‘Like Upstairs Downstairs with pheromones': how Britain fell in love with Dempsey and Makepeace

Telegraph

21-04-2025

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the classic 1980s British TV cop drama Dempsey and Makepeace. The series starred South African-born actress Glynis Barber as the aristocratic, Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant Harriet 'Harry' Makepeace opposite Brooklyn-born actor Michael Brandon's tough, brash, impetuous and often trigger-happy New York cop Lieutenant James Dempsey.
With Dempsey having been seconded to the Met in order to lay low in London for his own protection after exposing NYPD corruption, the series followed the ostensibly mismatched crime-fighting duo who, despite their initial reservations, developed a fulfilling working relationship, and in so doing rid the capital of nefarious thieves, murderers and terrorists with a heady mixture of sass, humour and uncompromising action.
With Chief Superintendent Spikings (played with irascible charm by Welsh actor Ray Smith) heading up the (imaginary) elite Met unit S1-10 and Scottish stalwart Tony Osoba as reliable desk jockey Sergeant Chas Jarvis, Dempsey and Makepeace enjoyed a strong cast, as well as quintessentially 80s sartorial styles and memorably explosive music composed by Alan Parker.
The show was written and created by Scottish writer and producer Ranald Graham, who also wrote the gritty 1970s television crime dramas The Sweeney and The Professionals. Yet it was noticeably different from its predecessors. Whereas both earlier shows had a harder edge, with the latter at times having an almost quasi-military feel (Lewis Collins 's character Bodie in The Professionals had formerly been in the SAS), Dempsey and Makepeace had a more knowing and ironic tone. For Glynis Barber, it was primarily the male-female dynamic which made it stand out. 'A lot of British TV shows, like The Sweeney, starred male cops only. This was one of the first where the leads were a man and a woman.
'Makepeace was ahead of her time in her position in the force and also how she took on Dempsey – her demanding to be treated with respect and as an equal, not as a sexual conquest. She exercised her boundaries while Dempsey had none. She had to keep him in check.'
Running for three seasons and numbering 30 episodes in total, Dempsey and Makepeace aired between January 1985 and November 1986. Despite a few negative critical reactions to the first episode ('If I say that Dempsey and Makepeace appears to be the worst thing that London Weekend Television have done since they came into existence in 1968, this is probably an understatement,' growled the Telegraph critic Richard Last), it went on to attract more than 20 million viewers in the UK at its peak.
As Brandon says, 'The public made the show a phenomenon. They showed their choice by watching every week.' Barber adds with evident satisfaction, 'I remember that after the first episode aired some of the reviews were scathing and thought it would bomb. They were instantly proved wrong and many of them made a quick U-turn and claimed they always knew it would be a success.'
The show became a global hit at a time when much British TV failed to gain a worldwide audience and was exported to over 75 countries throughout Europe, America, Asia and Africa. As Brandon recalls, 'It was bigger in France than it was in England. It was huge in Poland and saved me from a speeding ticket in Spain.'
'On a trip to Slovakia in the early 90s we were mobbed by thousands of people,' recalls Barber. 'We were in Zimbabwe at around that time and at the Victoria Falls we were surrounded by a group of school children. We had no idea the show had been aired there but got recognised wherever we went.' For her, it resonated around the world 'because of the chemistry [between the two leads] which was universal.'
Indeed the repartee between the two leads was often reminiscent of Burton and Taylor, or Bogart and Bacall. As Brandon asserts, 'The humour and the chemistry made it special. There are a lot of cop shows, but the viewers were drawn to the chemistry between these two characters.'
'The culture clash between Dempsey and Makepeace was real and hadn't been done before in this way, and the 'will they, won't they' element had people hooked. The constant clashing with a sexual tension,' says Barber.
The class dynamic at play between the protagonists also helps explain the show's astonishing popularity. As Brandon notes laconically, 'It's a class clash which echoes Upstairs Downstairs, but with pheromones.'
Despite the chemistry between the two lead characters, the scripts remained chaste. However what all adoring fans wished for actually took place off-screen, where, in a heart-warming case of life mirroring art, Brandon and Barber fell in love and married in 1989. Of their real-life relationship, Brandon says: 'Our series continues with 35 years of marriage – a great bit of casting!' Barber adds: 'Miraculously and against all the odds, we're still together. But it's Michael and Glynis who are together, not Dempsey and Makepeace. There's a big difference.'
Today, Dempsey would doubtless be cancelled for his unashamedly macho posturing, but, despite the ease and frequency with which he dispatched criminals with his Smith & Wesson revolver, he was all heart – chivalrous, loyal, dependable and with a fully functioning moral compass. As Brandon aptly says of his most famous incarnation, 'Of course, today Dempsey is 'unwoke' – his irreverence was part of his charm.'
It's easy to forget that Dempsey and Makepeace was made in an era where legitimate concerns were being raised about the levels of violence on TV and in the booming video market. The show walked a tightrope between authenticity and audience concerns, and Brandon says some of the more violent scenes were subsequently toned down for reruns. However, he argues: 'We were nowhere near as violent as shows are today.'
The London backdrop was also a crucial part of the show's appeal. During the mid-1980s, the capital's skyline was in the process of change and much of the filming was done on location in pre-gentrified, often insalubrious parts of the city, including Docklands. There were also plenty of establishing shots of the murky River Thames, adding a Dickensian patina of grime, not to mention offering a portrait of a hidden London.
Sadly for its devoted fanbase, the show ended after the third season – and for no discernible reason. Barber recalls that 'Our contracts were for three seasons. It was a co-production between LWT and Tribune Entertainment in the States. Tribune were very keen to make a lot more but LWT just dropped it. We never found out why.'
There still exist a couple of dedicated fan clubs and websites around the world, testament to the cult status the show achieved in the intervening 40 years.
Dempsey and Makepeace remains a standout classic of the genre, not only comparable with, but actually far superior to most other British crime dramas of the last five decades. The mixture of humour, grit and old-school action still gives shows like the hugely popular Gangs of London a run for their money. Above all, Dempsey and Makepeace is refreshingly itself – both of its time and for all time.
All episodes of Dempsey and Makepeace are available to stream on ITV X. That's All I'm Sayin' by Michael Brandon (Chronos, £14.99) will be published on May 1