Department S - Episode Guide

When an airliner lands at Heathrow airport, the pilot and crew believe they are half an early, then discover to their surprise that they are actually six days late. Neither they nor the passengers have any recollection of what happened to them during those missing days...

Since one of the VIPs on board was Sir Curtis Seretse, Department S is assigned to find out what happened. The investigators discover that all the passengers and crew were drugged - except one, and that one is later killed. Then they make the discovery that one of the passengers was a Soviet pilot, and the case takes a political turn...

A tanker is involved in a car crash, and the driver is killed. The other driver discovers the tanker wasn't carrying fuel, but instead its interior contains a large living space, and he swears he saw a young woman inside - but she has disappeared by the time the police arrive. The authorities don't know what to make of the incident, and the Department is called in.

A lighter discovered at the scene of he accident leads them to the woman - and to the discovery that she is involved in a heist in the planning, in which the crashed tanker was also supposed to play a crucial part. The detectives follow her to the South of France, where Stewart poses as a crook and wins her trust after coming out on top after a fist fight with her boy friend, whom they also suspect to be involved in the crime. When the gangster hijack another tanker to replace the one lost in the crash, the Department must hurry to prevent the heist, which is about to go down very soon.

Four men in costumes are gunned down in a cellar while celebrating a successful crime. When the bodies are found, the police discover that one of them had a recently fired gun in his holster - yet no crime had been reported at the time in question. Sir Curtis suspects that a criminal named Martin Kyle is somehow involved, and tells Stewart to pay him an 'unofficial' visit.

Stewart uses a mixture of coercion and trickery and gets some useful information out of Kyle. That evening, when Kyle is supposed to meet the man he got his assignment from, Stewart and Jason 'drop by' again. While the man gets away, he leaves behind a WWII marshal's baton, which the investigators subsequently use as bait to flush him out, although they still don't know what the baton's significance is.

The case gets more complicated when they find a car dumped in a lake and an unidentified body inside and discover that the ballistics match the gun found with the dead man in the cellar. Now they have to connect the dots between the dead man, an unreported robbery, and a young woman kept prisoner in her own house...

Susan Lewis, a young woman scheduled to participate in a beauty contest the next day, goes to bed early after taking a heavy sedative. The next morning, she discovers she is only person left in her village - the entire population of Hambledown has disappeared over night! This case is so strange that the local authorities immediately ask for the Department to take over. As Sir Curtis points out to Stewart, "Your Department is getting quite famous!"

Thus, with virtually nothing to go on, the three investigators travel to the deserted village and set up their HQs in the pub belonging to Susan's father. Stewart and Jason set out to check the surrounding areas, while Annabelle runs her research and finds evidence of some missing paint. Meanwhile, Susan is lured to a doctor's office and given an injection... once the detectives realize this, they rush her to a hospital, where it turns out that the injection was completely harmless - nothing but water.

As if this wasn't strange enough, they also discover a burnt patch of grass, and wonder what was burnt and why... Jason theorizes that if it were known that another person was 'left behind' in the village that night apart from Susan, the perpetrators would have to make a move... so Stewart sets himself up as bait. The plan works, up to a point, but when the gangsters show up, they knock out Jason and force Stewart to 'accompany' them at gunpoint... which leads him much closer to the case's solution, yet also into danger, and ultimately, in Jason's words, to "a marvelous twist at the end!"

A passenger plane approaching Heathrow Airport request auto-land procedure, and the air traffic controllers can't understand why. When the plane finally lands, it turns out to be completely empty, with neither passengers nor crew aboard... So the Department is called in.

In research, Annabelle discovers the picture of a reclusive CEO boarding the plane, but his name doesn't appear on the passenger list. Meanwhile, Stewart finds the body of the flight's pilot in a warehouse that belongs to the CEO's company. Ultimately the clues lead the Department S team to Ireland - and into danger...

