The Man in Room 17

The Man In Room 17/ The Fellows (Late of Room 17)
Created by	Robin Chapman
Starring	Richard Vernon Michael Aldridge Denholm Elliott
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Running time	50 minutes
Release
Original network	Granada TV
Original release	11 June 1965 – 11 August 1967

The Man in Room 17 is a British television series which ran for two seasons in the mid-1960s, produced by the northern weekday ITV franchise, Granada Television. Key to the series' success was the involvement of writer/producer Robin Chapman.

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 assistants (originally Ian Dimmock (Michael Aldridge), later succeeded by Imlac Defraits (Denholm Elliott), owing to Aldridge becoming ill). (Why do Dimmock and Defraits have the same initials? 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 with 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 of Oldenshaw's work was amplified in 1967 when he returned, re-united with Dimmock, in a new series, The Fellows (Late of Room 17). This series saw the pair relocated to All Saints College, Cambridge University, where they were appointed to the Peel Research Fellowship. Their research was (as it is stated in the series) "to investigate the general proposition that, in a period of rapid social change, the nature of crime (and therefore criminals) would change." Their research lead them into encounters (though never physical) with gangland boss Alec Spindoe (Ray McAnally), who eventually ended up behind bars thanks (unknown to Spindoe) to psychological pressure from Oldenshaw. The Spindoe character was to return in his own series, Spindoe in 1968, which charted his attempts to regain his criminal empire after release from prison.

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