CI5: The New Professionals

CI5: The New Professionals was a series which most fans waited for since the original's demise in the early 1980s.

While audiences have become more sophisticated in the last 18 years, the new series takes a backward step, with writing and scoring that are childish at best. The show's creator, Brian Clemens, fails to take into account numerous developments in the original, and the new 37 and 45, Curtis and Keel, lack the initiative of their predecessors. To the seasoned Professionals fan the pair appear stupid in Clemens's scripts. The only able agent, Backus, is forever stuck at headquarters (much like Ruth being Cowley's chauffeur). The performances are also weak: at times Edward Woodward, as Malone, is dictating, and not acting, his lines: this is his worst performance since that crimes documentary he did a few years back. Curtis and Keel are simply too soft-looking; remember that Bodie and Doyle were hard men who had seen plenty of action as a mercenary and a top police officer.

Of the first three Clemens stories, the plots are tolerable, but their execution is marred. (I have yet to see one not scripted by Clemens, so I hope they get better.) The new electronic score fails to build any of the tension of Laurie Johnson's original (which was edited to fit the scene, and not composed for each episode). Even the titles look silly (the same size of type used for both name and role or position).

For a series that was promised to be as streetwise and gritty as the 1970s originals, it fails miserably and is on the verge of a parody. Fans will be disappointed.