Planet Gazzypops! - Background to Bergerac

Robert Banks Stewart's Bergerac was first screened by the BBC in October 1981. The first episode, according to the Episode Guide website (see Links page), is Picking It Up although I'm not sure if this was the pilot episode or not. Anyway, it quickly established the main characters and the inexorable charm of the series as a whole. Another way would be to look at the following list:

Planet Gazzypops - Background
to Bergerac

Trying to get the theme tune for Bergerac meant a great number of late nights staring at Napster and hoping. I did get a copy but it turned out to be an accordion version which was utter shite. However, one fine day, Ralph Covino (see Friends page) stumbled across the proper version. It's fairly dreadful quality mp3/wav file - I renamed it so it should work on either player - but it is the Police-esque theme tune that was written by George Fenton and used from 1981 to about 1987.
Click on Jersey Jim to get.

Jersey suffers from one of the highest crime rates per square mile in the whole of the Channel Islands, if not the world.

The reason for this crime problem is simple: the Jersey police force, or "Bureau des Etrangers" as they insist on calling themselves, is utterly incompetent. Why do you think Jim Bergerac never got passed the rank of sergeant in ten years? It certainly had nothing to do with the "maverick" epithet that the papers constantly used to describe him, unless "maverick" means "hopeless at job".

Perhaps the other reason for the Jersey police's gross incompetance is that they close the police station at 5 o' clock. This did actually happen early one evening when
Jim was on his way to yet another bungled attempt at justice. Peggy, the secretary, asked him if he was coming back "otherwise I'll lock up now". I forget which episode this was in, but it did happen.

Untrue fact: Robbie Coltrane was originally to play Jim Bergerac, but his face didn't fit the shape of Jersey as was required for the credits (see photo above). Indeed, the writers considered setting the series on Madagascar as it's 228,000 square miles fitted Coltrane's proportions much better than Jersey's 63. Fortunately, pint-sized John Nettles came into the studio, his tiny features mirroring the Jersey coastline perfectly, and so a star was born. True fact: a fan of Planet Gazzypops! (the 243rd, she proudly claims) e-mailed me recently to say that Guernsey was actually going to be the island used for the series, but the Tourist Board refused as they were worried it would dissuade tourists from visiting. Interestingly, Guernsey has no crime whatsoever and has only ever had three pyrotechnic monk attacks, thus making it wholly unsuitable for Bergerac anyway. Unlike Sark...

Jim Bergerac dispenses pretty much all the justice on the island yet cannot pursue a criminal if his life depended on it. Very often he is chasing elderly rapists through St Helier, yet completely fails to catch them. And the less said about his pursuit driving on Jersey's one road (which has a speed limit aimed at making the bicycle a viable alternative to the car) the better.

Jersey is very, very haunted. However, Jim steadfastedly refuses to believe in ghosts, even after grappling on a cliff top with a phantom crow in The Dig ("freak gust of wind," he claims in hospital afterwards). In fact, the paranormal element of later Bergerac episodes has convinced James Cash (see Friends page again) that Jim comes up against a ghostly monk. I seem to remember this one too, and I'm sure he was also a pyrotechnic monk, setting fire to some chap in a black car at the end of the episode. Monks are like that. And coming monk-like to the rescue of Planet Gazzypops! is Richard Powell, of Bergerac TV Tome website (see Bergerac Links page) who has named this episode as the '86 Chrismas special Fires in the Fall. Richard also believes that a ghostly Roman Chariot plunges into the sea in one episode, probably as a result of a bungled police pursuit, although I don't have the slightest recollection of this ever happening. It is important to note that Richard got in touch last year about this site, and only now have I mentioned him. Still, there have been so many updates and so little time...

Whenever there is a crime committed on Jersey (most days of the week, especially after 5 o' clock) you can bet your life the murderer/rapist/embezzler/ghostly monk is a close personal friend of Charlie Hungerford. If not, then Charlie is certainly right where the action is. In one episode, a French private investigator is murderered in Charlie's study, whilst in another episode, Charlie inadvertantly dispenses a poisoned chalice to a fellow freemason in one of their stupid meetings - as you do. Never is he arrested or even held under suspicion for longer than a couple of minutes, yet crime keeps on being committed in Jersey to excess. Strange that.

Jim was married to Charlie's daughter Deborah, who reappears from time to time, resulting in much humour. If I had to describe Deborah in one word it would be "serial slapper". The girl humps anything that moves, and sometimes things that don't. Invariably whoever she shags is a personal friend of Charlie's and therefore a murderer/rapist/embezzler/ghostly monk who then easily eludes Jim's vain pursuit through St Helier.

Jim and Deborah have a freak of a child called Kim who both rides and looks like a horse whenever she visits her father (I imagine she looks like a horse when she's not visiting her father as well). It is no wonder, therefore, that when a real horse stars in a later episode (namely A Horse of a Different Colour), he turns out to be gay. Clever writing that.

To be historical for a moment, Bergerac does touch on WW2 quite a lot. It is insinuated early on in the series that Charlie was a collaborator (and that Hitler was a close personal friend of his). And there are episodes about war criminals and Jewish Nazi hunters, which links in nicely with my academic interest in the Holocaust. Incidentally, Sean Arnold, who played Chief Inspector Crozier throughout the series, appeared as Hoefle in the 1978 Holocaust mini-series. Furthermore Tony Robinson, of Blackadder fame, played a fantastic Jewish chap pretending to be Jim Bergerac in My Name's Sergeant Bergerac. If ever a Frazier-esque spin-off series was deserved, it unquestionably is for Schlomo Denkovitz.....