Sunday, November 10, 2019

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Central Police Station Compound, Central

I'm sticking with the Central Police Station (now Tai Kwun) for the next episode, Blind Bargain. This is the episode adapted from the un-aired pilot that co-starred Alex Davion in the original Chief Inspector role.

Various descriptions on the web say that the pilot was a cut down version of this episode, however, the way the characters interact and the way the story plays out in this episode, it looks to me more likely that this episode was constructed from the pilot footage with extra pick up shots inserted to pad the episode out to its 50 minute length (the original pilot was only 30 mins). An example would be the friendliness between Taylor's and Davion's characters that implies a close friendship despite the fact that for this episode, Davion is supposed to be a quick replacement brought in to fill in for Lloyd Bochner's usual 'Neil Campbell' character whilst the latter is away in the UK giving evidence in a trial.

So that I don't repeat myself too much, I've already updated the Pilot locations with a tag that also identifies them as locations for this episode, so the locations I'll include here are the ones that weren't in the pilot. In this case it is footage of Rod Taylor driving his car up the access ramp into the Police Station compound from Hollywood Road and then circling the central car park.

This exact same sequence was reused for the very last episode, The Runaway, a well.

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