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Man In Room 17 (1965)

1965 · Classic TV series

  • Mystery
  • Drama
  • Crime
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Synopsis

The Man in Room 17 is a British television series which ran for two series in the mid-1960s, then a follow up series The Fellows (Late of Room 17), produced by Granada Television. Key to the series' success was the involvement of writer/producer Robin Chapman. The main characters were "high-IQ" sleuths investigating espionage cases and similarly complex cases. The show was set in Room 17 of the Department of Social Research, where former wartime agent-turned-criminologist Edwin Oldenshaw ( Richard Vernon ) solved difficult police cases through theory and discussions with his assistant (originally Ian Dimmock ( Michael Aldridge ), later succeeded by Imlac Defraits ( Denholm Elliott ), owing to Aldridge becoming ill). (The characters of Dimmock and Defraits may have been given the same initials to continue a play on words. Oldenshaw was sometimes identified as Edwin G. Oldenshaw. In the last episode, Oldenshaw and Defraits are in a park, feeding waterfowl, and the camera zooms in on their briefcases, bearing their initials: E.G.O. and I.D.). The novelty of the series was that Oldenshaw and his colleagues never needed to leave their office in order to resolve cases, preferring to spend their time playing the board game of Go. They simply provided their prognosis and left the police to do the cleaning up. Different directors were often appointed to film the Room 17 and outside-world scenes independently, to maintain a sense of distance between the two worlds. The rarefied nature…

Synopsis from TVmaze

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Language
English

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