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Director : Martyn Friend Script : Robert Banks Stewart Synopsis : Returning from an extended bout of recuperative leave, Jim Bergerac is shocked to find not only his position as a Detective Sergeant at the Bureau de Etrangers under threat, but a colleague has been murdered whilst investigating the illegal trade of arms to South Africa. Notes : This season was transmitted on Sunday nights at 9:10pm to 10:00pm on BBC 1.
Director : Martin Campbell Script : John Kershaw Cast : Rosemary Martin and Richard Morant. Synopsis : The charity boss liked the good life and it's caught up with him. But they can't take the body to the undertakers just yet.
Director : Ian Toynton Script : Bob Baker Cast : Prunella Scales and Jack Galloway. Synopsis : When the hot potato from Paris slips through his grasp, Jim Bergerac is in for a roasting. But can he save someone else on the island from being mashed?
Director : Martyn Friend Script : Alistair Bell Cast : Ian Hendry, Jane Wenham and Simon Cadell. Synopsis
: Gerald Furneaux has something to sell, and
he needs the money badly. But memory lane, as
Jim Bergerac warns him, can be a dangerous place
to wander.
Director : Don Leaver Script : Gerry O'Hara Cast : Sara Kestelman, Bernard Gallagher and George Irving. Synopsis
: Is Margaret Semple using the "garden
route" or merely being sent up the garden
path?
Director : Laurence Moody Script : Dennis Spooner Cast : Sarah Lawson, Derek Farr and Charles Kay. Synopsis
: Who'll give the bride's mother away? Everything
is set for the big Jersey wedding, but Jim Bergerac
isn't exactly a welcome guest.
Director : Ian Toynton Script : Philip Broadley Cast
: Patrick
Mower and Sarah Douglas.
Director : Henry Herbert Script : Dennis Spooner Cast
: James
Cossins and Gary Watson.
Director : Martin Campbell Script : Peter Miller Cast
: Geoffrey
Bayldon, Warren Clarke, Lynda Marchal and Geoffrey
Davies.
Director : Roger Tucker Script : Terence Feely Cast
: Greta
Scacchi and Anthony Forrest.
Director : Alan Grint Script : Robert Banks Stewart Cast
: Dandy
Nichols and Philip Davis.
Director : Peter Smith Script : Robert Banks Stewart and Peter Miller Cast : Rikki Fulton (Andy Galbraith) and Joanne Whalley (Christine Bolton). Synopsis : For a summer show celebrity like Andy Galbraith, malicious cranks can be a hazard. But is Christine Bolton telling the truth?
Director : Michael Rolfe Script : Dennis Spooner Cast
: William
Hootkins.
Director : Henry Herbert Script : Robert Banks Stewart and Robert Holmes Cast
: Anthony
Valentine and Catherine Schell.
Director : Laurence Moody Script : Alistair Bell Cast
: Norman
Wisdom (Vincent Parkin).
Director : Ben Bolt Script : Paul Wheeler Cast
: Richard
Griffiths and Phillip Stone.
Director : Colin Bucksey Script : Robert Banks Stewart and Leslie Darbon Cast : Nicholas Ball and Dennis Lawson. Synopsis
: For Bergerac, the arrival in Jersey of a
penniless Indian presents problems. Especially
when he claims to be a faith healer and principal
asset of a rich foundation.
Director : Paul Ciappessoni Script : Paul Wheeler Cast
: Ronald
Hines (Inspector West) and Barbara Shelley.
