[bird of prey] richard griffiths and early computers

My first computer was bought sometime around 1984 - it was a Macintosh 512KED, with 0.5Mb RAM. I only mention it because that was about the year when PCs really took off and the paranoia set in about big time hacking and embezzlement. Various films and mini-series came out around the theme of the less than scrupulous computer whiz.

One was from 1982, when the excellent BBC serial in four parts, Bird of Prey, hit the small screen, starring Richard Griffiths and Carole Nimmons.

It was made into two series, each of four episodes, each series different to the other but including the same nucleus. Basically, Griffiths plays a computer operator who files a report which leads to complications and then to threats and frame-ups. Gradually, it emerges that there is widespread collusion going on with the EEC, Britain and criminal elements, attempting to corrupt and utilize the emerging technology.

Dated in many ways, especially in the technology and sets, it was nevertheless a gripping thriller with a nice twist at the end. If you can get the DVD, it could be worth it.

The Consultant [June, 1983] starring Hywel Bennett, was another serial tapping into the fear of what could happen to the computer world when clever hackers broke into it. Bennett and partner Jonathan Morris, also very strong as the computer whiz kid who tumbles to Bennett's game and wants in, are a backroom consultancy firm who decide to tender for a major bank job which sees Bennett commuting between London and Manchester.

It shows naive bank directors [in the database field], la less naive and therefore unscrupulous payrolled computer whiz who has a little embezzlement scheme going on within the bank and a savvy bank security chief who is not at all sure about Bennett being given free rein to test the system's defences. It was said in 2000:

In the 1970s and 1980s, the hacker was either a friendless loner or a super-cynical computer expert as played by Hywel Bennett in The Consultant. Today the hacker could be anybody. In fact, as the anti-fraud section of computer group Unisys warned last October, today's computer fraudster most closely fits the profile of someone a big computer company would most like to hire.

Bennett played the former type but when he realized the size of the stakes and that he was about to be sprung, stooped to murder - first one, then another, in a rivetting piece of tele-suspense.

As the IMDb reviewer said:

"I don't know if anyone will ever have a chance to see this again, but if you find it is showing on some obscure channel, it's worth the investment of time and attention."