrangers, run by an old colleague of Bergerac's, Inspector Barney Crozier — promoted in Bergerac's absence. None of Draycott's cases explain his last act, and his notebook burned with the car. Bergerac wants onto the investigation, but the Chief has his own news: the medical board has declared Bergerac unfit for duty, and he is on sick leave, on full pay, with an appeal pending. The series' central tension — the best detective on the island, forever at odds with the institution that employs him — is established inside the first twenty minutes.

The plot then spreads outward in the manner of early Bergerac: a wealthy butterfly collector, Christopher Gurney, knows the dead plane thief; a young au pair is in hospital after a hit-and-run; and the strands meet in an international arms deal to South Africa, the embargo-busting trade that gave the debut its political edge. Bergerac, suspended but tireless, follows the money and the guns while his superiors watch with folded arms. Floella Benjamin, then a familiar children's television presenter, appears as Gurney's girlfriend Juniper; Danny Schiller and Roland Oliver fill out the island's shadier reaches.

The pilot is a statement of intent rather than a flawless machine. The plotting is sprawling and some threads are left to look after themselves, but the lead is unmistakable: John Nettles, a Cornish actor with no real profile, makes Bergerac a recovering alcoholic with charm, a short fuse and a quiet stubbornness that outlasts every official objection. When the arms trail at last opens up, Bergerac is back at a desk he was told to leave. The series that would run for ten years and make Nettles a national institution begins here, bruised, blunt and already fighting the system.