Director : Michael Rolfe Script : Bob Baker Synopsis : How did a Belgian stable girl afford the Jersey high life? When Bergerac investigates he finds a killer. The first episode of this season benefitted from an article in the Radio Times to help promote it: Island Of Adventure - Jim Bergerac is back in action, fighting crime in that delightful Channel Island setting. And it seems that the success of the series so far has had a marked effect on the touristic popularity of Jersey. Gordon Burn visited during filming for this new ten-part series: It was that time of year when the season was over and the restaurants were full - or, more accurately, half-full - of the island's guest-house keepers and restaurateurs, bejeweled and bronzed and freshly returned from their own holidays, in Palm Beach and Montego Bay. Over the biggest helpings of surf and turg this side of Dallas, and bottles of the best burgundy and rafts of plump asparagus, they quickly got down to discussing next year's set-lunch prices and self-catering rates and last year's ghastly guests. "The first evening when he asked for a toothpick and started demanding his rights, I knew. He'd already asked for a bottle of red wine in his bedroom. It was all puffin' up cigars and double Remy when he was downstairs, but of course the wardrobe was full of cheap booze …". It is Jersey's special status as a low-duty area that helps sustain a tourist industry worth around one-hundred-and-twenty-five-million pounds a year. But even with petrol at just over one pound a gallon and cigarettes at forty-eight pence for twenty, Jersey, like every other resort in Britain, had been feeling the effects of the recession: general bookings were down; a growing number of the island's twenty-five-thousand registered tourist beds were permanently unslept in. Last year, however, saw a dramatic upturn in fortune. While trade on neighbouring Guernsey continued to fall, British visitors to Jersey last summer increased by more than five per cent, and local tourist officials are in no doubt at all whom they must thank: the Balliwick, as the holiday brochures delightfully proclaim, is now "Bergerac's Island". On the strength of a single series of ten parts, Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, brooding, blue-eyed hero of the Bureau des Etrangers, is a tourist attraction to rank alongside Mont Orgueil Castle and Gerald Durrell's zoo. There's a Bergerac wine cellar in Saint Helier and a Bergerac café, and houses (or "properties" as they are more often called on Jersey) are likely to be advertised "as seen on television" ("My house hasn't been used for Bergerac," was one of last year's more popular car stickers). Ritual pilgrimages are made to Queen's Valley and the rustic farmhouse where Bergerac lives. And business is booming at the "Royal Barge", his favourite watering hole - in reality the Old Court House Inn in Saint Aubin's harbour, whose regulars surely helped nudge The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook into the bestsellers. The Old Court House Inn, in fact, is only used in exteriors, which capitalise on its very characterful, immediately recognisable, glass frontage. The interior of the pub has been mocked up at the old Forum Cinema in Saint Helier, which the BBC, rather than filming at Ealing Studios (as they did for the first series), have requisitioned as a studio. The Forum is due to be demolished and replaced by a block of high-rise offices, but the developer, a local millionaire, has been persuaded to stay his hand at least until a third series of Bergerac is in the can. Such cooperation, it seems, is typical of the super-rich who are drawn to Jersey on account of the well-known tax facility it offers. A glance at the yellow pages suggests that their every need is met. In a couple of pages under "S", for instance, you'll find: safes and fire-protection; sailing schools; solaria; solicitors - English; stockbrokers. "Jersey's teeming with millionaires who only ever keep loose change in their pockets," a character remarks early in the new series. It is also, according to Bergerac producer, Robert Banks Stewart, teeming with millionaires who would like to see themselves or their properties on television: it is not unusual to find a handful of the island's richest men among location extras. Banks Stewart first registered the telly-potential of Jersey several years ago, as the plane he was on taxied in past an armada of Cessnas and other private aircraft. Further enquiries revealed that the island was, or had been, the home of "jockeys, boxers, pop stars, financiers, writers, off-shore bankers … The Dockers have lived there. The Butlins. The Tiarkses. Alan Whicker, of course, and Jack Higgins still do. So does the man who invented the Black and Decker collapsible work-bench, and Alfie Hinds. In film terms, there was also quite a strong element of the exotic to be found - palm trees, swimming pools, spectacular cliffs, close-packed, French-style streets". It wasn't until the BBC asked him to come up with a successor to his enormously popular private eye character, Eddie Shoestring, however, that Banks Stewart returned to Jersey for another look. The Tourist Committee needed a little reassuring that he wasn't about to blacken their good name with a lot of bang-bang and lurid plots, and they have been vindicated in their decision to give the go-ahead in every way: Bergerac has given Jersey's tourist trade the biggest boost it has ever had. Certainly, in John Nettles, who plays Jim Bergerac, they have found the perfect spokesman for their cause. Resident in Jersey since last June, in a rented house on a headland at the edge of the sea, he is unstinting in his praise. "It is," Nettles says, "quite idyllic, really. There's such quality and variety of landscape. You can change the scene completely without trekking thousands