DVD REVIEW - GIDEON'S WAY THE COMPLETE SERIES - 13/02/08

Mention ITC and cult action-adventure series of the sixties such as The Champions, Randall & Hopkirk Deceased and The Saint immediately come to mind. Gideon's Way seems to be one of their lesser known and underappreciated offerings but Network DVD have set out to put that right by issuing the entire series consisting of twenty-six episodes, which were originally aired during 1965 and 1966 as a seven-disc boxed set. For those who love their classic television or detective shows then this is well worth having.

Gideon's Way deals with the cases of Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard, an old school London policeman, who was played by the solidly reliable British character actor John Gregson. The character was the creation of author John Creasey who sold a large number of successful books under the pen name of JJ Marric such as Gideon's Month, Gideon's Fire, Gideon's Vote and Gideon's Day - the latter was in fact made into a feature film in the mid-fifties starring Jack Hawkins as Gideon and it was directed by the legendary American director John Ford. For this TV series various themes from the novels were adapted into stand alone episodes.

Gideon's Way holds up remarkably well after more than forty years since it made its debut on television. It was shot on film rather than videotape which meant that the quality of the production was a lot better than some of the other cop shows around at that time. In addition, Gideon's Way was also one of the first TV programmes of its kind to go out and shoot on location on the streets of the Capital giving it a grittier edge. The plots dealt with everything from arsonists, murderers, horse race fixers, corrupt businessmen, drug dealers and protection rackets and petty criminals. Nowadays its references to drugs and its depiction of criminal violence seem rather mannered compared to the kind of crime dramas on our air waves today, which are more graphic in terms of violence and are allowed more freedom to depict things such as sex and drug addiction in more detail due to more lax censorship but for its time it was without doubt cutting edge stuff. Nevertheless, the quality of the scripts still seem a lot better than some of the other TV shows of the time and some of the wonderful British actors who turned up in guest roles are a joy to watch such as Desmond Lleweylan who played Q in the James Bond movies, Kay Walsh, George Sewell, George Cole and Eric Barker who all made appearances. The series also benefits from the direction of a number of interesting British directors such as Leslie Norman, George Pollock, John Gilling, James Hill and Cyril Frankel, the most prolific of all ITC directors, all of whom were film makers who brought the same feature film quality to the smaller screen and it feels like you are watching movies rather than TV.

Special Features include Stills galleries, three scripts in PDF's and an original ITC promotional brochure in PDF format as well as the US opening titles, the show was called Gideon CID in the States, on selected episodes.