This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I think that in all the imagination of the ITC writers, Department S was ahead of it's time. First of all, although it was set in the cold war world years,the series really thought of a global society,the crimes were no longer the responsibility of local police but of a higher authority that had to be involved ( thus the chief Sir Seretse, which shows his position seems to be a sort of a U.N appointment). Then the crimes were not only state secrets but industrial and financial. I can't think of too many shows that would involve themselves with the work of Interpol ever since. In addition the mysteries are so bizarre that all the computer and imaginative efforts have to be thrown into the case to solve it. The Lone Ranger theory would be no longer feasible, it would seem we live in a society that has to pull resources together in order to figure out what is going on.

I missed this at the time it was made, and have just watched it for the very first time. It belongs to the ITC-type shows that the family would watch on a Sunday evening, although I don't think this one was given a prime TV slot in the UK. It is not so well known as The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Baron. The difference with Department S is that - Randall and Hopkirk apart - the other shows tend to be about the adventures of loners. Department S and The Champions started to introduce teams.And what a team. We have a man of action in Stuart. American, in order to sell it across the Pond. We have Annabelle, the good-looking female, with legs that go all the way up to her computer-operating brain. Then, the masterstroke. We have all kinds of mysteries to solve, so the team is complimented by someone who can produce ideas that are totally off the wall. Jason King. He is decadent, drives a Bentley with Swiss number plates, never misses the opportunity of picking up a pretty girl. Then there are the received pronunciation, the lived-in face, the expensive cigarettes, the flamboyant attire, the glass of spirits or champagne in his hand. In fights he is master of attack, delivering desperate hay makers; but he can't defend himself, and usually ends up senseless on the floor. He writes thrillers. Sometimes cases are solved because he can remember something that he wrote in one of his novels. Sometimes a solved case is published as his latest thriller. As an artist, he comes up with ideas that the other two would never even think of. The fourth member of the team - its head - is more mysterious. He is played by a Gambian actor. He has been knighted, so he is a diplomat from an African country that is a member of the British Commonwealth. He works for Interpol and the United Nations. It is clear that Department S is only a small part of his career, so his on screen time is very short. But he is important enough to enter the VIP lounges of the world's airports, and has enough status to pull strings to get things done, and to protect Department S if need be. Although he does little in the day-to-day running of Department S, he does have an understanding of Department S's purpose. For example, when everybody was saying that a prominent civil servant was blown up in a plane, he is the lone voice who says that the civil servant is still alive, using a gap on the wall where a picture had been as evidence. I found him the most interesting character of the four.In an attempt to combat those viewers who can guess the denouement early on, the ITC scriptwriters came up with the most incredible mysteries, which had credible solutions. I have to admit that I didn't guess a single one, so all hail to the scriptwriters. They even foresaw the internet! Although Department S is not so well known as many of the other ITC classics, it is well scripted, well acted, well directed, and can hold its own with the best ITC thrillers. It led to a spin-off featuring just Jason King. Although everybody loved Peter Wyngarde's portrayal, the Jason King series was not so successful, which underlines my observation that Department S is about a team and their casework, however flamboyant one of their members might be.Watch it and enjoy it.

I had never seen Department S until fairly recently when Top Gear did its spoof Sixties show "The Interceptors", which used the Department S theme music. Because I have a liking for the spy-fi shows of that era, I tracked down the DVDs of the series out of curiosity.And I'm glad I did, because while it's no classic and falls some way short of the likes of The Avengers and The Prisoner, it's still lively and entertaining thanks to the interplay of its three leads. Joel Fabiani's Stewart Sullivan is largely the straight man and muscle, but still maintains a deadpan humour - with a righteous anger whenever politics interferes with justice. Rosemary Nichols' Annabelle Hurst has a flirty relationship with Stewart, and while something of a computer nerd is still more than capable of taking care of herself in the field.Then... there's Jason King. Jason is the character known even by people who've never seen the show, simply because he's so outrageous. A chain-smoking dandy and fop who drives a Bentley even when trying to be inconspicuous and more often has a glass in his hand than not (he starts drinking when most people would be having their morning coffee and must surely be pleasantly buzzed, if not outright drunk, for 90% of his screen time), he's also arrogant, egotistical, rude, self-centred, lazy, hedonistic, snobbish, bitchy (poor Annabelle takes most of his cutting put-downs), a smarmy lech and is constantly outclassed in fights to the point where Annabelle chastises him for getting "knocked out AGAIN!" in quite an early episode. Yet despite all that, he's still utterly charming and magnetic because of Peter Wyngarde's effortlessly suave and confident performance. Played by anyone else Jason would seem like a buffoon - he was, after all, one of the inspirations for Austin Powers - but Wyngarde gives him class even at his most ridiculously pompous.The actual stories are mixed; some of the mysteries Department S are called upon to investigate are genuinely clever, while others (mostly those written by Philip Broadley) are bog-standard ITC crime plots involving bank robbers, smuggling rings or the Mafia with a 'bizarre' opening slapped on them to fit the format of "crimes too weird for the normal police to solve". Watching on DVD, ITC's penny-pinching also becomes evident - the same locations and sets appear again and again with only slight changes (watch for the corridor with a distinctive illuminated ceiling, which appears in almost every episode), and if you ever see anyone driving a white Jaguar, you know it's going to go over a cliff! ("Toonces, look ouuuuuut!") But overall it's a fun, lightly tongue-in-cheek adventure show that gets by on pure charisma.

Like NIGHT STALKER and then X-FILES, the show set up a fantastic situation and the main characters had to sort it out. Unlike these, the hero(es) weren't left holding an empty bag at the end. They had usually tangible results. It was also made clear that the 'good guys' were in a dirty profession where they occasionally had to pull some nasty things. Imagination, wit, acting which didn't always take itself too seriously ... I miss it. One reason being, I'm hard pressed to think of too many shows - BANACEK aside - which did as good a job of taking the viewer and grabbing their attention right off the bat. The writers excelled at setting up hugely improbable, if not downright impossible situations which the characters then had to find an explanation to. explanations which often took 90 degree turns into the clearly unexpected yet, for all that, still made sense. Too, I agree with another reviewer that the Anabelle character was somewhat underused, but when she was on screen, it wasn't just for eye candy. She was quite competent in her own right and stood up to the two male leads when she felt the point she was making warranted it. A rarity in those days. Sullivan? If he wasn't in the Department, he'd be working for the KGB or CIA. He's that sort of coldly efficient, ruthless type. He knows how the world works and realizes what it can take to get the job done. King? It's clearly a game to him. One he excels at and which he parleys into ideas for the detective/spy novels he writes as his ostensible 'real' job. He's probably the most fun to watch of the three, although they all have their moments and often, too. I do agree that the eventual spin-off series featuring only his character lacked the interest of the original, however.