of miles". There is also the added attraction of a basic rate of income tax of twenty per cent, but he says he hasn't had time to discover whether he actually benefits from that yet. It is a rainy Sunday at the beginning of November and congregations are paddling away from church. John Nettles, honorary Jerseyman, had performed one of his many public duties the night before, setting light to a charity bonfire. But this morning finds him in a vaulted arcade that runs through a Saint Helier department store whose name is De Gruchy but could just as easily be "Grace Brothers"; it is not, in other words, entirely of 1982. For reasons that never become entirely clear (Bergerac plots are not easily summarised on paper) the main action centres on a racing car, a book display, a model girl and a table of sausages-on-sticks and vol-au-vents whose condition will steadily deterioriate under the lights. Extras for this episode, recruited at Madison's at the Lido de France only hours earlier, shiver off-camera in summer frocks; "sparks" wander around mumbling unintelligible things like "It's a bit over the knuckle, there; I'll out it in the gubbins box"; and John Nettles barricades himself behind the Sunday Express. Nettles is a tightly-wound, very private, rather shy man who does not invite conversation, especially when his mind is on the job, which these days it almost always is. He is rarely to be found carousing with the crew in the bars of Saint Helier. He enjoys swimming and the peace of the countryside that, after twenty years of rough-and-tumble in the acting profession, he has recently discovered. "This has provided me with some kind of restoration," is how he puts it. He was brought up in Cornwall, the son of a carpenter who invested him with two middle names - Vivian Drummond - whose initials, ever since, have been a source of amusement and embarrassment. As "humble John Nettles", he studied for a degree in philosophy and history at Southampton University, and it was while he was there that he was spotted playing Camus' Caligula at the Sunday Times Student Drama Festival by Bill Gaskill who invited him to join the Royal Court Theatre. His time at Sloane Square, however, was not a happy one. "Acting is no life for a grown man … going round like a taxi with a light flashing a `for hire' sign, is how, in a previous interview, he tried to express the insecurity he felt in those early years. He is anxious to point out now, however, that the quote was not a Nettles original. "That was far too witty to have come from me. John Gielgud said it". Although at first he found the theatre and theatre people foreigners who spoke in a foreign tongue, he now says actors are his preferred company. "I'm very fond of my fellow actors. I like their style of life. I like their conversation. Which is why I've been so lucky with this new series. We've had people like Norman Wisdom, Ian Hendry, Dandy Nichols come over, who are like legends to me. Bergerac is a goodie. I like it". Nettles describes his career, pre-Bergerac, as "stable". A number of years with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford was followed by a number of years on the lam. The series came just in time, he says. He says he was starting to feel exhausted. "The greatest desire of my life was to get off the road. I couldn't bear it, sailing into places and out again and not touching anybody. You gradually lose your brains after a time doing that. Plus, there was a great macho feel about the profession for some years after I started - you know. `Stand up and take your drink like a man'. I know actors who have been dressed on their backs. But all that has changed, thank God. Standards of behaviour have improved enormously in the profession". Nettles has been able to draw on what he saw in the old days, nevertheless, for the part he is currently playing: Jim Bergerac is a reformed alcoholic with a fast car and a broken marriage. "We've created a whole background for him," John Nettles says, "which, basically, is Jersey and Jersey society - he lives and breathes and dreams this small island. Most of the time he tends to be very tense because being a policeman is a very tense way of living. He's under enormous pressure all the time, willy-nilly. Marrying out of his class was the big mistake for him: his own father was a fisherman, apparently, but he married young into a very well-heeled family. A constant reference for me is the character Sean Connery played in The Offence, the film of a John Hopkins play about a copper who cracks under the strain. But Bergerac is not a character part, and, at the end of the way, what you've mainly got to draw on is yourself. The trick is learning how to keep the professional and the personal life apart". Outside, two British soldiers, part of an army rugby team visiting Jersey from a German base, snapped him with the Bergerac Triumph Roadster that is really too big for the narrow roads on the island. "They'll never believe this," they said, strolling away happy. The continuing drizzle on a winter Sunday meant that the street was empty. "It seemed to be getting increasingly difficult to live in London," John Nettles said. "It seemed to be getting increasingly inhuman. Always and ever there was the constant background roar. Having it removed has been a relaxation in itself". It is the sort of service he would like to see the series perform for its audience. "Nice and gentle and quiet, without being overly violent," is how he describes it. (Radio Times, January 8, 1983 - Article by Gordon Burn).
Director : Robert Young Script : Brian Clemens Synopsis
: Jim Bergerac faces an up-hill battle to
convince friends and colleagues of his sobriety
when he apparently witnesses a murder after indulging
in a heavy drinking spree, prompted by his inability
to secure a conviction against an arsonist he
arrested.
