Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu (1956 TV series)

The Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu was a short-lived 1956 US TV series based on Sax Rohmer’s famous diabolical criminal mastermind. 

I picked up a bargain DVD from Payless Video containing three episodes of this series for a couple of bucks, and it’s actually not bad and the transfers are acceptable if not great. Yes, it’s very politically incorrect (which is really a feature rather than a bug) and it’s very campy, but it’s kind of fun. Being quite a fan of both the Fu Manchu books and the various movie adaptations made over the years I ended up buying the Volume 2 disc from Alpha Video which has another four episodes. Sadly this one is standard Alpha Video quality - in other words the transfers are stupendously atrocious.

Although this is an American series it retains the character of Sir Denis Nayland Smith as Dr Fu Manchu’s staunchest opponent and even has him played by an English actor. The highlight is Laurette Luez’s performance as Fu Manchu’s beautiful but deadly female assistant. She really should have been given a lot more to do.

Glen Gordon is very cartoonish as Fu Manchu, although that’s hardly a problem given the source material. He’s definitely not in the same league as Christopher Lee (who played the role in four films beginning with The Face of Fu Manchu and was the definitive screen Fu Manchu) or Henry Brandon (who played the role exceptionally well in the 1940 Republic serial The Drums of Fu Manchu), or even Boris Karloff (who gave a deliciously over-ripe interpretation of the part in MGM’s 1932 The Mask of Fu Manchu). Gordon’s performance is the show’s weak point, being more suited to an out-and-out spoof and lacking the necessary malevolence. This particular incarnation of Fu Manchu also lacks the sense of honour that is such a crucial part of the makeup of Rohmer’s creation. That sense of honour, and the fact that Fu Manchu really does have a vision of a world which to his way of thinking would be a better world, is what makes Rohmer’s character more than just a stock villain. Unfortunately those nuances (which Christopher Lee was able to bring out) are completely lost here.

Lester Matthews is adequate but they really needed a much more colourful actor to play Sir Denis Nayland Smith. For a Fu Manchu story to work properly Nayland Smith should be as much of a larger-than-life character as Fu Manchu himself. Dr Petrie is transformed into a rather dull American scientist.

The series apparently came to a premature end after only 13 episodes due to legal wrangles. This is a pity since it did have at least some potential. The series had the considerable advantage of having William Witney directing six of the thirteen episodes. Witney had been one of the best (some would say the absolute best) directors of movie serials and had helmed the excellent The Drums of Fu Manchu mentioned earlier. It’s impossible to imagine anyone better qualified to direct a Fu Manchu television series.

The series kicks off with The Prisoner of Dr Fu Manchu and this episode really does capture the spirit of Rohmer’s stories surprisingly well. 

The Master Plan of Dr Fu Manchu is great goofy fun, with Fu Manchu joining forces with Hitler! The Death Ships of Fu Manchu sees Fu Manchu dabbling in germ warfare.

Not surprisingly the series has a definite 1950s Cold War feel to it, especially in episodes like Dr. Fu Manchu's Raid (in which the evil Doctor threatens the air defence system of the United States) and The Satellites of Dr Fu Manchu (in which Fu Manchu plans to establish a space station which will allow him to threaten the free world with nuclear annihilation).

The Assassins of Dr Fu Manchu is not so good. The idea of Fu Manchu having an adopted son who is both a clean-cut all-American boy and a deadly killing machine stretches credibility a little too far.

In general the Cold War angle does not really detract from the fun and most importantly the plots have Fu Manchu doing the sorts of things you’d expect him to be getting up to in the 1950s. There’s still enough of an authentically Fu Manchu flavour to the stories.

The idea of Fu Manchu (a descendent of Chinese emperors) working hand-in-glove with the Chinese Communists might perhaps stretch credibility a little. I’d have thought that he would regard them with contempt but I guess if you’re aiming at world domination you sometimes have to work with unlikely allies.

The series was made by the television arm of Republic Pictures. The budgets were obviously minimal and production values are low. The series was made cheaply and unfortunately it looks cheap.

