Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
television series (1969–1970)

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is a British private detective television series, starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope respectively as the private detectives Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk. The series was created by Dennis Spooner and produced by Monty Berman, and was first broadcast in 1969 and 1970. In the United States, it was given the title My Partner the Ghost.
ITC Entertainment produced a single series of 26 episodes in 1968 and 1969, which was aired from September 1969 to March 1970. The pilot episode was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 19 September 1969 by ATV in the Midlands. London Weekend Television broadcast the pilot two days later on 21 September 1969.
The series was remade in 2000, starring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
Plot
In the initial episode, "My Late Lamented Friend and Partner", Marty Hopkirk is murdered during an investigation but returns as a ghost. He chooses his partner, Jeff Randall, to be the only main character able to see or hear him, to solve his own murder. Unfortunately, Marty chooses at the end of the episode not to return to his grave before dawn and is therefore to be trapped on earth for a century.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)” as television series (1969–1970). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as television series (1969–1970). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1860596. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1970, 1968 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.