Director : Ian Toynton Script : Bill Craig Cast : Celia Gregory and Rosy Clayton. Synopsis
: When Terri Fuller arrives on Jersey she
is clearly no ordinary tourist: the woman with
her has a gun …
Director : Ben Bolt Script : Nick McCarty Cast
: Lee
Montague and Michael Angelis.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : Rod Beacham Cast
: Dave
King.
Director : Robert Young Script : Alistair Bell Cast : Lee Montague, Oliver Cotton, Tony Osoba and Eva Mottley. Synopsis
: With Jersey's first major professional fight
only days away, Bergerac has no choice but to
arrest the challenger.
Director : Christopher King Script : Brian Finch Cast : Zia Mohyeddin and Nadim Sawalha. Synopsis
: Are the accidents which befall Charlie Hungerford's
Arab guest really accidents? Bergerac has his
doubts …
Director : Oliver Horsbrugh Script : Robert Holmes Cast
: David
Buck and Don Hawkins.
Director : David Reynolds Script : Tony Hoare Cast
: Mel
Martin, Tony Selby, Ralph Michael and Denis Lill.
Director : Laurence Moody Script : Paul Wheeler Cast : Alan Lake, Mary Tamm, Stephen Yardley and Marianne Borgo. Synopsis
: When Jack Broughton takes his son, Geoff,
on holiday, it's not just for the sun and the
sand that he chooses Jersey.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : Bill Craig Cast : Patrick Allen, Dudley Sutton and Kate Fahy. Synopsis
: A private meeting of European Financiers
attracts a lot of attention, some of it extremely
dangerous.
Director : Brian Farnham Script : Robert Banks Stewart Synopsis : Jim Bergerac's investigations into a series of minor crimes leads to a showdown with a Mafia hit squad. Notes : This season was transmitted at 9:10pm to 10:00pm on BBC 1.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : Nick McCarty Cast
: Ian
McCulloch and Bernard Archard, with Louise Jameson
providing the new romance .
Director : Ben Bolt Script : Brian Finch Synopsis
: An anonymous telephone call leads Bergerac
to re-examine what, on the fact of it, seemed
an uncomplicated road accident.
Director : David Reynolds Script : Roger Davenport Synopsis
: Beryl Reid makes a guest appearance as Miss
Broom, an elderly eccentric with a mysterious
past. The hunt for a sunken ship has attracted
divers, a renowned underwater archaeologist -
and a notorious London gangster.
Director : Michael Custance Script : Rod Beacham Synopsis : An old adversary in the form of Philippa Vale reappears on the island, intent on recovering stolen jewels she was forced to abandon in an earlier episode.
Director : David Reynolds Script : Edwin Pearce Synopsis : Bergerac is under pressure to find a briefcase containing fashion designs and also a baby and her nurse who have disappeared.
Director : Les Chatfield Script : Terry James Cast : Reece Dinsdale and Jonathan Stratt. Synopsis
: Jim Bergerac is given the job of protecting
a spoilt young tennis star whose life seems to
be in danger.
Director : Graeme Harper Script : Tessa Coleman Cast : Celia Gregory and Rosy Clayton. Synopsis
: The star of a film being made about the
German occupation of Jersey upsets most of the
crew and a number of the islanders. When threats
to the man's safety become reality, Bergerac has
an embarrassment of suspects.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : John Fletcher Cast
: Bernard
Hepton.
Director : Tom Clegg Script : Chris Boucher Synopsis : The Jersey detective investigates a case involving corruption, madness, and death, when a psychic and medium arrives on the island and digs into the truth behind the death twenty years ago of a twelve-year-old girl. Notes : This season was transmitted on Saturday nights at 7:30pm to 9:00pm on BBC 1. This episode attracted 13.2 million viewers and was ranked the sixteenth most popular programme of the top twenty in this particular week.
Director : Graeme Harper Script : Chris Boucher Synopsis
: Jim Bergerac begins an investigation into
a man with amnesia who is found wandering around
the island naked.
Director : Robert Young Script : Robert Holmes Cast : Michael Gambon and Connie Booth. Synopsis
: Bergerac investigates death threats against
a retired computer buff.
Director : Baz Taylor Script : Brian Finch Synopsis : Bergerac goes to the aid of his ex-wife when his former father-in-law Charlie Hungerford tells him he thinks she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she believes she is being watched. Notes : This episode attracted 15.3 million viewers and was ranked the third most popular programme of the top twenty in this particular week.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : Rod Beacham Synopsis : Jim Bergerac is intrigued to find out why a dilapidated property is so desirable to potential buyers.