On the whole The Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu can be enjoyed to a certain extent for its silliness. This is probably one for Fu Manchu completists only, although The Master Plan of Dr Fu Manchu is definitely worth a look. If you can pick up one of the discs for a dollar or so in a bargain bin then by all means grab it but I’d hesitate to pay any more. I certainly would not pay more than a dollar for the Alpha Video disc. Even at that price it's a dubious buy.

Out of the Unknown, season 1 (1965)

In the early 1960s Irene Shubik had been story editor on a British ABC science fiction TV series called Out of This World. This was when Sydney Newman was head of drama at Britain’s ABC Television. A few years later both Newman and Shubik had moved to the BBC and Shubik suggested doing a similar anthology series but with stories based on the works of well-known science fiction writers. The result was Out of the Unknown, with Shubik producing. The series was successful enough to last for four seasons although that didn’t stop the BBC from junking most of the series a few years later. Twenty episodes survived the holocaust and have now been released on DVD by the BFI.

The episodes were originally to have 75-minute running times. Shubik (fortunately) persuaded the BBC to cut that back to 60 minutes. In fact 60 minutes is still just a little too long for most of the stories - in retrospect 50 minutes might have been preferable.

As you would expect in an anthology series it’s a bit hit and miss. Some of the hits are very impressive while some of the misses are spectacularly bad.

The idea of basing the series on published novels and short stories had some merit although it caused problems. The episode based on a Ray Bradbury story was never able to be repeated because Bradbury had demanded colossal sums of money for each screening. The concept did give the series a veneer of respectability though, which may be why the BBC bought the idea.

The first episode that went to air was No Place Like Earth. It was based on two John Wyndham short stories and normally it’s difficult to go wrong when adapting Wyndham. Unfortunately the result in this case is catastrophically bad and after such a dismal start it’s surprising the series survived. This episode illustrates rather nicely just about every mistake you can make in a television production. It’s excessively talky, there are agonisingly long stretches of incredibly tedious expository dialogue, the pacing is glacial, it’s heavy-handed and inept in its attempts to make political points and in general it’s simply pitifully dull. It’s also very badly acted. The costumes are silly and the special effects are crude. It’s one of the most truly awful pieces of television that it’s ever been my misfortune to encounter.

The plot involves the survivors of the destruction of Earth and the choice between the tyranny of Venus and the apathy of Mars. The attempts to add an anti-colonial message are crude and obvious and irritating. It has one redeeming feature - the opening shot is quite effective in evoking an atmosphere of strangeness and stillness. My advice is to watch the first minute for that one shot and then hit the stop button.

If you’re tempted to give up on this series after this dismal start you’d be making a big mistake. The second episode, Counterfeit Man, is quite superb. A space mission to one of the moons of Jupiter seems to have picked up an extra passenger. At least the ship’s doctor is convinced that one of the crewmen has been replaced by an alien. An alien who is an exact duplicate of the crewman. In fact he’s such a perfect counterfeit that it seems to be impossible ever to prove the doctor’s suspicions. Counterfeit Man benefits from some fine acting by Charles Tingwell and Alex Davion and especially by David Hemmings. The set design is austere but effective. 

Costumes seem to be a real problem in this series - as in the first episode they’re a mixture of the silly and the dull. On the other hand the special effects and the makeup effects are very well done. Philip Broadley’s script (from a story by Alan Nourse) is intelligent and has some nice twists. Director George Spenton-Foster builds the suspense very effectively. A good story well told. If No Place Like Earth is the BBC approach to science fiction at its worst then Counterfeit Man is the same approach at its best.

Stranger in the Family, written by David Campton, is another strong episode. Charles (Richard O’Callaghan) is a young man who is different. He has no fingernails. He also has special powers. He can persuade people to do things. He can persuade people to do absolutely anything. His parents have tried to isolate him from the world but there are people who know about him and they want him. But for what purpose? It’s a creepy little tale but oddly moving as well. O’Callaghan gives a mesmerising performance and gets good support from Justine Lord as an actress with whom he becomes obsessed and Peter Copley as his devoted but increasingly desperate father. This is one of those stories, which enjoyed quite a vogue at the time, about the possible next step in human evolution. There is a bit of 60s silliness about using these powers to stop powers but on the whole it’s a well thought-out and powerful story.

