Public Eye (TV Series) - The End of The Series, Its Future Fate and Legacy

The End of The Series, Its Future Fate and Legacy

Public Eye came to an end on 7 April 1975 with the episode Unlucky For Some. A hotel owner asks Marker to investigate his wife's odd behaviour. It transpires that her first husband is still alive and she is being blackmailed about this. Marker traces the first husband and plans to claim a large reward on offer for doing so, only to find that, 15 minutes before he could stake his claim, the blackmailer has carried out his threat and has therefore obtained the money. Marker is left with nothing and, ten years after he first appeared on British TV screens, Frank Marker still needs to take every case that comes his way in order to make ends meet.

Thames had not wanted to end the series at this point: the intention had been that Euston Films, Thames' film-making subsidiary, would continue the series from 1976 on to film, rather than the video format on which it had been carried. Euston had already scored major successes with Van der Valk, their revamped version of Special Branch, and The Sweeney, but these were larger-scale, glossier and more 'action-packed' operations. Alfred Burke, fearing that this would mean the series would lose its particular, low-key identity, decided not to take up the option.

Public Eye was then confined to archival oblivion for almost twenty years, despite being a popular favourite and a ratings topper in its time. One episode (the rather weak Who Wants To Be Told Bad News? from series 5) was repeated in 1989 to mark Thames' 21st anniversary but nothing more happened. Thames lost their franchise in controversial circumstances in 1992. Their successors, Carlton Television, considered remaking the series in the 1990s but again nothing came of this. Long-overdue recognition came in 1995 when British satellite channel UK Gold, which was then part-owned by Thames, repeated all the colour Thames episodes from series 5 onwards. Sadly, UK Gold had a policy of not showing any black and white material and thus exceptionally strong material such as the Brighton episodes and Shades of White remained unscreened.

A small group of British Television enthusiasts, Kaleidoscope, did much to promote the programme and negotiated the rights to rescreen, at conventions and meetings, many of the black and white Thames episodes and the remaining ABC episodes. They also unearthed a 1968 ABC promotional reel, on a long-obsolete domestic videotape format, which included a five minute extract from the otherwise-missing third series episode Must Be the Architecture, Can't Be the Climate and audio recordings of several lost ABC episodes. Most notably, Kaleidoscope organised and hosted a Public Eye: Thirtieth Anniversary convention in 1995. This was attended by Alfred Burke in person, who was clearly delighted that some of his old work was finding a new audience.

Finally, in mid-2004 Network Video issued the Brighton series in a three DVD box set complete with some restoration work. Bonus material included the complete ABC episode Nobody Kills Santa Claus and the above-mentioned extract from Must Be The Architecture... Sales of the box set were moderate and a follow-up four disc set of Series 5, including the ABC episode Don't Forget You're Mine, was released in December 2004. In 2008, Network released the 1972/3 and 1975 series on DVD and the remaining ABC material on 27 August 2012 (2-DVD set, Network/StudioCanal 7953731).