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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I have no memory of this show from childhood but I do love a good cop show. This show starring George Sewell best known for 'UFO' and 'The Detectives' as DCI Craven. The plots are pretty run of the mill and bare comparison with 'The Sweeney'.The action is quite good in a 1970's way as are the basic storylines.Patrick Mower who is DCI Haggerty comes across as a brash 'Bodie' like person.Set against the plodding by the book Craven who won't rock the boat.They drive around in a lovely mk1 Ford Granada and stick out like a sore thumb.The Dvd's have been re-mastered and offer good quality at a resonable retail price.The very 'First' episode 'Troika' from series one is featured.As a purist I would have liked series 1 issued to be followed by the rest in order.However if you like 1970's cop drama to a high standard this is still a good purchase.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Series Four of Special Branch is the last series prior to Euston Films going on to make their TV hit, The Sweeney.
It follows the lives of Craven (George Sewell) and Haggerty (Patrick Mower) two members of the MET's Special Branch unit and in the first episode of this series, it is clear that the less interesting character of DS North (played by Roger Rowland) is finally written out of the show after suffering a nervous breakdown when confronted by and killing an armed suspect. It also now features Paul Eddington as a meddling home office official getting involved in cases and hindering Special Branch investigations. The episodes are livelier than the awkward 3rd series, which showed the transition between stale set based Thames drama and the Euston Films filmed on location series. The episodes are typically more interesting and action packed, they almost appear like some of the season 3 and 4 episodes of The Professionals but by remaining true to Special Branch procedure, lack some of the flare and action that The Professionals had in its scripts, being based on the fictional elite Ci5 department.
It follows the lives of Craven (George Sewell) and Haggerty (Patrick Mower) two members of the MET's Special Branch unit and in the first episode of this series, it is clear that the less interesting character of DS North (played by Roger Rowland) is finally written out of the show after suffering a nervous breakdown when confronted by and killing an armed suspect. It also now features Paul Eddington as a meddling home office official getting involved in cases and hindering Special Branch investigations. The episodes are livelier than the awkward 3rd series, which showed the transition between stale set based Thames drama and the Euston Films filmed on location series. The episodes are typically more interesting and action packed, they almost appear like some of the season 3 and 4 episodes of The Professionals but by remaining true to Special Branch procedure, lack some of the flare and action that The Professionals had in its scripts, being based on the fictional elite Ci5 department.
All in all a fair series, worth adding to a collection if you're a fan of Euston Films products but it won't excite like the rough and tumble action and social commentary of the now legendary "Sweeney" series.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
There is a common perception that TV in Britain isn't what it used to be. A magical 'golden age' of TV is often imagined, starting somewhere in the mid-sixties (possibly with the start of BBC2 in 1964) and ending at the start of the 'eighties.
I wonder how many people would consider Special Branch to be part of the 'golden age'. Not many, I reckon. Even the actors who appeared in it - George Sewell and Patrick Mower - interviewed on the DVD set of the 1974 series (also available as a network release) seem to be somewhat apologetic about it. Mower suggests that he was brought in to "grab the series by the balls" after the filming of the first six episodes because the format wasn't working, and Sewell disarmingly admits that it lacked the "polish" of its highly-regarded successor, The Sweeney.
Well, forgive me for disagreeing, but Special Branch - at least the 1973 and 1974 series - certainly deserve to be seen as part of the golden age of British TV. Well acted, well scripted, and the first of Thames TV offshoot Euston Films' productions shot entirely on film and on location, this series is a gem from start to finish.
Chic, it certainly isn't. It's gritty and cynical, an attitude superbly captured by Sewell's portrayal of Detective Chief Inspector Craven, a smoking, swearing, punching copper whose idiosyncratic methods - in a wonderfully cliché-snubbing way - do not always get results. A sense of almost sordid ethical ambivalence pervades the series: you find yourself siding with the 'criminal' as often as with the law, who themselves often wonder why they are pursing their latest hapless victim.
London in the 'seventies - a far grubbier and decaying city than that of today - is superbly captured on film, as is the dullness and dimness of Special Branch's office. The dialogue often displays its 1970s heritage - girlfriends are 'birds', gays are 'queers'. Yet, Craven - an archetypal East Ender - has a West Indian girlfriend, and becomes prickly when racism rears its ugly head. This on-screen relationship must have been quite a novelty on early 'seventies TV, and I bet it did far more to highlight the absurdity of racism than any number of episodes of the 'ironic' 'Till Death Us Do Part or the ghastly Love Thy Neighbour.
In a series of 13 episodes there will always be the odd dud script and there is one here - Episode 9, Threat, is absolutely dire. But the rest are uniformly excellent. Some stand out as superb television drama, especially A Copper Called Craven, Round the Clock and Inquisition. The latter, in particular, sums up the essential virtues of this series - a great script, superb dialogue, and down-to-earth, believable actors who can carry it off. The pace of such episodes is also interesting - slower than contemporary TV drama, but all the better for it. Absolutely wonderful stuff.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Special Branch the final series
The 1974 series of SPECIAL BRANCH and unfortunately the last, was a joy to watch, the characters of Craven and Haggerty played by George Sewell and Patrick Mower had developed into... Read more
Published 9 months ago by JOHN
third series of special branch
The investigations of a division of Scotland Yard known as Special Branch, is the basis of this series created originally by Thames Television. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Ms. M. Potter
Special Branch
This is the second season of the 2nd incarnation of the series.
Great cast, music and character development.
Patrick Mower appears in every second episode. Read more
Great cast, music and character development.
Patrick Mower appears in every second episode. Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2009 by Pj Thorp
'All the King's Men'
One of the strangest series ever to grace British television: 'Special Branch' stripped off the glamour often depicted in police series and replaced it with cold hard mundanity and... Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2008 by Paul Ess.
too ponderous and uneventful.
i was expecting this revamped version of "special branch" to be something similar to "sweeney." anyone thinking that is going to be disappointed. Read more
Published on 1 May 2007 by Mr. A. E. Ward Davies
Slow but steady, but still an improvement.
Series Three of Special Branch is the first of the series to be made by the more radical Euston Films department, and as such it took the stale set based format of Special Branch... Read more
Published on 5 Sep 2005 by J. Hammond
More of the plodding coppers
Well here we have it series 4 of Special Branch in that layed back 1970's style.Again George Sewell as DCI Craven does his best to track the villians as does Patrick Mower as DCI... Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2004 by NEO
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