Minder: A phenomenon in the making
A phenomenon in the making
Prelude to a phenomenon
Autumn  1979 was not a glorious time in Great Britain. Unemployment and inflation were  reaching record levels. Public morale was low. The new Conservative government  under Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher had recently unveiled a highly  unpopular budget. The country was still reeling from the effects of months of  industrial strikes that had brought down the Labour government and led to the ‘Winter of Discontent’. One such industrial dispute at London’s Thames  Television came to an end on 24 October after blacking out the entire  Independent Television network for close to 11 weeks.
Against  this dismal background, Thames Television introduced its new action series for  the autumn season on Monday 29 October — a programme with the intriguing title Minder. The show was already weeks overdue, the new season’s line-up traditionally  being unveiled in early to mid-September.
At that time, nobody could possibly  have imagined the eventual success that Minder would enjoy. Today,  probably due in large part to the series, the term ‘minder’ is widely  understood to mean a bodyguard or assistant. In 1979, this usage was much less  familiar, and the idea that it could form the basis of a television series  extending over 100 episodes would have seemed highly improbable. But by the  time the final series ended in 1994 the show could account for ten series, 105  52-minute episodes, aChristmas compilation of excerpts,  two feature films and two different actors playing the minder. The programme  became amajor hit not only on British television but was also sold to over 70  countries around the world, making it one of Britain’s top TV exports. In 1985,  at the peak of its success, nearly 18 million people a week in Britain were  watching the show.
But in Autumn 1979, Minder was  unashamedly intended as a follow-up series for its leading actor, Dennis  Waterman, to capitalise on his popularity in an earlier Thames Television  series The Sweeney, that had recently come to an end.
Dennis Waterman
Dennis Waterman was no newcomer to  acting and came with excellent credentials. The last of nine children, he was  born in Clapham, London on 24 February 1948 and joined the Corona Stage School  in Chiswick when he was eleven. He made his screen debut in January 1960 just  before his 12th birthday in the feature film Night Train for Inverness about  a jail escapee who kidnaps his son (Waterman) and takes him on a train to  Scotland unaware that the child has diabetes and requires regular medication.  The following year he appeared in the West End musical show The Music Man. In  1962 he was cast in the title role of the children’s BBC television series William based on the stories of Richmal Crompton. He went to Hollywood for a year  whenhe was fifteen to appear in the American sitcom Fair Exchange, which  was never shown in Britain. On his return to London he had a number of  television roles including the iconic Up the Junction in 1968 directed  by Peter Collinson about the social divide between the rich and poor. But his  big break came when he landed a part in Thames Television’s police drama The  Sweeney.
The Sweeney, in which he co-starred with the late John Thaw, was a no-holds-barred  action series based in London about two officers in Scotland Yard’s Flying  Squad (known as the ‘Sweeney Todd’ in rhyming slang). Dennis Waterman played  the part of Detective Sergeant George Carter while John Thaw played Carter’s  guv’nor, Detective Inspector Jack Regan. In its quest to achieve gritty  realism, the programme’s action sequences, tough dialogue, car chases and  violence — on both sides of the law — set a new standard in British police  shows. There were regular complaints from the police about its portrayal of  police brutality but the public could not get enough of the programme or its  two stars.
When The Sweeney finished its  run in 1978, its production company began to look for another role for Dennis  Waterman. The company, Euston Films, headed by George Taylor and Lloyd Shirley,  had been set up six years earlier as a subsidiary of Thames Television to  specialise in the production of television drama on film. Before making The  Sweeney, Euston’s major output had been the 1973 series Special Branch starring  George Sewell and Patrick Mower, and a six-part series under the general title Armchair  Cinema. One of the episodes, Regan, written by Ian Kennedy Martin  and directed by Tom Clegg, was the pilot of The Sweeney.
The successor to The Sweeney came  in the form of a film script called Minder penned two years earlier by  veteran television writer Leon Griffiths about an East End crime boss and his  bodyguard.
