The Professionals 40th anniversary retrospective: Series 2

A look back at the second series of the hit 1970's British cop show The Professionals. We look at the external pressure exerted on the series over it's use of violence, the changes for the new series as it got a new title sequence and settled into a more recognisable format, we look at the plots of each episode, and explore how Martin Shaw fell out of love with the series, whilst his co-star Lewis Collins caused production to be delayed.

First off apologies for making everyone wait so long; I did say I would get it finished a few months ago and then of course University got in the way.

This version is a bit shorter than the series 1 video because I was making a version of this for University and the feedback they gave me was that the initial one was far too bloated! So I managed to reduce it from the 40 minutes of series 1 to half the length; the casualty of this was the episode review sections, and I am thinking of trying out a different format of videos to review Professionals episodes in more detail and in a more interesting way; here I felt that the mini-reviews led to too much editorialising, which may not necessarily be all that interesting to everyone. I've also tried to write the script so that someone who hasn't seen the series 1 video can still follow what's being talked about. (Without recapping the entirety of the previous video)

By the way, the Lego Fords in the sequence at the end were both built and animated by me. If anyone wants instructions to build them I will happily put them online somewhere.

At the very end I mentioned "The Professionals Revisited", which you can find more info about here: I went last year for the inaugural event and had a blast, so it's highly recommended if you're a fan and can get there.

Finally you can follow me on Twitter @Pros40th for more Professionals content; I did Live tweet the first two episodes of the first series as an experiment and it proved to be a massive pain in the arse to do, so I probably won't do that again. (At least not for every episode)

The Professionals,Lewis Collins,Martin Shaw,Gordon Jackson,Documentary,retrospective,CI5,1978,anti terror,Criminal intelligence,series 2,Hunter/Hunted,The Rack,First Night,Man Without a Past,In The Public Interest,Not a very civil civil servant,A stirring of dust,Blind Run,Rogue,Fall Girl,Bodie,Doyle,Cowley,