Ghost Squad | |
---|---|
Also known as | GS5 |
Created by |
|
Starring | |
Composer | Philip Green |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
No. of series | 3 |
No. of episodes | 52 (13 missing) |
Production | |
Running time | 50 minutes |
Production company | ITC Entertainment for ATV |
Original release | |
Network | ITV |
Release | 9 September 1961 – 16 May 1964 |
Ghost Squad, known as GS5 for its third series, was a crime drama series that ran between 1961 and 1964, about an elite division of Scotland Yard. In each episode the Ghost Squad would investigate cases that fell outside the scope of normal police work. [1] Despite the show and characters being fictional, an actual division did exist within the Metropolitan Police at the time. [2]
Inspiration for the series was taken from a book of the same title written by John Gosling, a retired police officer and former member of the real-life squad it is based on. [2] This squad operated only in London, but the members of the fictional team travel all over Europe, sometimes to fictitious countries. As was common practice at the time, most of the foreign settings are depicted by combining stock footage with scenes shot on sets, in this case at Independent Artists Studios at Beaconsfield and Associated British Elstree Studios. The music for the show was by Philip Green.
The show was produced by ITC Entertainment with Rank Organisation TV and ATV. It was the first ITC show filmed to fit the one-hour time-slot (with two advertisement breaks), setting the trend for the majority of ITC's output. Another common ITC trait was to feature an American actor, in this case Michael Quinn, in a leading role, in the hope of increasing the chances of international sales. In the second series Neil Hallett sometimes replaced Quinn and in the third series Quinn was entirely replaced by the Australian actor Ray Barrett. Ray Austin, stunt director for the entire series, played Billy Clay in the third series (he went on to become a TV director in Hollywood and the UK).
The show was produced for three consecutive series. The Rank Organisation co-produced the first series, which was shot on 35 mm film. Subsequent series were made on videotape in a multi-camera television studio with filmed location inserts, with telerecordings being made for overseas sales. Series two survives complete in this form, but no complete episode survives from series three when the show had been renamed as GS5.
In most ITV regions the first ten episodes of the first series (actually episodes 1 to 9 plus episode 13, in random order) were shown from 9 September to 11 November 1961, the remaining three episodes (11, 10 and 12) being shown at the start of the second series, from 30 September to 14 October 1962, followed by the second series proper from 21 October 1962 to 27 April 1963 (though no episodes were shown on 4 November or 30 December). Other ITV regions, including TWW and Tyne Tees, showed the different seasons as 13, 26 and 13 episodes.
Series | Premiere | Finale | Episodes |
---|---|---|---|
Series One | 9 September 1961 | 11 November 1961 | 10 |
Series Two | 30 September 1962 | 27 April 1963 | 29 |
Series Three | 22 February 1964 | 16 May 1964 | 13 |
The series has not been broadcast since the 1960s. [1] The 39 surviving episodes are available in a 10-disc DVD set from Network.
Farewell, My Lovely is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1940, the second novel he wrote featuring the Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times and was also adapted for the stage and radio.
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London. It stars John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter. It was produced by the Thames Television subsidiary Euston Films for broadcast on the ITV network in the UK between 2 January 1975 and 28 December 1978.
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is a British private detective television series, starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope respectively as the private detectives Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk. The series was created by Dennis Spooner and produced by Monty Berman, and was first broadcast in 1969 and 1970. In the United States, it was given the title My Partner the Ghost.
Vincenzo Colosimo, known as James "Big Jim" Colosimo or as "Diamond Jim", was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who emigrated from Calabria, Italy, in 1895 and built a criminal empire in Chicago based on prostitution, gambling and racketeering. He gained power through petty crime and heading a chain of brothels. From 1902 until his death in 1920, he led a gang known after his death as the Chicago Outfit. Colosimo was assassinated on May 11, 1920, and no one was ever charged with his murder. Johnny Torrio, an enforcer whom Colosimo imported in 1909 from New York, seized control of Colosimo's businesses after his death. Al Capone, a close associate of Torrio, has been accused of involvement in Colosimo's murder but was not yet in Chicago at the time.
Murder, My Sweet is a 1944 American film noir, directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Dick Powell, Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley. The film is based on Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. It was the first film to feature Chandler's primary character, the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe.
The Baron is a British television series made in 1965 and 1966, based on the book series by John Creasey and produced by ITC Entertainment. Thirty colour episodes were produced, and the show was exported to the American ABC network.
Snakeheads are Chinese gangs that smuggle people to other countries. They are found in the Fujian region of China and smuggle their customers into wealthier Western countries such as those in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and some nearby wealthier regions such as Taiwan and Japan.
John Francis Regis Toomey was an American film and television actor.
Professor Craig Kennedy is a fictional detective created by Arthur B. Reeve.
The Zoo Gang is a 1974 ITC Entertainment drama series that ran for six one-hour colour episodes, based on the 1971 book of the same title by Paul Gallico.
K.T. Stevens was an American film and television actress.
The Saint's Double Trouble is a 1940 action-adventure film produced by RKO Pictures. The film stars George Sanders as Simon Templar, a.k.a. "The Saint", a master criminal turned crime-fighter, and features horror film legend Bela Lugosi as "The Partner". This was the fourth of eight films in RKO's film series about the character created by Leslie Charteris, and the first film to not be directly based upon one of the original Saint books, although Charteris did contribute to developing the story for the film.
"The Ghost Talks" is the twenty-first episode of the 1969 ITC British television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) starring Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope and Annette Andre. The episode was first broadcast on 6 February 1970, on ITV, and was directed by Cyril Frankel.
"Miracles" is the 20th and final episode of the third season of the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother and 64th overall. It was written by series creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, and directed by Pamela Fryman. It originally aired on May 19, 2008.
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony is the second of two episodic expansion packs available for the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. The game was released individually for the Xbox 360 on 29 October 2009, and for the PlayStation 3 and Windows on 13 April 2010, as part of a standalone disc-based package titled Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, which also contains Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned and does not require the base game to be played. Microsoft added Episodes from Liberty City to its backwards compatibility list for Xbox One platforms in February 2017.
Crane is a British black and white adventure series that aired on ITV from 1963 to 1965. It was shown on Monday nights at 8 PM.
A Date with the Falcon is the second in a series of 16 films about the suave detective nicknamed The Falcon. The 1942 sequel features many of the same characters as the first film, The Gay Falcon (1941).
"The Blitzkrieg Button" is the fourth episode of the first season of the American television series Agent Carter, inspired by the films Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the Marvel One-Shot short film also titled Agent Carter. It features the Marvel Comics character Peggy Carter as she must hide the fugitive Howard Stark while she retrieves the titular device for him, and is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. The episode was written by Brant Englestein and directed by Stephen Cragg.
"'Liberty" is the 1st episode and season premiere of the third season of the American television drama series Person of Interest. It is the 46th overall episode of the series and is written by executive producer Greg Plageman and supervising producer Denise Thé and directed by co-executive producer Chris Fisher. It aired on CBS in the United States and on CTV in Canada on September 24, 2013.