ARTICLE: Department S – The best set of cars on TV

Written by Mar­tin Buckley

Classic Sports Car: 1st January, 2026

I am find­ing it hard to sleep at the moment, which has caused me to reac­quaint myself, via the won­ders of You­tube, with a TV series called Depart­ment S. I’m cur­rently on a dose of at least two epis­odes a night. This was Incor­por­ated Tele­vi­sion Com­pany supremo Lew Grade’s answer to ABC’S The Avengers: an elite sec­tion of Inter­pol, weird ‘unsolv­able’ cases, a wacky main char­ac­ter and occa­sion­ally some inter­est­ing ideas… but mostly not. Throw in a crime-solv­ing com­puter with lots of spools and flash­ing lights, plus an Amer­ican sidekick with great hair (Joel Fabi­ani) to help flog the show to the USA, and you have pretty much a cliché of the ITC action­ser­ies for­mula. Also lots of fast cars and pretty girls, plus a side order of com­edy viol­ence. Best of all, a great theme tune: I have very fond memor­ies of driv­ing my Lan­cia 2000 Ber­lina around Lon­don in the late ’80s with Edwin Astley’s arrange­ment as a mood-set­ter.

The action ranges across the UK and Europe; most epis­odes appear to kick off at Heath­row with a jet either land­ing or tak­ing off, giv­ing the impres­sion the pro­du­cers wanted to tap into newly emer­ging pack­age-hol­i­day aspir­a­tions. Not that any­thing is filmed on loc­a­tion: the budget only exten­ded to pot­ted palm trees and a few exotic num­ber­plates. What could not be filmed on the Elstree back lot or a local hotel pool was recre­ated in the stu­dio. As in Carry on Abroad, you can see the act­ors shiv­er­ing, no mat­ter how hard they try to invoke the feel of the south of France or the Costa del Sol. Via the tiny black-and-white screens on which it first aired, nobody noticed or cared.

The feel is ‘inter­na­tional crime-fight­ing meets early-’70s Mar­tini advert’, par­tic­u­larly whenever the prot­ag­on­ist, Jason King, appears. With his flam­boy­ant hair and tailored clothes, King was played by the won­der­ful Peter Wyn­garde. This was a new kind of hero, who had the ladies’ hearts aflut­ter. Wyn­garde was a fine stage actor, and Depart­ment S made him a house­hold name: at the height of his fame, he pub­lished a risqué spoken-word album and was twice voted Bri­tain’s best-dressed man.

Wyn­garde became such a phe­nomenon that, post-Depart­ment S, he even got his own series, Jason King. This one I do remem­ber: even aged five I was uncer­tain of the nature of the man’s appeal. My mum had fallen under his spell – “Do your cuffs like Jason King!” – as the ’70s replace­ment for the clean-cut Simon Tem­plar.

In fair­ness, he is the best thing in the show, with his cha­risma bolstered by a James Young Bent­ley Con­tin­ental S2 on Swiss plates; the car, and clothes, were allegedly Wyn­garde’s own. He car­ries his myriad affect­a­tions lightly: Sobranie Cock­tail cigar­ettes, match­ing shirt and tie in lurid col­ours, and Zapata mous­tache. When neces­sary, King/wyn­garde can dir­ect a con­vin­cing punch, tak­ing on the likes of John Bindon and future Darth Vader actor Dave Prowse. You can even spot Anthony Hop­kins in a rare – pos­sibly unique – ITC appear­ance.

Depart­ment S prob­ably has the best set of cars of any ITC series: reg­u­lars include a Vaux­hall Vent­ora (for Fabi­ani), while com­puter boffin Rose­mary Nich­ols swaps between a Lan­cia Fulvia Coupé and a Lotus Elan +2S. For for­eign mis­sions (driv­ing on the wrong side of the road in Wales) there is a Fiat 2300S Coupé and a Mer­cedes SL Pagoda; bad­dies almost always drive Yanks or a recur­ring black Ford Zephyr MKIV. Cor­vairs turn up repeatedly – usu­ally as a pre­lude to a crash – and a black Rolls-royce Sil­ver Wraith limo often stands in for the Phantom V seen in the open­ing cred­its. When the script demands that the Wraith explodes, it magic­ally turns into an Aus­tin Sheer­line.

They must have knocked out dozens of epis­odes of this show, because there is always a fresh one to watch. Or maybe they are com­ing around again and I’ve simply not noticed.

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