Director : Gerry Mill Script : Nick McCarty Synopsis
: Bergerac is faced with a catastrophe when
animal rights' activists raid a research scientist's
laboratory.
Director : Robert Young Script : Rod Beacham Synopsis
: Bergarc is asked by a former adversary,
Philippa Vale, to help her when she is threatened
with death if she does not reveal the whereabouts
of a book full of incriminating evidence.
Director : Richard Bramall Script : Nick McCarty Synopsis : Jim Bergerac investigates the disappearance of a financier.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : John Fletcher Synopsis : Bergerac investigates a murder at a Masonic ceremony.
Director : Tom Clegg Script : Chris Boucher Synopsis
: The Jersey detective is challenged by an
old adversary, Philippa Vale .
Director : Nigel Finch Script : Brian Finch Cast : Ann Mitchell and Ronald Lacey. Synopsis
: Bergerac and his colleague Crozier are assigned
to look after Reggie, a convict who has turned
supergrass, when he and his mother, Lola, arrive
on the island to stay in a "safe" house.
Hot on their tails is a gang leader after his
share of the proceeds of a diamond robbery who
plans to kidnap Reggie's mother in order to force
him to reveal the whereabouts of the loot.
Director : David Carson Script : Edwin Pearce Cast
: Cherry
Gillespie and Peter Woodward.
Director : Matthew Robinson Script : Rod Beacham Synopsis
: Bergerac's investigations into the kidnapping
of a valuable stud horse for a ransom are complicated
by the arrival on the island of Philippa Vale,
now out of prison on parole. Her arrival also
complicates his precarious relationship with Susan
Young.
Director : Robert Tronson Script : John Fletcher Cast : Ronald Pickup. Synopsis
: Bergerac is ordered to cooperate with inspectors
from the Department of Trade and Industry who
are investigating Sir Anthony Villiers, a businessman
suspected of insider dealing whose headquarters
are on the island. But Charlie Hungerford and
others who have been a victim of Villiers' business
methods decide to take action of their own.
Director : Tristan de Vere Cole Script : John Collee Synopsis : A Nazi hunter and a woman who has recently lost her father throw a shadow over Charlie Hungerford's Jersey International Music Festival, and Bergerac makes a connection between the hunted Nazi and the dead man.
Director : Geoffrey Sax Script : John Fletcher Synopsis : When a dead body is found in an empty cottage on Jersey, Jim Bergerac is sent to London, where he is met by a City of London police Detective Sergeant. Bergerac is soon knee-deep in drug smugglers and crooked policemen. But then his boss arrives from Jersey and orders him off the case.
Director : Alan Dossor Script : Edmund Ward Synopsis
: Jim Bergerac's career is put at risk when
he tries to help his ex-father-in-law Charlie
Hungerford and becomes a potential victim of a
blackmailer and his gang.
Director : Edward Bennett Script : Edmund Ward Synopsis
: Charlie Hungerford (Terence Alexander) is
on the Costa del Sol when he is pressured by a
not very subtle pair of crooks who have a share
in Charlie's business. Jim Bergerac (John Nettles)
is summoned to help but he soon finds himself
in the middle of a gangland war.
Director : Richard Standeven Script : Edwin Pearce Cast
: Denica
Fairman.
Director : Geoffrey Sax Script : Andrew Caine Cast
: Susan
Penhaligon.
Director : Stuart Urban Script : John Fletcher Synopsis
: Jim Bergerac is called upon to investigate
the theft of diamonds from the house of Lady Cynthia
Trowbridge, one of Jersey's leading socialites.
He suspects there may be more to the case than
meets the eye when he notices the close connection
she has with society rival Rita Smith and her
dance instructor.
Director : Peter Ellis Script : John Collins Cast : Celia Gregory and Rosy Clayton. Synopsis
: . Bergerac is in a difficult position when
his investigations into the murder of Graham Hawkesworth
lead to one conclusion and one possible suspect
- Charlie Hungerford. Bergerac discovers that
the Hawkesworths had an open marriage and tolerated
each other's extra-martial affairs and that Hawkesworth
was about to end one with an unknown local woman.
Director : Charlie Naim Script : John Milne Cast
: James
Faulkner.
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