TV REVIEW: Why I love crime-busters Dempsey and Makepeace

The premise of Dempsey and Makepeace was the oddball pairing of two police detectives – an elegant British noblewoman, Sergeant, Lady, Harriet Makepeace, and a streetwise working-class New Yorker, Lieutenant James Dempsey, both working for an elite and armed unit of the London Metropolitan Police.

It was kind of a male-female version of The Persuaders – Roger Moore played the English aristocrat Lord Brett Sinclair and Tony Curtis was a street-wise slugger from the slums of the Big Apple.

Glynis Barber played Makepeace – aptly named as she was the character who tried to stop the gung-ho Dempsey from shooting his way out of trouble.

Michael Brandon played Dempsey – a former New York detective who is assigned to London to escape assassins.

Of course, from the start the two police officers disliked each other, their methods were different, there was a clash of class and culture and Dempsey was a man who thought women looked good only in police uniform if they were kissograms.

It burst – literally with opening credits featuring car chases, crashes, gunfire and explosions – on to TV screens in 1985.

He was handsome she was gorgeous – the chemistry between the two lead actors was as explosive as a bomb going off – which they did regularly – and it was no surprise when Brandon and Barber, four years later, married in real life.

For all the animus between them, they always had a wink and smile for each other, flirted outrageously and sometimes, for the sake of the job, had to pose as a couple.

It was the Eighties and though Britain had a female Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher, women in power were a novelty. Makepeace was always going to be subordinate to Dempsey. That’s the way it was – like it or not.

Earlier in the 1980s, there had been Jill Gascoine as Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes in the Gentle Touch – which was more soap opera than thief-taking. There was too much about the single mother bringing up her son and not enough crime-fighting.

The series was progressive in that Makepeace had no baggage – she was a career woman – and she was out of uniform unlike Inspectors Jean Darblay, Stephanie Turner, and Kate Longton, Anna Carteret, in the BBC’s Juliet Bravo.

Audiences had to wait until 1991 for a female to be equal in the ‘Squad’ with DCI Jane Tennison, played by Dame Helen Mirren, in Prime Suspect. Such was the equality, she had a drink problem to match anything seen in The Sweeney’s Regan and Carter.

Makepeace could talk tough, act strong, shoot straight, fight dirty, drive a car so it screeched round corners on two wheels and, in one episode, flew a plane. Go girl, we would shout now. The Spice Girls and girl power? Nowhere compared to Sergeant, Lady, Harriet Makepeace.

Over 30 episodes Dempsey and Makepeace tackled real crimes – murderers, drug traffickers, art thieves, robbers, hostage takers and terrorists – with titles that left you in no doubt what to expect: Armed and Extremely Dangerous, Given to Acts of Violence, Extreme Prejudice and Blood Money.

There was never a dull moment – car chases, helicopter rides, fast boats, explosions and shoot-outs. Dempsey’s modus operandi was shoot first, ask questions later.

Wherever Dempsey went, he trailed chaos and violence in his wake. He let nothing and no-one stand in his way – if he could not beat it up, he blew it up.

That left his boss, Chief Superintendent Gordon Spikings, raging like the proverbial bull with a sore head. He was played with a shout, snarl, and the demeanour of a man about to have a coronary by Ray Smith. It was a cliche of a part but Smith gave it humour and distinction.

The guest-star list is a who’s who of 1980s acting – Kate O’Mara, Michael Melia, Richa rd Johnson, Christopher Benjamin, Barbara Young and Clive Mantle.

Dempsey and Makepeace blazed a trail for Scott and Bailey and Shakespeare and Hathaway … both pale imitations. Dempsey and Makepeace is on every weekday on ITV4.