The Dead Past is based on an Isaac Asimov story. It’s a time travel story with a difference. Time travel is impossible but a scientist develops a technology for viewing the past, rather like viewing a movie. His invention is the Chronoscope. The government seems to have developed in the direction of a soft totalitarianism. The government controls all scientific research, in fact all academic research, and access to the Chronoscope is strictly limited. This causes immense frustration to a historian who is determined to prove that the Carthaginians weren’t so terrible after all. He enlists the help of a physicist and they indulge in what is known as intellectual anarchy - unauthorised scientific research. They discover some very curious things about the Chronoscope.

The audio commentary for this episode features two of the original crew including director John Gorrie. Gorrie makes some scathing but very pertinent criticisms of the modern BBC culture.

Time in Advance is based on a story by William Tenn with Edward Judd tuning in a compelling performance. This episode has an intriguing central idea - Edward Judd and Mike Pratt play two pre-criminals. In this future society you can confess to a crime before you commit it, and also serve your sentence before you commit the crime. In this case both these men have served seven years on a penal planet for murder. Now they have been released and have been given a special licence to commit one murder each. Having already served their time they will face no further punishment. Both men have spent seven years being totally obsessed with the murders they plan to carry out. But a lot can change in seven years. It’s a clever idea and the script uses it to examine issues of friendship and betrayal.

The audio commentary for Time in Advance is particularly good with director Peter Sasdy explaining in detail the enormous differences between doing a television program in 1965 and doing television today. In 1965 there was no such thing as post-production on television. Editing on videotape was virtually impossible and was almost never done. A program such as this was done very much in the way live television had been done. The points that Sasdy makes really do put this series in perspective. It’s rather talky and slow-paced by today’s standards but given the way that multi-camera shooting in the studio was done at the time these faults were simply unavoidable. And of course the special effects seem primitive by today’s standards. One of the strengths of this series is that such limitations were taken into account and the stories were chosen because they were the kinds of science fiction stories that required very little in the way of special effects. The focus was on ideas rather than gadgets and on emotions rather than action.

Sasdy also points out, quite correctly, just how effective black-and-white can be for science fiction. In fact in my own view futuristic societies often seem more convincing and more futuristic-looking in black-and-white.

Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come...? by Mike Watts suffers from its inability to surmount the basic silliness of the story. Carnivorous killer plants are probably best left on the printed page. When attempts are made to visualise them onscreen it’s very difficult to avoid an Addams Family feel.

Sucker Bait was adapted by Meade Roberts from an Isaac Asimov short story. A spacecraft has been sent to investigate the possibilities of colonising a planet. An attempt had been made a century earlier to colonise the planet. After apparently thriving for three years the colonists all died under circumstance that were never explained. This new mission includes the expected collection of scientist but also includes a mnemonic. At this point in the distant future humanity has become very dependent on computers but experience has shown that computers rather fatally lack the ability to make unexpected intellectual connections and they lack the faculty of imagination. To compensate for this children with odd mental abilities are selected at a very young age and trained to supply those qualities that computers lack. On this mission the mnemonic is Mark Annuncio (Clive  Endersby) and he’s typical of the breed - he is capable of startling and profound insights but he is very difficult to get along with. He’s the type of young man who would today be labelled as having Asperger’s Syndrome.

The story is mainly concerned with the nature and the importance of memory and it succeeds quite well. The beautifully understated performance of noted Australian character actor John Meillon is a major highlight. As is the case with most of these episodes the set design looks a little clunky today but is still quite imaginative.

