Barlow: Sect and an Aside on Dead Malls

I am delighted to be writing about this show again. Some time ago I wrote about the episode called Asylum which cleverly tricks the audience into thinking that Martin Shaw was playing a gay Russian sailor who wanted asylum in Britain. I commented at the time that I hadn't been able to find out the show's preservation status but that if Asylum was anything to go by, I definitely wanted to see the rest of the series, because it was intelligent writing which really messed with the viewer's head. Since then some kind soul has uploaded either the whole series, or a huge chunk of it, to the Internet Archive, which you can find by searching for Barlow at Large.

So to recap what the show is Barlow at Large (just Barlow towards the end of its run), 1971 to 1975, was one of several series in which Stratford Johns played his Barlow character, here as a Detective Chief Superintendent seconded to the Home Office to investigate very special cases. In Sect he takes over the investigation of a cult from the local force who have already started an investigation after complaints from the public that cult members have been signing over property and then disappearing. Then the police officer investigating also disappears, ultimately being found dead. The episode is essentially the investigation of what has happened to these people and what is going on in the cult.

The creation of the cult for this episode is a remarkable feat. It emerges folly formed and showing a remarkably current understanding of how these things function: we have a charismatic founder, keen-eyed followers, people abandoning everything, levels of commitment, an international hierarchy, an entire jargon of its own, you name it, Human Energy has every feature of your classic cult. The creation is such an achievement that I've looked up who the writer was and it turns out to be a writer called Jack Ronder, who I hadn't heard of, but who apparently also worked on Space 1999, Survivors, Z Cars, Hadleigh and The Lotus Eaters. The creation of the cult is such an achievement that the show is honestly worth watching for that alone.

There are other matters raised in the course of the episode, including the moral and human responsibility for what happens to police officers who die in the course of duty, the human damage to family members when someone just signs over their belongings, the question of what Barlow actually believes, and the question of 'bad apples' in organisations. I rather like the way these numerous moral and ethical matters are raised and not extensively examined while the investigation progresses: it gives a feeling of cutting to the chase.

I do have a couple of criticisms, one of which is that the identity of the killer is revealed by the killer's actions rather than the investigation. You could say, if you wanted, that this shifts the attention of the show to the cult and all the other matters, but surely this show is supposed to be an investigation.

My only other criticism is that Barlow rather manipulates a confession out of the killer. Now you may say that all sorts of underhand things went on in British policing in the 1970s (and still) but to make it authentic and bearing in mind that he was supposed to have killed a police officer, really Barlow would have rearranged his face and most of the bones in his body rather than merely manipulate him. He wasn't above picking up the head of the London branch of the cult by his collar and demanding to know where the suspect had gone, so come on. The police force doesn't attract the sophisticated and isn't sophisticated.

I highly recommend this episode (I haven't worked my way through the whole series yet and am finding it a bit variable, as you would expect with different writers).

An Aside on Dead Malls

I have recently discovered the remarkable internet phenomenon of videos about dead shopping malls in the USA and have become rather obsessed with watching these empty temples of capitalism with few shops open and fewer people. This is also how I discovered that 'mall walking' is an activity in itself, which I find utterly bizarre because I can't think of anything I would like less. I particularly recommend the videos on YouTube by NorthCDogg22: he puts a lot of research into the history, backs them with convincing elevator muzak and seems a genuinely nice person. It's an interesting insight for me that a local community could consider a mall their community, or that a YouTube maker could talk fondly about shopping malls. I live very near the Bull Ring in Birmingham and avoid it, and would rather die than walk around or shop in Merry Hill, which is the nearest major shopping centre to me, so this is an interesting insight for me.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog