A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY • REVIEW

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY • DECLASSIFIED

• Pre-Titles Teaser... Jeff is readying himself to go to the office, grabbing a bite of toast and a gulp of coffee, when his bedside light starts to flicker on and off. It is Marty's doing - and Jeff is getting a little tired of his ghostly partner's parlour tricks. Marty materialises and reveals that he has come to warn his friend of imminent trouble. He complains that all he gets in return are complaints about his limited repertoire. Jeff asks about the warning, but it is too late, the visitors that Marty was going to warn him about have arrived. Two men, hard as nails, enter the flat and proceed to explore as if they owned the place. Jeff confronts one of them and gets an elbow in the guts for his trouble. As Jeff recovers on his knees, two further men enter. The first introduces himself as Hamilton and the other as Sam Seymour. They are gang leaders and they have come to Jeff with a proposition. They will pay him £50 if he escorts a courier from Scotland to London. Considering the nature of their approach to him, Jeff maintains he is not interested. Seymour is persistent. He wants Randall to deliver £10,000 worth of goods to him in London and then take a receipt to Hamilton in Glasgow and will up the fee to £75. When Jeff again refuses, Seymour has his henchmen work Jeff over, after which Jeff, breathless and winded, demands £200 for the job - or no deal. Marty appears and looks down on Jeff. "Typical!" he comments.

• Production Brief... After being given only a small part in For the Girl Who Has Everything, Annette André could have been forgiven for thinking that this episode had the working title For the Girl Who Has Nothing as her character, Jean Hopkirk, does not appear at all. These early episodes certainly give the impression that Jeannie was initially seen as an ancilliary character, with Jeff and Marty the two leads. Fortunately for us and for Annette André, as the series developed, her character would become increasingly more important and involved. Despite her non-appearance in this episode, Annette André retained a credit in the closing sequence and her appearance in the opening title sequence.

• A Sentimental Journey relied quite heavily on the use of stock footage, raiding the archives of World Backgrounds Limited. Footage of the slums, railway station and streets of Glasgow, a platform at Euston Station (doubling for Glasgow Central) and a train travelling through the night were used, along with shots of several high class London hotels.

• The use of materials from stock for A Sentimental Journey was not limited to the visuals. The sequence in which Marty hunts for Dandy Garrison, checking out a number of London hotels, is accompanied by a piece of music composed by Albert Elms for the earlier ITC adventure series, The Champions. It is very recognisable and serves to highlight the different musical styles of the two series. Other tracks from stock included Harp Interludes by Robert Farnon and pieces by Gordon Franks, Johnny Hawksworth and Malcolm Lockyer which were heard over Dandy's transistor radio.

• The 'Pepper's Ghost' technique was once more called into action here, though was used sparingly due to the time involved in setting up the effect. The sequence where Marty enters Jeff's flat to check that no-one is waiting for them inside was achieved using this technique.

• Filming of this episode took place in July to August 1968.

• Post production work was completed in mid-March 1969.

• On Location... Suburban locales for this one, many of which were within walking distance of the ABC Elstree Studios at Borehamwood. More details in Locations: A Sentimental Journey.

• A rather curious point to note concerning the road sign seen as Dandy approaches what was at that time the A6 junction, driving down Ridge Hill (42:26 into the episode)... The road sign at the junction has been defaced, either by a member of the crew for production reasons, or by a member of the public for the sheer hell of it. It correctly points the way ahead to the Waggon and Horses public house and Redwell Wood Farm, but the left turn towards St. Albans on the A6 is incorrectly stated as the A26 to ST. AEBANS, while the right turn towards London is now the A16 in the direction of EONBON!

• Seeing Things... A Sentimental Journey received its first UK broadcast when London Weekend Television screened it in colour on Friday 23rd January 1970.

• Trivia... Jeff's trademark fawn leather jacket makes its first appearance in A Sentimental Journey. He dons it and a mere three minutes later he is beaten to a pulp. A bad omen?

• An ITC inter-series in-joke is hidden in plain sight in this episode. Shortly after the opening title sequence, when Jeff enters the Glasgow tenement building to collect the item he is to take to London for Sam Seymour, he walks past a wall covered in graffiti. Eagle-eyed viewers would no doubt have spotted the familiar stick-man symbol of Leslie Charteris' creation, The Saint. However, this particular representation of the sign was somewhat limp-wristed and fey and scrawled diagonally across it was the distinctly politically incorrect legend, 'IS BENT', implying that the character's fondness for the ladies was a bit of an act. The Saint was of course a phenomenally successful ITC series starring Roger Moore and many of the cast and crew of A Sentimental Journey had worked on that series over the years, including director Leslie Norman.

