The Professionals (TV series) the show featured varied plots, good scripts and ongoing character development of Bodie and Doyle and to a lesser extent Cowley, but later series featured increasingly overused ideas and script devices and both Collins and Shaw stated they felt the show was becoming stale. While episodes were broadcast until 1983, episodes were actually filmed between 1977 and 1981. Major George Cowley (Gordon Jackson) (born c. 1917) – Nicknamed "Morris" after the car of the same name. His operatives sometimes call him "The Cow", though not to his face. Founder and head of CI5, making him Bodie and Doyle's boss. As
The Professionals (TV series) popular TV comedy series "The Two Ronnies", Ronnie Corbett played a bungling version of Martin Shaw's Doyle in a sketch called "Tinker Tailor Smiley Doyle" (Series 11; broadcast February 1985 - March 1985). This was a joint send-up of "The Professionals" and the "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" TV drama, with Ronnie Barker playing George Smiley along the lines of Alec Guinness' portrayal in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". Corbett's Doyle provides the brawn to the brains of Barker's Smiley and actually comes out the worse. The sketch guest-starred Frank Williams from "Dad's Army". In 1984 some of the team behind "The