When a real estate agent shows a warehouse to a potential client, they discover a replica of an elegant room, with the painting of a lady on the wall, and a crazed young man locked inside, next to the body of a woman. The British police don't know what to make of it, and the Department takes over.

Stewart and Annabelle visit the young man in the psychiatric hospital he was taken to and try to get anything useful out of him, but the only real clue they get is the name of a woman - 'Selina'. This remains the only clue they'll get from him, since he is murdered soon after the detectives leave.

Meanwhile, Jason tries to find the original of the woman in the painting and locates the artist who painted the picture, but is knocked out and can't prevent the evidence from being burned. Eventually the investigators find the original of the elegant room, but even then the case is far from solved...

Stewart is a spectator at a golf tournament in Scotland. When the leading player, Eddie Curtis, fails to show up for his tee time and is disqualified and later found dead, it is labelled an accident, but Stewart suspects foul play and investigates on his own.

He finds a casino chip among the dead man's belongings, and when later on Curtis' golf clubs are stolen, it becomes an official case for the Department. Annabelle's research leads the team to the casino that the chip came from, and when Stewart and Jason check the place out, the croupier recognizes Stewart from an earlier encounter, and now the stakes are high - with Stewart gambling for his life while hoping the cavalry will show up in time...

A man goes to see the 'Don Giovanni' at the London opera - and disappears without a trace. Three days later he resurfaces in the Mexican desert, still in his formal wear and with a complete loss of memory, and no idea what happened to him. Sir Curtis assigns Stewart to investigate.

The team discovers a case of mistaken identity - the real target was an important scientist - but by the time they realize this, the scientist has already been kidnapped. Now the only clue they're left with is the phrase 'turtle in a shell' - a special dish served in the Bahamas, so that's where the Department is headed.

Once arrived there, they realize that this case is about far more than kidnapping - the perpetrators have much bigger fish to fry, and the detectives have very little time to prevent that scheme...

A limousine is ambushed by a group of armed men and riddled with bullets - yet it turns out the only passenger was a wax dummy. The Department is assigned to investigate the incident.

The investigators set out to uncover who the attackers were, and who the intended victim was. The trail leads to a monarch in exile and a group of underground fighters - and a case of double cross, as well as a dramatic rescue/decoy operation.

Two men kill each other after retrieving a plastic fish from the ocean - which turns out to be full of money. The Spanish police is baffled, and the Department is called in.

When Sir Curtis tells Stewart about counterfeit dollars appearing all over Europe, the detectives connect the dots between the two cases, and are soon on the trail of an expert engraver. Stewart and Annabelle pay him a visit, posing as a married couple interested in his engravings, and bug his apartment. This leads them to a counterfeiting ring, and finally Stewart finds himself ocean-diving and fishing for treasure...

On a country road in Spain, a policeman attempts to flag down a speeding car, and in the ensuing chase, the car crashes, whereupon the cop discovers that the driver is actually a dummy. Stewart and Jason are already in Spain, so the local authorities turn to them for help.

They realize the car must have been remote controlled, but wonder how and why. Then things literally heat up when the car wreck that was supposed to be taken to the police lab disappears, then explodes and burns out, erasing any possible clues. Annabelle runs research on companies specializing in remote controlled cars and comes up with a company in England. Stewart and Jason check the place out and soon realize something sinister is going on there.

Moreover, they discover a connection with an important NATO meeting, and Sir Curtis has to use his connections so the Department can access classified NATO information. They head back to Spain, where Stewart realizes that the same local authorities who asked for the Department's help are now undermining their investigative efforts. All this leads the detectives into danger and some very explosive situations.

An intruder breaks into a heavily guarded estate in France, yet steals nothing - instead he glues a clown's mask onto the face of a sleeping man, then disappears, unseen. When the man wakes up the next morning and discovers the mask, he dies of a heart attack. Sir Curtis asks Stewart to look into the matter as a personal favor, since the deceased was a friend of his.