Some Lapse of Time is unfortunately extremely poor. That’s probably inevitable given that it was based on a short story by John Brunner, a writer noted for his dreary political sermonising. This episode bludgeons the viewer with its anti-nuclear message while the science fictional elements are embarrassingly silly. It’s also let down by a ludicrously histrionic performance by Ronald Lewis. 

Thirteen to Centaurus, based on a J. G. Ballard story, is by contrast a superb story with challenging ideas and extremely well-handled.

Season one closes with The Midas Plague, directed by Peter Sasdy from a Frederik Pohl story. It comes as something of a surprise, being not only a comedy episode but a very good one that combines intelligence with plenty of genuine laughs.

The transfers are, considering the program’s age, remarkably good. More than half the episode come with audio commentaries and they’re almost invariably stimulating and informative.

Despite the unevenness that you expect in an anthology series the first season of Out of the Unknown is fairly impressive. There are a couple of real clunkers but there are quite a few absolute gems and the hits outnumber the misses. The better episodes can stand comparison with any science fiction television from any era. There’s an emphasis on ideas rather than action but happily the ideas are more often than not truly interesting and developed intelligently. In general the scripts are literate and the acting is exceptionally good.

Out of the Unknown is an example of 1960s British television at its best. Highly recommended.

Doctor Who - The Curse of Peladon (1972)

The Curse of Peladon went to air in early 1972 as the second story of season nine of Doctor Who. By this time the Doctor is no longer confined to Earth and he’s just taken the Tardis for a test spin. And gets caught up in some delicate diplomatic negotiations on the planet Peladon.

This somewhat backward planet has applied for membership of a galactic federation. The Doctor rather unexpectedly finds himself acting as the delegate from Earth. With Jo Grant being passed off as a royal observer, Princess Josephine of Tardis.

Among the other delegates are some old foes of the Doctor, the Ice Warriors. But the Ice Warriors have a major surprise in store for the Doctor.

The young and inexperienced king of Peladon (played by David Troughton) is anxious that his planet’s application for membership should be accepted but he faces fierce opposition from his High Priest Hepesh (Geoffrey Toone). Another major obstacle is the past - Peladon is still a society ruled by ritual and superstition. One of the chief superstitions is the belief in the Curse of Peladon, a belief that the legendary Aggedor (a kind of monstrous god) will return to take vengeance on anyone who defies the planet’s traditions.

It soon becomes obvious that there’s dirty work afoot and that someone intends that the meeting of the representatives of the members of the galactic federation should end in failure.

An unusual feature of this serial is that the Doctor gets a fight scene. And not just a fight scene, but a fight to the death with some rather nasty-looking edged weapons. It’s odd to see the Doctor, so often the champion of non-violence, indulging in some pretty enthusiastic violence but then the Third Doctor was never quite so wedded to the non-violence doctrine as some of the other incarnations of the Doctor.

The opening episode shows Jo Grant being quite quick-witted, handling her audience in the throne room rather adroitly. Jo in fact is given plenty to do and she also gets the opportunity to demonstrate considerable physical courage in confronting a monster single-handedly. 

This story features several alien races and a monster. The monster is not quite scary enough. The aliens are more successful. One thing Doctor who has to be given credit for is tying to create genuinely non-human aliens. The delegate from Alpha Centauri, a hermaphrodite hexapod, is a brave attempt that doesn’t quite come off. The delegate from Acturus on the other hand is something of a triumph - a very alien alien indeed. 

The costumes are generally fairly impressive. An interesting point made on the commentary track is that at this stage the Doctor, although he has a very definite fashion look, does not wear exactly the same outfit all the time. In later years the Doctor’s clothes would become a sort of uniform, remaining identical from story to story, which makes it slightly more difficult to take the Doctor seriously as a real person rather than a comic book-type hero.

In general the approach of producer Barry Letts and story editor Terrance Dicks was fairly serious. The tried to make the show the way you would make any ordinary drama series, rather than in the style of a children’s science fiction series. This was a very deliberate decision and it was a correct one. And a very successful one - the early 70s would see Doctor Who’s popularity skyrocketing. 

