2007 • Approx. 1300 mins + extras • PG • £59.99 • Out Now
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) on Amazon
Series: 
Extras: 
Directors: Ray Austin, Cyril Frankel, Leslie Norman, Jeremy Summers
Writer: Ray Austin, Donald James, Gerald Kelsey
Starring: Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope, Annette Andre
In a nutshell: Complete DVD release for the classic ITC series in which the ghost of slain private detective Marty Hopkirk assists his former partner, Jeff Randall, from beyond the grave.
Review: Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk are private investigators. Okay, one of them is actually a ghost forced to walk the Earth for a hundred years after trying to arrange his killer’s apprehension and becoming trapped by the daybreak, but it’s worth remembering that they are private investigators, because ultimately this is where Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) succeeds – a detective story, of the ‘partners’ kind. The supernatural provides the overtones here, but seldom is it central, and that’s exactly as it should be.
It would have been all too easy for a show like this to become ‘Randall & Hopkirk: Paranormal Investigators’ or some equally crass reading of the premise, and chances are that were it made today, it would suffer precisely that fate, but subtlety is the key, as Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) proves. The ghost of Marty Hopkirk brings a novel twist to otherwise typical detective capers, but never causes the series to plunge needlessly into the realms of the ridiculous.
Vendetta for a Dead Man, for instance, sees a criminal once put away by Hopkirk escape from a psychiatric hospital, intent on revenge. Finding that Hopkirk is already dead, his attentions turn instead to Marty’s widow, Jeannie. Of course, Hopkirk is in fact still present to protect Jeannie and aid partner Randall in thwarting the vengeful criminal. Elsewhere, in The Man from Nowhere, a man enters Jeannie life attempting to win her affection by persuading her that he is, in fact, Marty returned from the grave – a suggestion Randall, of course, knows to be impossible, accompanied as he still is by Marty’s ghost – while in The Smile Behind the Veil, the ghost of Hopkirk is responsible for uncovering a murder while spectating on funeral proceedings in the grave plot next to his own. These are light touches, then, offering original plays upon well-worn plots, but without discarding their original essence.
Equally subtle is the show’s handling of the curious relationship between Jeannie, Marty’s young and attractive widow, and Randall, the man charged with protecting her – by her dead husband’s ghost no less. Much feeling for the characters is created by the ghostly Hopkirk’s understandable jealousy of other men, tangling on occasion with Randall’s obvious sympathy for a young widow who still has her own life to live. That Randall alone can see and hear Marty only serves to complicate matters, but the show wisely avoids any of the many rather too obvious conclusions that such a situation suggests and, like the fact of Marty’s life after death, Jeannie’s life after widowhood adds a genuinely human element to the show without ever coming to dominate unnecessarily.
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) is perhaps one of the more obvious candidates for re-release. The series ran to just 26 episodes, comparable to a single season of a modern US drama and pretty much ideal for the comprehensive DVD boxed set treatment – eight discs’ worth, in fact.
The sound and picture quality of this release is certainly nothing to be ashamed of for a series now almost forty years old, but it does lack the reinvigorated shine of a complete remastering, and the sound remains mono. The boxed set possesses rather more additional material than releases for most series of a similar age – high quality still photographs from each episode are offered in image galleries on each disc, while the final two discs offer the bulk of the genuine extras, including a 40 minute documentary produced specially for this release, and a second, shorter documentary remembering deceased co-star Mike Pratt (who, ironically, played Randall and not the deceased Hopkirk). Angel on My Shoulder, a 1946 black-and-white film which partly inspired the series and an episode of The Man in Room 17, a 1960s thriller starring Pratt also appear, both more relevant than they might sound, their inclusion well justified.
The alternative, US opening credits are included as a curio but of most interest here are the full commentaries provided for five of the episodes – a genuinely impressive addition, given the age of the original series and many of its creators. The reason for buying this really has to be the series itself, but anyone doing so certainly won’t find themselves short of extras into the bargain.