So Stewart goes to France and talks to the other people living in the villa, including the beautiful and seductive Nicole (guest star Alexandra Bastedo). His investigations don't go unnoticed, and he soon finds his life threatened by an anonymous voice on a tape recorder demanding that he stop snooping around immediately if he wants to survive he following day. The effect, of course, is the opposite: now knowing that he has a 'real' case on his hands, Stewart declares this an official case for the Department, and soon he, Jason, and Annabelle discover a deadly blackmail scheme - which they have to put an end to, especially since other people's lives have been threatened, too, and the blackmailer has already proved that he doesn't believe in empty threats...

A gangster in Rome gives a small package to his accomplice, with instructions to deliver it to a man in Paris, and is killed soon after in a shooting. The courier, instead of delivering the package, opens it and finds some flowers and a cryptic message, which he is unable to make sense of. As it turns out, he is not the only one trying to decipher the meaning. The people who killed the other gangster are after the package and its contents too.

The Department, called in after the shooting, follow the courier to Paris and realize he hasn't delivered the package yet. So Stewart poses as the courier to lure out the intended recipient, and indeed makes contact... but now is expected to deliver the package that he doesn't have in his possession. Meanwhile, Jason and Annabelle are trying to find the real courier and get a hold of the package so that Stewart can 'deliver' it and see where it leads them, but time is running out, and Annabelle has some serious code cracking to do...

The entire workforce of a chemical plant call in sick on the same day - yet the next day the neighbors claim that it seemed like a perfectly normal workday, with vehicles coming and leaving, etc. The local police don't know what to make of it and hand it over to the Department.

The detectives soon realize that the workers' 'sickness' was due to poison, but that one man did show up for work anyway - and he is found murdered. So what was going on at the factory that particular day that's worth killing for? The secretary is also missing since that day, and the Department's investigators try to locate her. When they do, they discover that this case has much wider implications, which also include a newly build nuclear power plant...

The face of a man in a crowd attracts the attention of a photographer, who takes his picture, then shows it to another man, who promptly sends two killers to murder the man in the photograph - except he dies of a heart attack before they get to pull the trigger. Since the deceased looks just like a master criminal named Christopher Lomax, who supposedly died three years ago, Sir Curtis wants Stewart to find out if the real Lomax is really dead, or actually still alive.

The case leads the Department to Greece, where Annabelle goes undercover as a newspaper reporter writing a story about the 'deceased' gangster Lomax. Quite a few people are not thrilled by her snooping around, and soon the finds herself in danger and in unpleasant company. Entrapped, she gets more of a 'story' than she bargained for, while Stewart and Jason are racing against time to find her...

A man wakes up, disoriented - in the middle of a runway, and is subsequently killed by an approaching plane. The Department is alarmed - as are other parties -, since the deceased had apparently perfected a brainwashing machine, which they fear might do great damage in the wrong hands... and they are proven right.

During their investigation, Stewart poses as a businessman to get information from the victim's secretary, while Jason gets acquainted with the man's niece - until, one day, she doesn't recognize him anymore. Then Jason, too, loses all memory of the facts of the case - as does Stewart. Annabelle realizes they have fallen victims to the brainwashing machine. So they have to go back to square one and figure out a way to solve the case without having their memories erased every time they get too close to the dangerous criminals who are in control of he machine and have sinister plans with it... When Jason falls into the villains' - and the machine's - hands again, Stewart and Annabelle must hurry to save him before it is too late.

When the tube pulls into the final station, a conductor discovers an entire car full of dead people. They turn out to have been poisoned with nerve gas. The question is why, and the case is handed over to the Department.