• This is the first episode in which we see Jeff wearing his trademark leather jacket. It would reappear briefly in Who Killed Cock Robin? before it was brought into more regular service from Never Trust a Ghost onwards.

• Only You, Jeff? Only Jeff, yes, but a bemused police officer notices Jeff Randall very obviously talking to thin air. He elects not to ask exactly why...

• Ghosts and Ghoulies... Just Marty, though Jeff does comment that the more he sticks around with his partner the ghost, the more nervous he gets: "I'm alive. I'd like to stay that way," he says.

• The Vehicles... Appearing in this episode were the following wonders of transport...

	1958-1962 Class 40 Diesel Locomotive Number Unknown
	1967 Vanden Plas Princess 4-litre Limousine Registration OGJ 531E Driven by Seymour's Driver, and later Tony and Dandy Garrison
	1968 Ford Zephyr Deluxe MkIV Registration PXD 976F	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'My Late Lamented Friend and Partner', 'You Can Always Find A Fall Guy', 'Who Killed Cock Robin?', 'The Trouble With Women', 'Whoever Heard of a Ghost Dying?', 'Never Trust A Ghost', 'Vendetta for a Dead Man', 'A Disturbing Case', 'Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave'  Department S - 'The Bones of Byrom Blain' and other episodes
	1968 Vauxhall Victor FD 2000 Registration RXD 996F Driven by Jeff Randall	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - used extensively throughout the series Department S - 'The Last Train to Redbridge', 'The Man from X'
	Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche Registration G-ASWW Serial number 30-556 Blown down the runway by Marty!

• Seen It All Before? The exact same police car that had screamed around the corner of Moor Lane in the City after the villains crashed their car in My Late Lamented Friend and Partner turns up again, in and around the shopping area of Borehamwood. The 1968 Ford Zephyr Deluxe MkIV would go on to feature in a further seven episodes of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and in several episodes of sister series Department S.

• When Jeff jumps from the roof of Seymour's gymnasium on the ABC Elstree backlot, we see the gang leader's hoods exit the building and run down the street after him. In the background, we can clearly see Julia Fenwick's 1964 Triumph Herald 1200 Convertible from But What A Sweet Little Room, and John Mannering's antiques shop from the earlier ITC adventure series, The Baron.

• Cock-ups... When Jeff (or more accurately, a particularly bad double!) runs down the service road off Cardinal Avenue and jumps into the waiting police car, we are on the cusp of a back projection foul up of some magnitude... We cut to the inside of the car (in studio with an optically added background) and Jeff starts explaining what's happened to Detective Sergeant Watts. The car slowly pulls away and we see the painted graffiti on the wall opposite (picture 1, below). The shot then cuts to Jeff, and the background images are of shop fronts on Shenley Road (2). We cut back to Watts and behind him we see we are still in Cardinal Avenue with the last bit of graffiti, a CND symbol next to the Tesco's store (3)! The car then turns into Shenley Road, some seven seconds after Jeff's side of the car was already there! To make matters worse, shortly afterwards, we cut back from Jeff to Watts and the car magically passes the end of Cardinal Avenue (4), going in the opposite direction to that in which the car set off!

Images © ITV Studios, 1968

• At 41 minutes and 51 seconds, we see Dandy driving off in the Vanden Plas Princess, leaving Tony and Marty behind on the road. Looking backwards from inside the car, we see Tony reach into his coat pocket. When the camera cuts to the close up of Tony - you've guessed it! - he reaches into his pocket for a second time...

• Finally, Chambers+Partners commit another typographic faux-pas in the end credit sequence, with actor Drewe Henley credited as 'Drew Henley'. This means that three out of the first four end credit sequences has a misspelt name along the way... While the first two instances (Dolores Mantez being credited as Dolorez in My Late Lamented Friend and Partner and Cyril Renison becoming Renision in But What A Sweet Little Room) are repeated in the ITC Synopsis, this one is not, so entirely a titling error.

• And Finally... A Sentimental Journey's director, Leslie Norman, a new addition to the Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) team, had previously directed both Mike Pratt and Victor Maddern in Fall High, Fall Hard, an episode of the ITC crime thriller series Gideon's Way. Although both Pratt and Maddern had major roles in the episode, they did not actually appear in any scenes together. Ironically, Maddern's character was called Charles Randle!

Plotline: Scoton Productions / ITC • UK Transmissions by Simon Coward and Alan Hayes
Review by Alan Hayes • Declassified by Alan Hayes
with thanks to Vince Cox and Andrew Pixley

All timings given on this page relate to the Blu-ray editions of this episode