There are some impressive sets and some very fine model work - the shots of the Tardis plunging off the cliff face are exceptionally well done. This serial is also notable for the subdued lighting, in pleasing contrast to the flat overlit look so common in television of its era.

The performances of the guest stars are effective with David Troughton being very good as the young king of Peladon. Geoffrey Toone makes Hepesh a rather compelling character and certainly far more than just a conventional villain.

As always with the BBC’s Doctor Who DVDs the audio commentaries are a highlight, with producer Barry Letts, story editor Terrance Dicks and star Katy Manning all contributing a good mix of information and amusing anecdotes.

Attempts have been made to see this episode as a commentary on political events of the time such as the UK’s decision to join the Common Market. Some over-enthusiastic fans have even seen the Time Lords as representing the CIA! On the audio commentary both Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks pour scorn on such interpretations, pointing out the dangerous tendency of critics and fans to over-interpret and to find meanings that were never intended.

The Curse of Peladon is on the whole a successful story and thoroughly enjoyable Doctor Who adventure. Recommended.

Carry On Laughing (1975)

Carry On Laughing was A British ATV TV comedy series that was, as its title suggests, an attempt to transfer the formula of the Carry On movies to the small screen. It ran for six episodes in early 1975, followed by a second season of seven episodes later the same year.

By this time the Carry On formula was starting to wear a bit thin on the big screen and some of the regular cast members were starting to drop out. The TV series does at least have some of the established Carry On stars, including Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Connor, Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth. Sadly Kenneth Williams decided against appearing in the TV series.

The results are rather mixed although the series does definitely have its moments. 

Dave Freeman, who had some experience of writing for the Carry On crew, wrote most of the episodes.

The first episode, The Prisoner of Spenda, is of course a spoof of the movie The Prisoner of Zenda (and also of course of the original book by Anthony Hope). In this case the crown prince of Pluritania has not just one double but half a dozen, all played by Sid James. The idea of an Englishman taking over the identity of a European prince is pushed to ludicrous extremes, with moderately funny results. Sid James and Barbara Windsor do their best to overcome the thinness of Dave Freeman’s script and do manage to get a few laughs.

The Baron Outlook, a kind of medieval farce, is rather better. Barbara Windsor is the standout performer but Joan Sims and Sid James do pretty well while Peter Butterworth is amusing as a randy friar who dabbles in alchemy.

With the third episode, The Sobbing Cavalier, the series finally manages to capture the authentic Carry On spirit. Sid James is a luckless cavalier on the run from Oliver Cromwell’s forces although he still manages to find time to pursue maidservant Sarah (Barbara Windsor) although it has to be said she doesn’t seem too anxious to escape his attentions. Joan Sims is the lady of the house reluctantly playing hostess to Cromwell. Peter Butterworth is Cromwell while Jack Douglas is more musing than usual as the country gentleman switching sides continuously as the fortunes of war ebb and flow. Sid James, Barbara Windsor and Joan Sims all have a good deal of fun with this material and the laughs are pleasingly plentiful.

Orgy and Bess continues the historical theme, with Hattie Jacques as Queen Elizabeth I and Sid James as Sir Francis Drake. Kenneth Connor is King Phillip of Spain while Barbara Windsor is a lady-in-waiting of dubious morals. Both The Sobbing Cavalier and Orgy and Bess serve us up a heady diet of double entendres. The humour might be risque but it is undeniably very funny. 

One in the Eye for Harold features very few Carry On regulars and was written by Lew Schwarz who was a fairly prolific TV comedy writer but one with no experience of writing Carry Ons. This one falls very flat and is very heavy going. Schwarz doesn’t seem to understand this style of comedy and most of the cast seem all at sea.