A first clue - as well as further complication - comes when Annabelle is at the morgue with one of the victim's wife and the woman is abducted at gunpoint... Meanwhile Jason, on the trail of a suspect, is also overpowered and abducted, and soon he and the woman find themselves locked up together in the same underground place. Stewart and Annabelle, the latter posing as a new secretary at a firm they suspect to be involved in the crime, are trying to locate them. Then her new 'boss' at the firm gets suspicious of Annabelle and she disappears, too... while Jason turns up in a hospital, having been exposed to nerve gas and lost all memory of what happened or where he's been... so Stewart has his hands full trying to get him to remember anything that can help lead them to Annabelle and the gangsters...

When John Burnham and his wife Mary are leaving their house, Mary is gunned down by a hidden assassin and then dies at the hospital. Soon after, however, her husband starts seeing her and hearing her voice again... Sir Curtis wants Stewart and Annabelle to keep the near-the-edge Burnham under 24/7 surveillance in order to 'protect' him, yet without telling them what from, or why he is 'an important man to the world'.

It doesn't take them long to realize that Burnham is really on the brink of a nervous breakdown - but how do you protect a man from a 'ghost'? Yet when Stewart and Annabelle witness a 'phone call' from the deceased wife, they become convinced someone is purposely trying to drive Burnham over the edge. When they find that the phone is bugged, they also discover there are more people keeping tabs on Burnham - but who and, above all, why?

A man in a spacesuit drops dead in the middle of a street in London. The authorities are baffled - where did he come from, and why was he in a spacesuit? So the case is handed over to the Department.

In tracking down the origins of the spacesuit, Annabelle's research leads them to an institute running a space program, therefore they ordered eight suits from NASA. Stewart goes to the institute, finds the manager uncooperative, snoops around himself and discovers that four of the spacesuits are missing. In the meantime, his car is being manipulated, so on the way back, when the car crashes, he barely can throw himself out of the car before it explodes. Unconscious in the hospital, he has no way of sharing his discoveries...

Meanwhile Jason has tracked down the dead man's sister. Since he deceased was a professional safecracker, Jason poses as a safecracker himself, trying to set himself up as the dead man's replacement. When the gangsters take the bait, things go wrong when they spot Annabelle, who was supposed to follow them... That leaves Jason alone with the gangsters and Annabelle and Stewart, who has discharged himself from the hospital, with little time to find him and prevent the coup the gangsters are planning...

When Sir Curtis is at an auction, he witnesses a bidding war over a mirror that hardly seems worth it, and wonders what sparked it. When the man who bought the mirror is found murdered shortly afterwards, Sir Curtis decides this is a case the Department should look into.

The initial clues lead the detectives to a boutique in Paris, where Jason makes he acquaintance of the lady who owns it. Thus the Department gets on the trail of her jealous boyfriend, Yves, who becomes their main suspect. Stewart and Annabelle set up a stakeout and witness a mirror just like the first one being brought into Yves' apartment, and then use his absence to break in - and find that there is much more to these mirrors than meets the eye...

In the middle of performing an operation on a British public servant, the surgeon is secretly replaced by an unknown man, who finishes the operation... When this is discovered, the initial suspicion is that the 'replacement' botched it up on purpose - however, it turns out he performed it flawlessly. So why was the surgeon replaced at all? Since the man who was operated on is an important public figure, this delicate case is referred to the Department.

The surgeon at the hospital says that the style in which the unknown intruder finished the operation reminds him of the technique of a famous Russian surgeon - yet the man in question would be far too old by now... Nonetheless, Stewart goes behind the Iron Curtain, flying to Moscow to talk to that surgeon, where, after dodging a few KGB agents, he makes an interesting discovery... Meanwhile, Jason follows up another lead that takes him to Istanbul, where his inquiries attract some unwanted attention, so when he is knocked out, he lands in a local hospital, where he too discovers an interesting piece of the puzzle...

A plane carrying the British diplomat Anthony Harvey explodes over the Channel. Although the passengers of a ferry witnessed the explosion, Sir Curtis is convinced that Harvey is actually still alive, so the the Department is tasked to find him.

