After a nervous breakdown ends his career in computing, Eddie Shoestring (Trevor Eve) reinvents himself as a private investigator in Bristol. His first case, investigating a singer’s suspicious death for local station Radio West, impresses the manager, Don Satchley (Michael Medwin). Satchley offers Shoestring a unique job: to be the station’s “Private Ear,” a public-facing detective who solves cases brought in by listeners. Operating from his ramshackle houseboat, and with occasional help from his landlady, barrister Erica Bayliss (Doran Godwin), the fragile but tenacious Shoestring investigates crime across the city.
The series broke new ground for the British crime drama. Its protagonist was not a hard-bitten professional but a man defined by his recent mental collapse; Eddie Shoestring’s vulnerability was the engine of the drama, not a mere character trait. This focus on psychological fragility, combined with its novel use of Bristol as a character in its own right, gave the production a contemporary texture that set it apart from its London-centric rivals.
Creator Robert Banks Stewart correctly identified the appeal of a damaged detective in a distinctive regional setting, a formula he would refine for his subsequent success, Bergerac. The programme made a star of Trevor Eve, but his decision to leave after just two seasons, fearing typecasting, brought the popular series to a premature end.
Broadcast: BBC One, 21 Episodes, 30 September 1979 – 21 December 1980
Created by: Robert Banks Stewart, Richard Harris
Theme Music: George Fenton
Producer: Robert Banks Stewart
Main Cast: Trevor Eve (Eddie Shoestring), Michael Medwin (Don Satchley), Doran Godwin (Erica Bayliss), Liz Crowther (Sonia)