The Nine Old Cobblers spoofs Lord Peter Wimsey, the very popular 1970s series based on the detective stories of Dorothy L. Sayers. This is perhaps the funniest of the season 1 episodes and in fact it’s extremely good. Jack Douglas plays Lord Peter Flimsy while Kenneth Connor is his faithful manservant Punter. The joke is that it’s Punter who actually does all the crime-solving. Kenneth Connor is more restrained than usual, but also funnier. Joan Sims relishes the opportunity to play a role rather different from the shrewish roles in which she was so often typecast. She’s the eccentric Amelia Forbush, a woman with a passion for the drums. Barbara Windsor is the saucy landlady of the local pub and she’s in sparkling form. In this episode everything comes together nicely. It’s clever and it’s very amusing.

So six episodes in this first season, with three being extremely good, two being reasonably OK and only one complete washout. That’s not a bad batting average and suggests that this series (or at least its first season) has been unfairly neglected.

All thirteen episodes (I haven’t had a chance to sample the second season yet) are included as extras in the ITV Studios Home Entertainment Carry On Complete Collection DVD boxed set which includes every one of the Carry On movies. The TV series has also been released on its own by A&E.

If you’re a fan of 1970s British television comedy or of the Carry On movies then Carry On Laughing is definitely worth a look. Recommended.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everybody!

Doctor Who - Enlightenment (1983)

Enlightenment was the third serial in the Guardian trilogy which formed a major part of the twentieth (1983) season of Doctor Who. The trilogy had begun with the excellent Mawdryn Undead and continued with the reasonably good Terminus.

By his time the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) was down to just two companions, Tegan and Turlough.

Enlightenment was writer Barbara Clegg’s only Doctor Who script which is rather a pity since it combines some interesting science fictional ideas with an oddly moving storyline.

The Doctor has received a rather garbled message from the White Guardian. All he knows is that he has to stop someone from winning a race. The Tardis arrives on board an Edwardian racing yacht. The atmosphere on board is subtly disconcerting. None of the crew members can remember coming aboard. The officers are scrupulously polite but seem rather distant and emotionless. The First Mate takes quite a shine to Tegan but his attentions towards her are slightly disturbing. It’s not so much that he doesn’t seem to know how to communicate with a woman - it’s more that he seems unsure how to communicate with a human being. He just doesn’t seem to comprehend emotions.

Pretty soon things become much stranger. The yacht is not a sailing ship - it’s a spaceship. It’s engaged in a race with other spaceships, all of which have the appearance of sailing ships but from a bewildering variety of different time periods. Although they are spaceships they behave like sailing ships. The crews are sent aloft to set the sails. 

This story introduces the Eternals, one of the more interesting alien races in Doctor Who. They normally exist outside of time but the only way they can tolerate the boredom of eternity is by seeking diversion. The only way they can find diversion is by making use of mortals whom they refer to as Ephemerals. In fact the only way they can experience any kind of emotion or excitement or mental stimulation is by raiding the minds of Ephemerals and emotion, excitement and mental stimulation are things they crave with a kind of desperation. The Eternals are not really evil, just entirely amoral. And while they’re frightening and cruel in some ways in other ways they’re more to be pitied. They’re a splendid idea and Enlightenment explores that idea with intelligence and subtlety.

This serial’s other great strength is the concept of sailing ships in space. It’s a concept that has been used before (and since) but it’s never been handled quite as cleverly as this.

This serial is also notable for its visual style. Instead of the uniform overlit very flat style that is so familiar in TV programs of its era Enlightenment is full of shadows and low-key lighting. Director Fiona Cumming was anxious to shoot it this way and to her surprise and delight she found that Fred Wright, the man in charge of the studio lighting, was happy to experiment with moody low-key lighting approaches. Apart from being wonderfully atmospheric and considerable enhancing the story it also gives this serial a rather modern look.

Designer Colin Green helped out with some very good set designs. The costumes are great fun as well with the pressure suits being delightfully bizarre. Janet Fielding was also given the opportunity to look rather stunning in an Edwardian evening gown although her dress caused a certain amount of controversy by being excessively “provocative” - and considering the truly stupendous amount of cleavage she’s displaying that’s not entirely surprising. It does at least give us the chance to see a remarkably sexy and very feminine Tegan.

