The Long Chase

Taking a little break from The Prisoner to rush into print about this show which I have only just found out about in case there is anyone who hasn't sussed that it is currently available in its entirety on YouTube (on the magnificently named Major Dolby's Cat channel); in fairly poor quality but nonetheless as far as I can tell that is the only place you will be able to see this much-loved children's show. And while you're watching it, use one of those YouTube downloaders to save your own copy, because the more copies there are the more these things can be made available. According to t'internet because it was made on film the BBC still have it but have shown no interest in releasing it or repeating it since its onlly repeat in 1974.

Perhaps I should stress that I am talking about the 1972 children's TV series and not the 1971 film of the same name. I swear this drives me crazy.

The premise is fairly simple: John Corby is fishing with his dad, a police officer who got thrown out of the Met after getting too close to an international assassination organisation, when John spots a girl in distress in the water off the cliff and goes to help her. When he comes back he finds that his father has vanished. The rest of the series is their chase to find the father, with the elaboration of the reasons he got kicked out of the Met and what happened. The chase goes right the way up the country into Scotland and includes loads of nail-biting action as they get embroiled ever deeper into the world of espionage.

I should say that this is such a 1970s set-up for this show, when every police officer they speak to assumes the father is a bent copper (even by the standards of the notoriously bent Metropolitan police) but John of course knows that he wasn't. The whole scandal of corrupt police in the 1970s (and still) and don't forget that 1972 was before TV drama turned to show police realistically as utterly criminal in shows like The Sweeney. This is about trust and truth, and not giving up in the face of intimidation.

Well, you would know it would be a nuanced and perceptive drama when you know The Long Chase was written by the prolific NJ Crisp, who also wrote episodes of Dixon of Dock Green, Dr Finlay's Casebook, Doomwatch, Enemy at the Door, and the whole of The Brothers, Colditz, and Secret Army. Basically I can almost guarantee you've seen something else he's written.

One of the reasons I'm posting about it is that I'm very pleased because normally when I write about a show I have a poke around online and find that I disagree with the reviews I read. In this case I found that there is vanishingly little about it online, but there are a number of older reviews (from before 2010, say) by contemporary viewers who were all very struck by it at the time and wanted to see it again. I was sufficiently moved by the sheer strength of feeling in those reviews to write this blog post! I haven't even seen it all the way through myself but love it already. The criticism I've also seen that those middle aged men wanted to see it again for the reason that they wanted to see Jan Francis (who played Susan Fraser, the girl) again. I know this isn't true because they could equally well see her in any of the other 75 films and shows IMDB says she has been in!

In fact that is my only criticism, which I'm not sure is justified, because in the show Simon Fisher-Turner was 17, the age of John his character, but Jan Francis was more like 24 and it shows. The problem is that even though it's only seven years, in reality there is a huge age difference between 17 and 24 but they act like they are the same age. They're both acting like they're 17, and it doesn't seem quite right. I wouldn't want you to run away with the idea that this is a fatal criticism, though.

Pictured: women's charity Refuge dumping 1,071 bad apples (that we know of) outside New Scotland Yard. Legends.

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