Ghost Squad (TV series) explained

Alt Name:GS5
Runtime:50 minutes
Creator:
  • John Gosling
  • Anthony Kearey
Starring:
Composer:Philip Green
Country:United Kingdom
Network:ITV
Num Series:3
Num Episodes:52 (13 missing)
Company:ITC Entertainment for ATV

Ghost Squad, known as GS5 for its third series, was a crime drama series that ran between 1961 and 1964, about an elite division of Scotland Yard. In each episode the Ghost Squad would investigate cases that fell outside the scope of normal police work.[1] Despite the show and characters being fictional, an actual division did exist within the Metropolitan Police at the time.[2]

Inspiration for the series was taken from a book of the same title written by John Gosling, a retired police officer and former member of the real-life squad it is based on. This squad operated only in London, but the members of the fictional team travel all over Europe, sometimes to fictitious countries. As was common practice at the time, most of the foreign settings are depicted by combining stock footage with scenes shot on sets, in this case at Independent Artists Studios at Beaconsfield and Associated British Elstree Studios. The music for the show was by Philip Green.

The show was produced by ITC Entertainment with Rank Organisation TV and ATV. It was the first ITC show filmed to fit the one-hour time-slot (with two advertisement breaks), setting the trend for the majority of ITC's output. Another common ITC trait was to feature an American actor, in this case Michael Quinn, in a leading role, in the hope of increasing the chances of international sales. In the second series Neil Hallett sometimes replaced Quinn and in the third series Quinn was entirely replaced by the Australian actor Ray Barrett. Ray Austin, stunt director for the entire series, played Billy Clay in the third series (he went on to become a TV director in Hollywood and the UK).

Cast

Episodes

The show was produced for three consecutive series. The Rank Organisation co-produced the first series, which was shot on 35 mm film. Subsequent series were made on videotape in a multi-camera television studio with filmed location inserts, with telerecordings being made for overseas sales. Series two survives complete in this form, but no complete episode survives from series three when the show had been renamed as GS5.

In most ITV regions the first ten episodes of the first series (actually episodes 1 to 9 plus episode 13, in random order) were shown from 9 September to 11 November 1961, the remaining three episodes (11, 10 and 12) being shown at the start of the second series, from 30 September to 14 October 1962, followed by the second series proper from 21 October 1962 to 27 April 1963 (though no episodes were shown on 4 November or 30 December). Other ITV regions, including TWW and Tyne Tees, showed the different seasons as 13, 26 and 13 episodes.

SeriesPremiereFinaleEpisodes
Series One9 September 196111 November 196110
Series Two30 September 196227 April 196329
Series Three22 February 196416 May 196413

Series one

Series two

Series three

Availability

The series has not been broadcast since the 1960s. The 39 surviving episodes are available in a 10-disc DVD set from Network.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Ghost Squad . 21 April 2008 . Network.
  2. Web site: Ghost Squad . 21 April 2008 . Laurence Marcus . 30 January 2001 . Television Heaven . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080423164256/http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/gs5.htm . 23 April 2008.

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