Adam H. Kerman <
ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
Mr. Palfrey of Westminster - pilot episode - starring Alec McCowen
(1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h4q0qVCvTM
I watched the entire thing. The pilot, 4-episode first series, 6-episode
second series, and post-series episode featuring one of the supporting characters.
Alec McCowen presents a facade of a bureaucrat seemingly unswayed by
emotion upholding traditional values. Instead, it's a facade to hide a
keen mind with excellent psychological insights able to think severl
steps ahead of his enemy, who will not forgive disloyalty (but does
forgive other sins like adultery and homosexuality0 as long as the
person's job isn't affected. He won't tolerate careers being sabotaged
through petty jealousies and refuses to reach conclusions pushed by his
bosses to neatly wrap up inquiries.
The pilot is different from the rest, largely a two-man confrontation
versus im igott-Smith in modern offices though windowless in
which there is anemphasis on secret recordings and technology of
the era.
In the main series, he loses his professional boss and is given an
unnamed political boss Caroline Blakiston, a character with an
inconsistent personality to butt heads with Palfrey, but in one episode,
she made an observation and used her imagination to suss out a security problem. She puts him into a government surplus office in a closed
school that seemingly houses no other personnel, and doesn't have modern heating. But it's an excuse to get him out into the field. He's aided by
Clive Wood as Blair, to do mundane surveillance and breakins. It is
implied that he's an assasin butwe never see that on Paltry's cases.
Only two stories show the British security services arranging
assasinations, including the pilot in which palfry arranges for the
other side to do it, and another in which Palfrey meets the assasin but
doesn't expose her. The Americans are the assasins in one episode.
In the main series, he's given a love of baroque music and literature,
and is even shown as a member of a stodgy club.
Talky but largely satisfying and perhaps just one episode in which his conclusion came from out of no where. there is an episode in which he
gets it wrong and has no idea.
I enjoyed it.
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