The support cast is mostly very strong, with Keith Barron being particularly good as the icily courteous but slightly creepy captain of of the yacht and Christopher Brown being even more disturbing as First Mate Marriner. Lynda Baron perhaps goes too far over-the-top as the captain of The Buccaneer.

Mark Strickson as Turlough gets to do a bit of actual acting while Janet Fielding as Tegan underplays her performance nicely. This is one serial in which Tegan comes across as a very sympathetic and rather likeable character. Peter Davison is as solid as ever.

Enlightenment is included in the Guardian Trilogy DVD boxed set and the BBC really went to town with the extras on this release. Apart from some good featurettes and an excellent audio commentary by Peter Davison, Mark Strickson, director Fiona Cumming and writer Barbara Clegg we also get (on a second disc) a completely re-edited feature film-length version of Enlightenment with new CGI special effects. 

Unfortunately this new version has been matted to make it appear widescreen and the results are very similar to the horrific results we used to see with pan-and-scanned widescreen movies. The framing in many scenes is terribly wrong, sometimes ludicrously so, with the Doctor’s head totally lopped off in one scene. The CGI effects do look very good. I personally dislike CGI because it always looks so fake but in a Doctor Who story about sailing ships in space it isn’t a major problem. The re-editing does remove some of the obvious padding but it also tends to dissipate the effect of the episode cliff-hangers.

The idea of trying to re-edit an 80s Doctor Who serial to appeal to modern audiences is not however an entirely bad idea (although not to my personal taste) and the result is certainly infinitely superior to any of the episodes of the horrible 21st century Doctor Who series.

The original four-part Enlightenment serial is well-written, well-made, well-acted and visually pleasing and includes some excellent ideas. An impressive example of 1980s Doctor Who at its best. Highly recommended.

Danger Man, season one (1960)

In the 1950s Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment had enjoyed great success with their various historical adventure TV series. By the beginning of the 60s that formula was starting to wear a bit thin. Danger Man, which premiered in 1960, came along at exactly the right moment. Danger Man was the first of the classic 1960s TV spy series and proved to be both highly successful and immensely influential.

The series appeared two years before the first of the Bond movies so it has some claims to have been the starting point for the whole 1960s spy craze.

The series had an odd production history. 39 half-hour episodes were broadcast in 1960 and 1961. Despite its popularity there was then a three-year hiatus. The series was then revived and 47 one-hour episodes went to air between 1964 and 1967. There were significant differences between the first season and the later hour-long episodes. Although the hero is still called John Drake it’s not even entirely clear that he’s the same character. In fact the differences are sufficient in some ways to make it advisable to consider the later seasons to be a separate, albeit related, series.

The identity of the hero is an intriguing question indeed. Apart from the two incarnations of Danger Man Patrick McGoohan went on to play another spy in the cult favourite series The Prisoner. In the half-hour Danger Man series John Drake works for an unnamed international agency. He is a secret agent of indeterminate nationality. This was easy enough since McGoohan was born in the United States, raised in Ireland and lived in England and therefore had a conveniently indeterminate accent. In the revived hour-long Danger Man series he again plays a secret agent named John Drake but now he is clearly British and works for a British intelligence agency. So is he in fact the same man? And there has always been speculation that the unnamed character he played in The Prisoner was actually John Drake. So did he play three different spies, or two, or only one?

What is not  in dispute is that playing television spies proved to be a wildly successful career move for McGoohan, lifting him from obscurity and making him for a time the most highly paid actor on British television. 

McGoohan was a man with very strong views, deeply religious and with very clearly defined moral principles. He insisted on having these views taken into consideration. He would not countenance any hint of sexual promiscuity and he insisted that the violence should be kept within very strict bounds. You might think this would have caused major problems but oddly enough it seems to have worked in the series’ favour. Since the writers could not rely on resolving everything with a climactic shootout they had to put a bit more thought into their scripts. It also gave the series a definite flavour of its own. John Drake was a complex character, not always entirely happy with the things he had to do in the line of duty.