Stewart and Annabelle talk to Harvey's landlady, and soon the agents come to share the suspicion that he staged his own death in order to assume a new identity, yet locating him proves far from easy. They also realize that Harvey may have worked for more than one side when they find themselves being shadowed by Russian agents. So now they are racing against time to find the man before the Russians do...

A man is assassinated on board a plane in the middle of a flight - or so it seems until the assassin jumps from the 'plane' onto the floor of a warehouse. Although some other 'passengers' pursue him and shoot at him, he escapes. Alarmed by the shots, the French police turn up and find the warehouse and the 'plane' set abandoned, except for the body of the dead man. The Department is assigned to find out what happened and why anyone would go to the trouble of constructing a full scale set just to shoot a man.

The agents start investigating, and the first clue comes in the form of a message scrawled in lipstick on the windshield of Stewart's car. Yet the girl who wrote it is murdered before Stewart and Jason can get to her. However, another lipstick-message she left leads them to a gambler and gangster named 'Lucky' LeBeau. Annabelle goes undercover as a tourist to make his acquaintance - a gamble that has Stewart concerned about her safety...

A distressed young man shoots himself in a park after destroying his passport. What looks like an ordinary suicide turns into a case for the Department when the coroner rules that the man, who looks as if he's in his twenties, is in fact 60 years old.

When Stewart and Annabelle search his hotel room, they find a set of red dice with a mysterious symbol on it. These remain their only clue, since the body is stolen from the morgue before the coroner can run any more tests. Further investigation leads the detectives to a strange 'fountain of youth' serum...

An Interpol agent goes to Lebanon supposedly on vacation and washes up dead on a beach soon after. The official verdict is that he drowned in a diving accident. Yet Stewart, who was a friend of his, does not believe in 'accidents' and demands that the Department investigate.

Since Sir Curtis feels that Stewart is too emotionally involved, he sends Jason to Beirut to look into the matter. Yet Jason becomes too emotionally involved, too - with a woman - and soon his cover is about to be blown... Stewart confronts Sir Curtis with an ultimatum, and finally he lets Stewart and Annabelle go to Lebanon, where they reunite with Jason and face an international drug cartel...

A chemist named Halliday disappears along with a container of nerve gas, and the Department is assigned to find him - and the container - as quickly as possible.

They soon realize they are not the only one trying to locate the man and his precious souvenir - people with sinister plans of how to use the gas are on his trail, too, and get a hold of Halliday first. Even after Jason and Stewart rescue him from the hands of the gangsters, the paranoid chemist does not trust them and disappears again, still without having revealed the whereabouts of the container to anybody. Instead, he has plans of his own - he wants to unleash the nerve gas in the middle of London...

When a chauffeur driving a high ranking British government official reaches his destination, he is horrified to discover that his passenger has turned into a skeleton...! Clearly a case for Department S.

The detectives start investigating, wondering whether this was indeed the man's skeleton, or if some sort of switch has been made. Stewart is supposed to meet Sir Curtis on a train for an urgent briefing, enters the compartment and finds - another skeleton...

In the hopes that the bones are fake and their boss is really still alive, the agents are racing against time to unravel the mystery of the skeletons. Stewart and Annabelle have to pressure high ranking military officers into revealing classified information, while Jason follows a lead to a hotel. When Annabelle is about to meet him there later, she only finds another skeleton... as does Stewart on a plane from New York, where an American official has seemingly turned into a bonesman in midair. It takes a journey in a cargo container to find out what - and who - is behind it all.

A group of men go to great lengths to break into a warehouse at a loading dock in London - just to steal a crate of fish soup. The authorities don't know what to make of it and pass the case on to the Department.

Soon the case seems almost closed when Stewart and Annabelle find the crate, discarded, cans of fish soup and all. But then why was it stolen in the first place? Obviously someone made a mistake... Jason thinks something is foul and heads to Portugal, where the soup crate originated from. Working the case from both ends, the agents get on the trail of international smugglers, and get caught in the middle of a dangerous game of double-cross among thieves...