As Terry McCann in Minder, Waterman  played a young man with two prison terms under his belt, one for grievous  bodily harm and the other for attempted robbery. At least one of these was for  a crime that his boss was involved in but escaped prosecution. At one time  McCann had had a promising career ahead of him as a professional boxer but lost  his licence after a rigged bout in which he took a fall that was too obvious.  According to his boss, Arthur Daley, he should have been nicked for overacting.
The character he took on in Minder, as the tough, streetwise but put-upon and naïve underdog, had many  similarities to his role as Sergeant Carter in The Sweeney, the sidekick  of the powerful Inspector Regan.
Leon Griffiths
Born in Sheffield in 1928, Leon  Griffiths (named after Leon Trotsky by his staunchly communist mother) had a  tough upbringing in Glasgow where he developed a hankering to be a writer.  After leaving school he obtained a job as an assistant director in a small film  company. He left the company to perform his National Service and found himself  working with the British Forces Network in Germany alongside fledgling  broadcaster Cliff Michelmore. By the time he had completed his National Service  the film company he worked for previously had gone bankrupt. To pay the bills  he took up a writing post with the communist Daily Worker newspaper in  the 1950s and eventually became its drama critic. He relinquished this  position, and indeed his communist ties, following the invasion of Budapest by  Russian tanks in 1956 and struggled to make a career on Fleet Street.
Griffiths got into television  script-writing almost by accident following a chance offer to write some  episodes of the independently produced The Adventures of Robin Hood series  from 1955—59 starring Richard Greene. Griffiths was not the only one outside of  the political mainstream to work on the Robin Hood series. Executive producer  Hannah Weinstein also used the talents of several blacklisted American writers  (usually working under pseudonyms) who had taken refuge from Senator Joseph  McCarthy’s notorious communist witch-hunt back home.
In script-writing, Griffiths found a  vocation and branched out into writing television plays and film scripts, often  in the crime thriller genre and incorporating the undercurrent of dark humour,  incisive wit and cleverly crafted dialogue that became his forte.
He wrote prolifically for television,  ranging from three episodes of the 1959—60 ITV series The Four Just Men, based  on the stories by Edgar Wallace, to Yorkshire Television’s 1979—80 series The  Racing Game. He was at home in the sleazy aspects of his plots, from  horse-race fixing in The Racing Game to his 1978 BBC-1 Play for Today episode Dinner at the Sporting Club involving rigged boxing contests — a topic he would revisit a few years later in a Minder episode.
Coincidentally, in the 1978 story, it  was John Thaw from The Sweeney who gave an exceptional performance as  the boxing manager who suffers the indignity of seeing his prize boxer forced  to lose a fight for financial gain.
Among Griffiths’ notable film credits  was The Grissom Gang in 1971 set in America during the 1920s Depression,  based on the 1948 book No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley  Chase in which a kidnapped socialite falls in love with one of her abductors.  In The Grissom Gang he took an essentially violent plot and interspersed  a sprinkling of humour — an approach that he also adopted later with the early  episodes of Minder.
In an interview with TV Times in  1991, Leon Griffiths described how he used to go to afternoon drinking clubs in  North London and meet people who gave him ideas for his characters, including  that of Arthur Daley in Minder: ‘I’ve always been fascinated by low  life, the semi-villains of this world. I like observing them, wondering how  they make out.’ He went on: ‘They lived on their wits and were great  storytellers. I don’t suppose half of what they said was true but it didn’t  matter. They were alive; they crackled with a sort of crazy energy.’1
Griffiths’ original conception of Minder was as a tough, hard-hitting gangland film which he had kept on hold for a  couple of years on the advice of his agent who felt that it was a little too  serious to sell at that particular time. The same agent later suggested that  Griffiths rework the film into a television script using two of the characters  from the film: a small-time crook with a second-hand car business and his  streetwise bodyguard (or ‘minder’, as the term was in London), an ex-boxer with  a prison record.
Around that time, Euston Films had  recently taken on script executive Linda Agran to develop its access to quality  scripts. As soon as she saw Griffith’s revised script she recognised that the  part of the minder would be ideal for Dennis Waterman. When Waterman saw the  initial scripts and story lines he was particularly taken by the underlying  humour and needed no second thoughts about accepting the part.
