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The XYY Man (Granada, 1976 - 1977)

Based on the novels by Kenneth Royce, concerning the adventures of William ‘Spider’ Scott - reformed cat-burglar, fine art expert and all round sulkster. Granada commissioned an adaptation of the first novel, The XYY Man, in three episodes broadcast in 1976. The show was popular with the public and a further series of ten episodes followed the next year, adapting Royce’s sequels Concrete Boot and The Miniatures Frame.

Stephen Yardley is well cast as Scott, bringing just the right amount of sullen humour and weary stubborness. He’s not a hero, actually he’s a bit of a bastard, but life keeps throwing him lemons and all he can do is steal those lemons and try to make some money. The supporting cast is excellent - full of eccentrics, from Mark Dignam as a dog loving spook to Leslie Schofield as an outrageously camp ex-con turned legit photographer. Special mention goes to Brian Croucher, playing what has to be the most genial and reasonable of gangland overlords.

Where XYY differs from its contemporaries is in the tightrope it walks between moods. At one minute its a fairly silly adventure story about a career criminal being manipulated into working for the government, with added jokes and deadpan looks. The next, its a jet black thriller with some truly horrific moments - Spider’s discovery of an underwater graveyard, filled with the corpses of ex-cons (some of them former colleagues) and all at different stages of decomposition, is genuinely quite shocking and eerily well realised.

All the stops are pulled out for the final few episodes, as the show attempts a grander scale - the hunt for a deadly terrorist with international figures looking on, double agents, betrayals, explosions and Star Wars era Garrick Hagon sporting his Biggs moustasche. Norman Jones gives what may be a career-best performance as Dero - the ‘Detrimental Robot’ (coined from the writings of Richard Sharpe Shaver, a typically obscure Royce reference), an amoral, unfeeling monster elevated to a position of power because of his own particular talent for devious planning and calculated violence. There is a fairly thick seam of anti-authoritarianism throughout the series, but nowhere is Royce (and the scriptwriters) more critical, more indignant than in the finale.

Although a modest success, XYY isn’t especially remembered today and might have slipped entirely into obscurity if it hadn’t been for one significant addition to popular culture - Detective Sergeant George Kitchener Bulman. As played by the wonderful Don Henderson, Bulman is that magical melding of the perfect actor in the perfect role. Playing down some of the cruder aspects of the novel character (Alf Bulman, a corrupt copper), Henderson still makes Bulman, in his first appearance, a bully and a man obsessed - with putting Scott back inside. It’s never presented as anything other than a character flaw, but he he’s still a good copper and a fairly decent man. He’s eccentric - he spouts philosophy and reads Marx - but he’s clever and capable of seeing the bigger picture. Throughout the series he and his ‘oppo’, DC Derek Willis (Dennis Blanch, who grows into the role until you can’t imagine anybody else playing the part) become both more sympathetic and more like comic relief. Murray Smith, one of the writers on the second series, clearly saw the possibilities for the character and Henderson and Blanch soon had their own show, Strangers (1978 - 1982). Here the Bulman character was fully hammered out, with his many quirks properly introduced (his penchant for string gloves, a hangover from XYY, but also his habit of carrying his possessions in a plastic carrier bag and frequent use of a nasal inhaler).

Henderson clearly loved playing Bulman, the character that had put him on the map, and returned for a further sequel, Bulman, which ran between 1985 and 1987. After the series ended, the actor acquired the rights to the character with thoughts of future shows. It never happened, and Henderson died in 1997 - the same year as Royce.