Style File: Jeanie Hopkirk

The biggest influence on my clothes at the moment isn't a celebrity, model or designer. It is the character Jeanie Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). I've always loved the fashions of the Sixties, but Jeanie Randall is a weekly reminder why.

She wears a fantastic mixture of shift dresses, mini dresses, pussy bow blouses and cute macs. She has great hair and make-up too. Perhaps a little too fond of lime green, but she can carry it off. Obviously it helps that she is played by the beautiful Annette Andre.

Today she wore this outfit with the amazing headscarf. Sometimes the storylines might get a bit predictable, but Jeanie's wardrobe is always worth watching for.

Old Beginnings

In the last week I've seen the pilot episodes of two shows. Unfortunately they aren't the discovery of new shows, but just that I've finally seen how two old favourites began.

I was given the boxset of the first series of Ironside for Christmas (hurray!) which begins with a feature length pilot episode which shows Ironside receiving the gunshot injury that leds to him being in a wheelchair. I had assumed that much of Ironside's tough-talking cynicism came from being disabled, but this episode showed that the pre-shooting Ironside was much the same. He gave a great welcome to new recruits to the police force that told them they'd either be corrupt or assumed to be corrupt, and unappreciated until they were shot in the line of duty. He gave the nun nurses in hospital a hard time, he gave his colleagues a hard time and then he caught the person who shot him.

ITV4 continues to show no logic in how it shows Randall & Hopkirk Deceased and completely out of sync throw in the original pilot episode in the middle of the series. Whereas Ironside was disabled, the first episode here shows how Marty Hopkirk ended up dead and wearing a white suit. Marty is killed in what appears at first to be a hit and run, but he returns to haunt Jeff to tell him that it was murder. It is a great introduction to the premise of the series, that would have been better had it been shown at the start of the series!

Vintage Pair

I had the morning off work and never one to miss a sleuthing opportunity, I sneaked in a couple of vintage shows.

Randall and Hopkirk Deceased was a case involving a scam with a fake spiritualist. I was struck again about just how weird this programme can be. Hopkirk spied on one of the con men and caught him pretending to be an orchestra conductor, putting on a classical music record and standing in front of a mirror with a baton in his hand. It had no bearing on the plot whatsoever but it is these little quirky bits that make this show so good.

Next was an episode of The Professionals from 1978 entitled “Everest was also conquered”. When a senior policeman claims on his deathbed to have killed a woman called Susie, Cowley’s former mentor asks him to investigate. The duo uncover a web of corruption (corruption is always a web!) involving police and respected businessmen. Parts of it were predictable including the “twist” at the end, but it was saved by the banter between the pair. Not sure if it was an intentional joke, but people in the episode kept referring to them as “Doyle and Bodie” when it is normally “Bodie and Doyle” and it sounded ridiculous the other way round, like saying “Dec and Ant” or “McCartney and Lennnon”.

Sadly I had to go into the office after The Professionals finished, but I enjoyed this luxury.

Some detectives

When my OH hasn’t been watching cricket or the Olympics, I’ve watched a couple of detective shows in the last week.

I’ve seen a bit more of Medium. I’m surprised the couple have three children as I’ve never seen two people wear so many clothes to go to bed. Is it a family show so we can’t see man’s bare chest?

I attempted to watch a couple of episodes of SVU but they seemed to be particularly gruesome episodes (I know sex crimes are never a barrel of laughs, but these seemed particularly vicious) and I found myself not having the stomach for it.

Saturday morning, I enjoyed an episode of Randall and Hopkirk deceased, which featured a great moment when Randall was nearly drowned and for a moment he appeared next Hopkirk, wearing a white suit too.

I’ve also watched a bit of Law & Order too but that will be a separate post.

Psychedelic Sleuth

As well as detectives and dogs, my other passion is the past. I love all things retro, mainly from the 1960s. So I was delighted when yesterday's episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) delivered on all three.

Obviously it is always about detectives, and it is set at the end of 1960s, but yesterday's episode was particularly psychedelic and featured a very cute dog. Jeff (Randall) investigated Marty's (Hopkirk) claim of witnessing his grave being robbed and ends up in the middle of a plot to kidnap a wealthy heir.

The heir was an agrophobic hippy artist, who was reluctant to go into his father's business - he bore a slight rememblance to Sid Barrett at his most wild-eyed. It turned out he was complicit in the plan, to con his father out of £5,000, but bizarrely the father wouldn't then pay the ransom, settled instead on marrying his housekeeper to give him other heirs instead. The son ended up being a circus attraction with his attempt to stay underground for five years. And it seemed like a happy enough ending for all concerned, but was so far removed from the conventional resolution to a detective programme and had more in common with the psychedelic cinema of the time.

Far out, man (or something).