The task then fell to producers George  Taylor and Lloyd Shirley at Euston Films to cast the supporting role of Arthur  Daley, the smooth-talking used-car salesman, always on the lookout for a quick  quid. The script called for someone ‘the same age as some good-looking American  film star [Arthur Daley often announced proudly that he was the same age as  Paul Newman]. He’s totally behind the Home Secretary as far as law and order is  concerned. His favourite film is The Godfather and he dresses like a  dodgy member of the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.’
The task was not an easy one. What  they were looking for was someone who could convey an image of being  continually ‘on the make’. Dennis Waterman had previously worked with the  well-respected actor Denholm Elliot and was convinced that he would be an ideal  choice, but Euston’s production team felt he was a little too smooth. A number  of other artists were considered including television and film veteran George  Cole but he was initially thought to be too ‘middle-class’ and there were  heated arguments about who should be cast in the role. Eventually executive  producer Verity Lambert reminded the other decision makers that George Cole had  already made a name for himself playing a spiv and should be well-suited to play  this one. That apparently swayed them and he was offered the part.
George Cole
George Cole was no stranger to the  Arthur Daley character he took on in Minder. In a career spanning over  40 years, he had already become well-known as the smooth-talking spiv Flash  Harry in the highly popular St. Trinian’s comedy films in the 1950s and ’60s  about a dysfunctional girls’ boarding school.  Born  in London on 22 April 1925, Cole made his stage debut at the age of 14 in the  1939 revival of the musical show The White Horse Inn. The following year  he was cast as a young wartime evacuee in the movie Cottage to Let starring  the legendary comedy actor Alastair Sim.
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The second and third parts were made  in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on location in  Sydney and the outback town of Broken Hill in New South Wales. They dealt with  Arthur and Ray’s attempts to claim the inheritance and their troubles along the  way. Fussy viewers were no doubt able to see through the holes, (‘How could  someone get on a plane from England to Australia as a tourist without a return  ticket?’). The locations were spectacular and provided an interesting diversion  for British viewers. Unfortunately, the three episodes were written by three  different people and, although entertaining, the single story that came out of  them lacked much of the crispness that the audience had come to expect from Minder.
Minder in Australia
By the time the Australian episodes  were made, Minder was extremely well known in Australia, where it had  become the show’s biggest market outside the UK.
Minder first appeared on Australian television at 8:30 pm on 27 May 1980 when Gunfight  at the O.K. Laundrettemade its debut on the national network operated by  the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), seven months after the episode  first aired in Britain. Like most of the episodes that followed, it was given a  PGR rating — Parental Guidance Recommended. Notable exceptions were episodes  featuring excessive violence, such as The Old School Tie, You Need Hands,  Looking for Micky, and sexual themes, such as Monday Night Fever, which  received AO ratings — Adults Only.
ABC owned the rights to first and second  transmission in Australia. New episodes were always shown first on ABC, usually  with a repeat one to two years later. The exceptions to this were the two  feature films, Minder on the Orient Express and An Officer and a Car  Salesman, which were bought by the Seven Network under a separate  distribution agreement and had their first runs on Channel Seven.
The show seemed to take off faster  with the audience in Australia than it did in Britain. In a year-end poll of  Australian television critics’ favouriteprogrammes of 1982 conducted by the Sydney  Morning Herald, critic Denis O’Brien listed Minder as his most  addictive hour on television and nominated as his favourite the Series 3  episode Another Bride, Another Groom in which Terryhas to collect pornographic  magazines on the way to a wedding.29 Also in 1982, and then again in 1983, the show’s theme  song I Could Be So Good For You sung by Dennis Waterman reached the top  ten of both the Australian and New Zealand pop record charts.
