Big Breadwinner Hog

This gangster series from 1969 was almost the spin-off of the spin-off of the spin-off of The Man in Room 17, since it was originally intended to feature George Sewell reprising his role as Scaliger from Spindoe, except that Sewell was unable to do it due to his being in another series at the same time - and due to the timing of this series, I have to assume that he was being Alec Freeman in UFO.

Instead of simply recasting the character, as would have been unremarkably common at the time, they changed it enough to make a new character, Ackerman (played by Donald Burton), who had enough character traits in common with Scaliger to fill his place in the plot, but not so you'd notice the swap if you didn't know better. See also: Tarrant in some season 3 episodes of Blakes 7.

Superficially similar to Spindoe in terms of themes and basic plot - in each the title character (Spindoe/Hog) is a new arrival on the scene who upsets the status quo among several factions of gangsters with their own agendas, provoking them into an escalating violent conflict, into which mix is added a down-on-his-luck private detective (Scaliger/Ackerman) and the police.

If you wanted to see Big Breadwinner Hog as set in the same world as Spindoe, you could even assume that the gangsters of this series inherited the power vacuum left by the demise of most of the principal characters of the earlier series, and it would fit.

The chief difference that's immediately apparent is in the title character of Hogarth, a.k.a. "Hog" (Peter Egan), who is a young, up-and-coming gangster, instead of Spindoe's old man seeking to regain his lost glory. But with eight episodes to its predecessor's six, here the plot has more room to breathe and set itself apart, and it quickly twists in ways that Spindoe didn't - whereas Spindoe had a form that was familiar (even to someone only passingly familiar with the gangster genre such as myself), this series was continually surprising me with unexpected turns, and kept me guessing to the very last scene.

Of the many excellent character actors making up the cast, the one I would most single out for praise is Timothy West as the main villain Lennox, who displays a cold ruthlessness throughout, until the moment when he finally has to kill someone himself (as opposed to the many, many times he has ordered a henchmanny to do it), and we see him shaken and physically sickened by the deed.