The first season was sufficiently successful to put McGoohan into the running for the rôle of James Bond in the first of the Bond movies. McGoohan however decided that playing Bond was incompatible with his moral views. While McGoohan became a major 1960s pop culture icon the actor did not really approve of the 1960s, believing that society had begun a downward slide into moral degeneracy (and  of course he turned out to be quite correct in his assessment).

The creator and producer of Danger Man was Ralph Smart, an Australian with considerable experience producing, directing and writing for both feature films and television. Smart had worked on several earlier ITC television series and had produced The Invisible Man for them in 1959, a series that was closer to being a spy series than a science fiction series.

It was Smart and McGoohan who were primarily responsible for setting the tone of Danger Man. It was rather unusual at that time for an actor to have that sort of input but McGoohan was an unusual actor. Danger Man would also give McGoohan his first chance to try his hand at directing.

The half-hour format had its weaknesses but in the hands of competent writers it had its advantages. At its best it made for fast-moving and tightly focused television.

John Drake is a professional secret agent although at times he does a little unofficial freelancing. In the episode Position of Trust (which features a delightful guest starring performance by Donald Pleasence) Drake is acting as a vigilante to break up a drug smuggling racket.

Smart was obviously keen not to get locked into doing too many straight Cold War stories. The idea was to have plenty of variety in the settings, and plenty of variety in the bad guys Drake would come up against. There are very few Russian spies in this series. Most of the stories are set in fictional countries with Drake having to deal with corrupt, incompetent or obstructive local authorities. The series relies entirely on stock footage and a bit of atmospheric set dressing (it’s amazing what you can do with a few potted palms) to convince us that John Drake is in a different country each week. This was the standard technique of the time and generally works quite satisfactorily even if some of the accents are rather mysterious.

The Island sees Drake is escorting two prisoners, professional assassins. They cause the aircraft to crash near an island. There’s only one person living on the island, a hermit with a gun. The action takes place entirely on the island. This is one episode that entirely fails to convince us that it’s not taking place in the studio but it’s an amusing little tale.

Find and Return is one of several episodes guest starring Donald Pleasence. Drake has to bring a woman back from a Middle Eastern country to face charges of high treason. Drake does the job but finds himself feeling sorry for the woman. His sympathy for her tempts him in this case to break the rules. The Gallows Tree is another fine episode that puts John Drake once again in a situation where duty may not be entirely compatible with humanity. This is a very grown-up series that does not disguise the fact that a secret agent’s job can involve some genuine moral quandaries.

Position of Trust sees Drake acting as a lone wolf (and a bit of a vigilante) to fight drug traffickers. Quite appropriate, given Patrick McGoohan’s intense dislike of the way society was heading in the 1960s.

The Girl Who Liked GI's involves an American serviceman murdered in Germany. He’d ben working on a top-secret missile project so both the West German security services and the Americans are worried. As is NATO, who have assigned John Drake to the case. The serviceman had been dating a German girl. Was she involved in espionage? Was the American soldier a spy? Drake will find the answers.

The episode Vacation was McGoohan’s first attempt at directing and he does a solid job. Drake is just about to enjoy his first vacation for four years but an apparently innocent encounter with an American businessman on the plane changes all that. Drake finds himself taking the place of a hired killer but the identity of the target is the first puzzle. The identity of the client is the second part of the puzzle.

The Conspirators comes as something of a surprise, with quite a bit of fairly impressive location shooting - a very unusual feature for a British series of this era. The Honeymooners is one of the rare episodes that really does suffer from the half-hour format. By the time the exciting climax is set up the episode had simply run out of time. It’s a tribute to the quality of the writing for this series that such failures are so very rare.

The A&E DVD boxed set boasts fairly good transfers. Some British series of this era have not survived not in the best of condition but Danger Man is one of the lucky ones, surviving in its entirety and still looking pretty good.

Danger Man still holds up extremely well. It’s an intelligent and stylish action adventure series and it certainly deserves its iconic status. One of the absolutely essential British series of the 1960s. Very highly recommended.