Customs on TV - The Revenue Men (1967-68)
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| Ewen Solon, Callum Mill and James Grant |
The Revenue Men was a 1960’s BBC series about the Scottish division of HM Customs and Excise’s Investigation Branch. It was made in the tradition of Forbidden Cargo (1954), based on fact but told in a style which captured the imagination of the public.
As the publicity for the series explained, “the emphasis is new. This is a realistic series which does not find smuggling romantic, which presents the men of Customs and Excise as the guardians of purchase tax and exchange control regulations, as the collectors of vast sums in indirect taxation, as those who come to grips with the 'cheaters' of international finance, with the traffic in illegal drugs, with whisky hi-jackers, and with the routing of strategic cargoes to forbidden countries.”
The series dealt with The Investigation Branch (IB) rather than uniformed waterguard at ports, harbours and airports or the Outdoor Branch checking on fuel and spirits tax. Publicity said, “ IB officers usually speak more than one foreign language; they are trained in the techniques of detection and interrogation and have wide reaching powers; they can arrest, and they can confiscate and have a roving commission empowering them to follow a case anywhere in Britain or abroad. Recruited from different areas within the various Customs and Excise departments and serve a two-year probationary period in the IB.”
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| Ewen Solon as Caesar Smith |
The series starred New Zealander Ewen Solon (Sgt Lucas in Maigret) as Caesar Smith, “a bachelor with a taste for sailing, who comes from the Outdoor Branch and is happiest behind the wheel of a sports car.” He was supported by James Grant as Ross McInnes, newly appointed from the Waterguard, less experienced and “impulsively ruthless” with a “glum reluctance to obey”, making the mistakes which Smith has to clear up (“an officious, insensitive young man whose main quality was his stubbornness.” Birmingham Mail). Callum Mill played Stuart Campbell, the head of the Investigation Branch, noted as a shrewd politician. Claire Nielson ( wife of “the American” in the Fawlty Towers “Waldorf Salad” episode) played the sole woman, secretary Lucretia “Luke” Fraser. “She has been selected for her intelligence, reliability and security mindedness”. One reviewer praised James Grant’s, “abortive attempts to fraternise with the most secretarial secretary on TV.”
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| Clare Nielson as Luke Fraser |
The series was produced by Gerard Glaister at the BBC’s Glasgow studios. Glaister had previously produced Dr Finlay’s Casebook and This Man Craig at the Glasgow studios. Before that, he had produced Moonstrike, a semi-documentary series about World War 2 Lysander pilots flying agents into France in support of the resistance.
Location filming began on Sunday 5 February 1967, with the first episode transmitted on BBC2 on 28 March 1967. On 6 April 1967 The Stage reported that the run had been increased from 13 weeks to 26 weeks following an enthusiastic reception. In practice this meant a second series of 14 episodes was broadcast on 1 September 1967 after two month break from 20 June. A third series began on 29 March 1968, ending after 12 episodes on 14 June 1968. BBC 2 was still a minority channel at the time, and although four episodes were repeated on BBC1 in August 1969, the series did not loom large in the public mind and all episodes have been wiped.
The series was devised by Alan Haire, a long-term researcher for This Is Your Life and Pat Dunlop, whose credits range from Z Cars to Fantasy Island. However, three of the first four episodes were written by Glaister’s long-term collaborator N.J. Crisp (The Brothers). The first episode, The Traders introduced the main characters against the background of the export of strategic material to then-Iron Curtain countries. Marius Goring as Kersten and Diana Beevers as his daughter arrive from East Germany with the IB already watching and waiting.
Cases investigated during the series would range from the supply of plastic explosives to the-still-under-the-radar IRA, to theft of over-proof whisky from a Bonded (Duty Suspended) Warehouse. The smuggling of gold and fur coats still ranked with the fiddling of £2000 purchase tax by the head of a washing machine direct sales company. In fact, one reviewer observed that, “the unexpectedly good thing about The Revenue Men is how exciting such dry subjects as Purchase Tax can be made to seem. Each case, were it taken straight from dusty files, would be mildly interesting and no more. But cleverly dramatised, and with the undoubted chief asset it has in Ewen Solon, relentless and unforgiving, the series has quietly earned a considerable reputation.” Although the series was a low-key videotaped production on a minority channel (BBC2 was broadcast in 625-line UHF at a time when most TV sets could only receive BBC1 and ITV in 425-line VHF pictures) it still had a high standard of production. The series two episode The Exile starred Patrick Cargill as confidence trickster Paul Valery, Barbara Shelley as Renee, Peter Barkworth as Captain Brett and Peter Wyngarde as General Daniel ( although the Glasgow studios also provided a vital source of local work for Scottish actors such as Dorothy Paul and Alex Norton).
Initial response was favourable, with the Daily Mirror’s Kenneth Eastaugh reporting that, “next to The Troubleshooters, it is already TV’s most proficient, involving and entertaining series. Certainly, it is TV’s top cop series. It scores with an efficient blending of realism, excitement and understanding of human nature. The acting regulars are superbly led by Ewen Solon and all give challenging performances.”
Peggie Philips, giving a Scottish perspective, agreed that it was, “valid in its use of genuine local types, but sufficiently colourful in story to make this a handsome rival to the popular thrillers with suggestions in the script of all the fashionable Power Game tensions, including insubordinate juniors and touchy seniors.”
Reviewing the second episode, Don’t Get Conspicuous (4 April 1967) , Eastaugh added that Solon, “portrays strength, reliability and smartness without clever clever slickness, and last night was only overshadowed by that clever actor Edward Woodward. As Bill Murray, he was a character out to make a mint by importing pornographic books and films. A scheming, vain, selfish, cowardly crook…a role which could oh-so-easily have been a corny caricature , instead of the subtle characterisation which we got. Which is also to the credit of director Peter Cregeen and producer Gerard Glaister who make this a series to watch with their fine sense of detail and naturalness.”
The Daily Record warned that, “The Revenue Men needs to be closely watched. The stories compress a lot of plot and technicality into the time, and average half-viewing, half-reading attention is not enough.”
Inevitably though, the sheer production-line timescale and the law of diminishing returns set in. By the third series, reviewers were complaining about dialogue that they could predict before it was spoken by the actors (nice to know nothing has changed in 50 years). The third series was the last, and although four selected episodes were shown on BBC1 in August 1969, they did not win the series any further life. Unluckily, one of the four episodes, ‘Borderline’ was dropped because it dealt with the IRA . The worsening troubles in Northern Ireland meant that it could not be shown and it was replaced by a Panorama documentary on the Ulster situation. Even worse, not even these selected episodes were preserved from the wholesale wiping of the videotapes. Gerard Glaister moved on to shows like Colditz and Secret Army and made no attempt to revive The Revenue Men.
One odd bit of longevity came with the third episode of the first series, You Can’t Win. This saw the IB trying to anticipate the smuggling of three million English cigarettes hijacked in France. Written by Ian Kennedy Martin (of The Sweeney fame) the story featured Noel Coleman as Det Ch Insp Reaygo and Glyn Owen as James Greig. Just over a year later, in August 1968 Glyn Owen would play Chief Insp Reaygo in Kennedy Martin’s series Letters From The Dead for Southern TV. Owen would return as Reaygo in Kennedy Martin’s The Capone Investment (recently repeated on Talking Pictures TV). As The Capone Investment starred John Thaw, who would go on to play Kennedy Martin’s Inspector Regan in The Sweeney, you could say there was some bizarre Three Degrees of Separation between The Revenue Men and The Sweeney (Kennedy Martin would also go on to write episodes of ITV’s The Knock).
