Taggart 1983- 2010

[Dirty Epic]

Is anyone else a fan of Taggart?

I’ve steadily been getting into it over the last decade and have recently got the DVD’s too. I prefer the newer Matt Burke (Alex Norton) episodes as they have a more maverick Sweeney style feel to them rather than the older Mark McManus ones. That’s not to say the original Taggart/Mike Jardine (James McPherson) ones aren’t good – most of them are and speaking of The Sweeney, Pro’s and AWP there’s plenty of their ‘faces’ in the older Taggart episodes. Peter Brayham did the stunt work on the first episode ‘Killer’ and the likes of Janet Key, Diane Keen, James Cosmo, Alex Norton (as a different character in the third episode Knife Edge), Brigitte Kahn, Jenny Runacre, Hugh Martin and a whole host of others feature too.

Shame it sort of lost it’s way with the final 2010 series which sort of ‘jumps the shark’ by then but prior to that it was all good stuff. Also love the Glasgow/Scottish actors re-appearing more than once as different characters too - sometimes more so in the later series.

[Brown Granada]

Love taggart too. Watched it when it was first shown and its great but I too am a fan of the Alex Norton later ones. An unusual case of someone replacing someone and making it just as good or better. I have some individual ones on dvd. Is there a box set?

[Dirty Epic]

Mar 19, 2015 21:40:56 GMT Brown Granada said:

Love taggart too. Watched it when it was first shown and its great but I too am a fan of the Alex Norton later ones. An unusual case of someone replacing someone and making it just as good or better. I have some individual ones on dvd. Is there a box set?

Nice to see another Taggart fan BG. Unfortunately there's no 'definitive' DVD set for all the 27 series and it's made worse by STV licensing them to different companies. What would be nice if someone like Network acquired the rights to it and did that with a full restoration of the older ones as the filmed sections are a bit wonky although there's nothing that would spoil your enjoyment of them to be honest. I've attached the list of Taggart episodes below.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Taggart_episodes

I've managed to get everything on DVD only duplicating the 2005 episode Dead Man Walking - a good one IMHO. What I'll do I'll post/PM to you the best DVD sets to get hold of if you're trying to get it altogether. Failing that Alibi was showing some (not all) of the episodes though they seemed to have moved on to Rebus recently (another one I'm thinking of getting hold of) so don't know if they've finished with it for now.

As I've said previously it's more the newer 2002-09 series I like the best as I can see some shades of The Sweeney in them with Burke (Alex Norton) similar to a modern day Regan, Ross (John Michie) being a bit of slightly more slippery Carter and the supporting cast Reid (Blythe Duff) and Fraser (Colin McCredie) having a similar feel to Daniels, Burtonshaw etc. but in a modern day setting and in a different location. Just a shame the 2010 series seemed to lose its way a it bit with the unexplained loss of Fraser (Colin McCredie being sacked by text from the show) and some plot/characters which didn't quite seem to work and/or went over old ground they once did better for me.

Hope this helps mate.

[Windy Miller]

You're right about the licensing being all over the place. It makes it very difficult to watch repeats of Taggart on TV.
But they're still being shown if you look hard enough. This Saturday at 9.00pm on True Drama there's an episode from S16, and next Wednesday on Drama there's the episode "An Eye For An Eye".

[Del Boy]

Cheers Windy, I might try to catch these to reacquaint myself with the series.

[Charles Bronson]

I've never really seen any Taggarts, only bits of it here and there. I know it lasted a long time though. I will have to watch some episodes next time they show it.