CI5: The New Professionals

CI5: The New Professionals
Genre	Crime, Action
Created by	Brian Clemens
Written by	Brian Clemens Steven Whitney
Directed by	Raymond Austin Colin Bucksey Harley Cokeliss John Davies
Starring	Edward Woodward Kal Weber Colin Wells Lexa Doig Adrian Irvine Charlotte Cornwell
Theme music composer	Laurie Johnson
Composers	Hywel Maggs Chris Winter
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	13 (list of episodes) Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox television with "list_episodes" parameter using self-link. See Infobox instructions and MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE.
Production
Executive producers	David Bainbridge Brian Clemens Peter Hitchen Laurie Johnson
Producer	David Wickes
Cinematography	Peter Belcher Ken Brinsley Frank P. Flynn Robin Vidgeon
Editors	John Grover Hugo Middleton
Running time	50 minutes
Production company	David Wickes TV
Original release
Network	Sky One
Release	19 September (1999-09-19) – 19 December 1999 (1999-12-19)
Related
The Professionals
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

CI5: The New Professionals is a British television action crime drama series, created and principally written by Brian Clemens, that first broadcast on Sky One on 19 September 1999.^[1] Billed as an updated version of the 1970s terrestrial television series The Professionals, the series is set in a fictional government agency known as CI5 (Criminal Intelligence Department 5). The original group of three men - Doyle, Bodie and their boss Cowley - are replaced by a team consisting of Harry Malone (Edward Woodward), Chris Keel (Kal Weber), Sam Curtis (Colin Wells) and Tina Backus (Lexa Doig).^[2] In a similar manner to The Professionals, the series included a number of high-budget impressive action sequences, often filmed in a James Bond-esque style.^[2]

An initial thirteen episode series was offered to all major British broadcasters. At one time, it was suggested that ITV would broadcast the series, but after attempting to secure a cheaper deal for broadcast rights, producer David Wickes told The Daily Mail that he "would sooner lock it away in a vault than hand it over to ITV for next to nothing."^[2] Sky chose to invest in the series, after considerable editing which removed a number of sequences deemed "excessively violent or disturbing".^[2]

Sky provided the show with considerable pre-publicity, but viewer response to the show was extremely poor, with the low production values and perceived low-quality acting being widely mocked among those who watched it.^[2] The inevitable comparisons to the original series were uniformly negative, also the series was not a success in the ratings. The overall reaction was that Sky, which normally aimed to maximise its value from any of its programming by repeating it extensively, chose never to re-broadcast it after its premiere run.^[2] Subsequently, the series was not repeated on any other satellite television channel until 2012. The series, in its original, uncut form, was eventually released on Region 2 DVD on August 8, 2016.^[3]