Another informal survey, this one  among readers of the Sun-Herald in Sydney, reported that ‘the most  written-about show — and always favourably — was Minder’ despite the  fact that the current series at the time of the survey was a repeat of Series  2.30
With a few exceptions the episodes  were shown in Australia in the same order as in Britain. The Christmas Bonus episode featuring clips from the first three series was saved until  Christmas Eve 1985 by which time the first five series had been shown and the  first four had already been repeated.
Series 6 opened on the ABC on 11 March  1986 in a Tuesday night time-slot with The Return of the Invincible Man, which  was the fourth episode of the series in UK. Channel Seven managed to catch some  of the action with a first showing of Minder on the Orient Express the  following Monday, the night before ABC showed its next episode of Series 6.  Following the last episode of Series 6 in April 1986 there were no new episodes  transmitted in Australia until 1989.
Dennis Waterman, meanwhile, maintained  his visibility in Australia and later New Zealand co-starring with RulaLenska  in Bernard Slade’s play Same Time Next Year, which had a two-month run  in Perth during the southern-hemisphere spring of 1984. The couple were back in  Perth two years later, towards the end of 1986, working in Tom Stoppard’s play The  Real Thing and getting married in the Perth suburb of Shenton Park on 3  January 1987.
By the time Series 7 became available  for transmission in late 1988, Channel Seven had bought the repeat rights to  the first seven series with effect from April 1989, meaning that all repeats  after that date would be shown on that network. This left ABC with the  contractual obligation to show six outstanding repeats of Series 6 plus the six  new episodes of Series 7 before April 1989. They managed to fit in the repeats  in January 1989 and all six episodes of Series 7 by showing episodes two at a  time on three nights between 31 January and 21 February. Then, as was the case  in UK, there was a three-year break before Australia saw a new episode of Minder.
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The formal announcement from Channel 5  was made on 31 July 2008 when it was revealed that the new series would star  former EastEndersactor Shane Richie playing Arthur Daley’s nephew Archie  Daley, with Royal Shakespeare Company actor Lex Shrapnel taking on the role of  Archie’s minder Jamie Cartwright.42 Channel 5 reported that the six-part series would be  an updated version of the original series that would retain ‘all the humour and  charm of the original Minder’.43 The series would be produced by Talkback Thames.
In the weeks preceding the launch of  the new show Channel 5 began a massive national advertising campaign involving  billboards, taxi panels, and phone box wraps, all featuring the two stars.  Wider marketing included ads on taxi receipts, a social networking campaign,  and branded beer mats.44
The first episode, written by Tim  Loane, was broadcast on 4 February 2009. The signature tune was the same as in  the earlier series, but in an upbeat style recorded by Glaswegian band Attic  Lights without the vocal. For a show that was not intended as a remake, the  opening credits showed a remarkable resemblance to the original, alternating between  action shots and monochrome stills. Even the locations and postures of the two  principal characters were very similar.
The episode begins with Archie Daley  being pursued in a car containing two heavies working for a pair of crooked  property developers. Taxi driver Jamie Cartwright cuts off the pursuers and  saves Archie from an inevitable beating — and eventually becomes Archie’s  minder.
Similarities to the original abound.  There is a lock-up, crammed with goods of suspicious origins — and a Winchester  Club. Initially it is called the Victoria, but following an arson attack by  property developers who want to buy up the land it is transformed into the  Winchester, the proprietor of which is the daughter of Dave Harris, who ran the  Winchester Club in the original series.
Archie Daley shares Arthur’s  propensity to use malapropisms: ‘This is no time for levitation’ (instead of ‘levity’) and ‘I want to make amendments’ (instead of ‘amends’) among many.  There is no ‘’erindoors’ this time round. Archie is going through a messy  separation and refers to ‘she who must be paid’ (which harks back to ‘she who  must be obeyed’ in Thames Television’sRumpole of the Bailey series that  was shown around the same time as the original Minder).
The critics were generally not kind to  the first episode. Sam Wollaston in the Guardian was particularly  critical of the need to make a new series at all. He wrote: ‘The original Minder was of its time: it captured and encapsulated the spirit of Thatcher’s  1990s. This one attempts to transplant that spirit into today, where it doesn’t  belong.’45