It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon Jackson as agents of the fictional "CI5" (Criminal Intelligence 5, alluding to the real-life MI5 and CID).

Criminal Intelligence 5 (CI5) is a British law enforcement department, instructed by the Home Secretary to use any means to deal with crimes of a serious nature that go beyond the capacity of the police, but which are not tasks for the Security Service or the military.

The premise allowed the programme makers to involve a wide variety of villains, including terrorists, hitmen, hate groups and espionage suspects, with plots sometimes relating to the Cold War.

Ironically, since this was the reason Collins was brought into the production,[1] he and Shaw became friends off-screen, although they managed to keep up the on-screen chemistry and abrasiveness of Bodie and Doyle's relationship.

Clemens intended to write two or three establishing episodes and then hand over to other writers, but their scripts were uneven and lacked the energy and pace needed.

The early years of the show featured varied plots, good scripts and ongoing character development of Bodie and Doyle and to a lesser extent Cowley, but later series featured increasingly overused ideas and script devices, and both Collins and Shaw stated they felt the show was becoming stale.

As a young man, he was a socialist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM on the Republican side, where he was shot in the leg in 1937; this left him with a painful limp.

Raymond Doyle (Martin Shaw) (born c. 1949), a former police detective constable who originated in Derby but later lived in an unspecified "city" with parallels to Birmingham.

William Andrew Philip Bodie (Lewis Collins) (born c. 1950) was a former paratrooper and Special Air Service (SAS) soldier.

After leaving school aged 14, he joined the Merchant Navy and eventually ended up in Africa as a mercenary fighting bush wars.

The SD1, a turmeric yellow 3500, bore the registration MOO 229R; in The New Avengers John Steed drove an identical-looking car with the number MOC 229P.

However, reliability problems with the cars and British Leyland requiring them back to give to the motoring press was causing disruption to filming.

Although depictions of actual bloodshed were scarce, the series was often criticised for its level of violence, with shootings, martial arts and asphyxiation a common means of assassination.

[citation needed] To help maximise the on-screen action, Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins were taught stunt driving skills and encouraged to propel their respective cars through streets as rapidly as possible, although LWT insisted that the stars had to be chauffeured when travelling to filming sets.

[citation needed] The first series episode "Klansmen" was withdrawn in the UK, ostensibly due to its race-related subject matter.

LWT refused to explain its view that while the episode remained unsuitable for British television viewers, it continued to be licensed to broadcasters in other countries.

Mary Whitehouse, President of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, was among those who highlighted the occasional use of sexist and racist terms.

Several years after the series ended London Weekend Television was contractually obliged to re-negotiate repeat fees with the lead actors.

However, Shaw eventually agreed to UK satellite screenings; although, according to a Radio Times interview, he did so only after being discreetly made aware that Gordon Jackson's widow, actress Rona Anderson (who guested in "Cry Wolf"), was suffering financial difficulties [citation needed] after her husband's death and needed the repeat fees.

After the Hungerford shooting incident the particular episode that was to be aired, "Lawson's Last Stand", had a theme that was deemed insensitive and was replaced by the less violent "The Untouchables".

Bonehead and Foyle returned to TV screens in 1993 in The Comic Strip one-off Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown alongside 'Shouting George from The Weeny' (Jack Regan from The Sweeney), 'Spanker' (Spender) and 'Jason Bentley' (Department S's Jason King).

Peter Jackson's 1987 film, Bad Taste, featured Astro Investigation and Defence Service employees "the boys", a Doyle and Bodie parody complete with Ford Capri.

During its broadcast run, the public television service ZDF, due to concerns over politics and violence, did not air all episodes of the programme, so The Professionals became one of the first TV shows ever to be released on VHS in Germany in the 1980s.

The first dubbed episode "When the Heat Cools Off" was spoken by Petr Oliva (Bodie), Martin Štěpánek (Doyle) and Jiří Adamíra (Cowley).

According to Dave Matthews' website, Shaw had already signed the video release agreement, it was the repeat fee amount offered by LWT that he objected to.

[citation needed] In the late 1990s, the complete run of 57 episodes were given a UK VHS videocassette release by Contender Entertainment Group.

Although labelled as having been "digitally remastered", these releases have attracted some criticism, mainly due to the relatively poor picture quality (colour, contrast and levels of dirt and scratches).

In part, this was due to problems with the age and condition of the prints used, and the loss of (or lack of access to) the original source footage which would normally be used as the basis of a remaster.

[38] On 2 September 2013, the Network imprint announced that it had acquired the scripts, production files, original camera negatives and stills from the show.

In 2009, author Bob Rocca published a book entitled The Professionals, a chronological account of every episode including cast lists and production credits.