Mr Rose (1967), season one

Detective Chief Inspector Charles Rose, played by William Mervyn, had featured in two early 60s British crime drama TV series, The Odd Man and It’s Dark Outside. In 1967 the character was given his own series, Mr Rose, created by Philip Mackie (one of the best British television writers of that period when it came to offbeat crime dramas).

Chief Inspector Rose has now retired but it seems unlikely to be a quiet retirement. His interest in crime is still keen as ever and now he is free to pursue crime-solving as a hobby rather than a profession. 

He is also keen to write his memoirs, something that should prove to pleasingly lucrative. He has hopes that his book will be serialised in one of the quality newspapers, or if he is particularly fortunate in one of the more disreputable papers which tend to be pay even better. In the opening episode, The Bright Bomber, he finds that someone is taking a very keen interest indeed in his literary endeavours. In fact someone is prepared to pay a great deal of money to induce him to reveal certain facts about one of his most famous cases, that of Bomber Bolt. And someone else is prepared to take literary criticism to even greater extremes - they are prepared to kill over it. The Bright Bomber was written by Philip Mackie and it has a delightfully twisted plot which hinges on the contrasting moral frameworks of policemen and criminals.

The writing of Rose’s memoirs is a thread that runs through season one. Or it might be more accurate to say - the non-writing of Rose’s memoirs. Mr Rose likes the idea of writing this book. He also likes the idea of being paid handsomely for it - he has already accepted a generous advance from a Sunday newspaper for the serialisation rights. The idea of actually sitting down and writing the book is however rather less appealing. It might turn out to involve work. Mr Rose is not overly fond of work. And having inherited a considerable sum of money from some elderly and wealthy aunts he is very comfortably provided for and thus has little incentive to apply nose to the grindstone. Despite the best efforts of his keen and efficient personal secretary Miss Drusilla Lamb (Gillian Lewis), whom he has employed specifically to assist him in his literary endeavours, it seems increasingly unlikely that his memoirs will ever see the light of day.

The memoirs do however serve an important purpose for both Mr Rose and for the series. The fact that it is known that the famous detective is writing them proves to be the factor that sets the plots in motion, most of the plots having to do with famous cases that turn out not to be closed after all.

The episode The Naked Emperor plunges Mr Rose into a mystery involving the owner and publisher of The Sunday World, the very newspaper in which the memoirs are to be serialised. In The Noble Roman the prospect of the intended publication of the book prompts a figure from the past, a man who had played a central role in an unsolved case,  to contact Mr Rose.  

The stories are generally murder mysteries but not always conventional examples of the breed. Murder is not always straightforward. 

The Jolly Swagman has a classic traditional English detective story plot which could have come straight out of the 1930s. It’s a story of robbery on the high seas and it’s a delight. The Unquiet Ghost sees Mr Rose arrested for murder, and once again it’s those memoirs that land him in trouble.

The Bad Halfpenny shows that Mr Rose is quite capable of fighting dirty, albeit in a good cause.

The Tin God is especially good. Another old case returns to haunt Mr Rose, a scandal involving a television personality and the death of a young woman. It’s all a matter of accepting responsibility and choosing to do one’s duty, concepts that might seem old-fashioned to modern audiences but in fact as this story makes clear such things always do matter. Both the TV personality and Mr Rose find themselves in situations where such things matter very much indeed, but which of them will be equal to the challenge? This episode is notable for a guest appearance by a very young Judy Geeson, later to become a significant star of some excellent 1970s cult movies.

In this first season Mr Rose has two invaluable assistants, John Halifax (Donald Webster) and Drusilla Lamb (Gillian Lewis). John Halifax is an ex-burglar. Chief Inspector Rose was the man who sent him to prison. Halifax is now his butler, chauffeur, cook and right-hand man and a most useful, resourceful and fiercely loyal assistant in Rose’s amateur crime-fighting activities. Drusilla Lamb is his private secretary although she also joins in Rose’s amateur detective adventures.

The scripts are witty and clever. These were the days when British television series were shot almost entirely in the studio, more or less live, and with minimal location shooting. This could produce a very claustrophobic feel but that’s not the case, possibly because the overall tone is light and breezy but the expansive performances also help.

The larger-than-life performances of the three principals make no concessions to realism. In fact the series as a whole makes no such concessions. The late 1960s would mark the beginnings of British television’s obsession with gritty realism but there are no signs of any such qualities here. This is pure light-hearted fun with outrageously outlandish storylines. The various guest performers take their cues from the three leads, giving over-the-top and deliciously overripe performances.

Network’s season one DVD set offers transfers that are as good as can be expected given the condition of the source materials. We’re lucky the series survived at all. Both picture and quality are quite acceptable.

Mr Rose is superb sparkling television viewing, intelligent and amusing and always entertaining. It’s like eating chocolate cake washed down with champagne - it might not be good for you but it’s hugely enjoyable. Very highly recommended.

books that inspired cult TV series

Some of the best cult TV series of the 60s and 70s were based on literary sources. Since I also have a book blog, Vintage Pop Fictions, specialising in popular literature of the past (what could be described as Cult Literature), I thought a post on some of these literary sources might be in order (with links to my reviews).

The best-known example undoubtedly is The Saint, based on Leslie Charteris’s phenomenally successful novels and short stories chronicling the adventures of the daring rogue Simon Templar. The Simon Templar of the early Saint books is very different from the character familiar to us from the TV series - he’s both more whimsical and more ruthless and at the same time more cocky and self-confident. And while he’s unquestionably on the side of the angels it’s also much more clear that he has not always been on the right side of the law. These early Saint books like The Saint Meets his Match (originally published in 1931 as She Was a Lady), The Saint Closes the Case (AKA The Last Hero) and The Avenging Saint (originally published in 1930 under the title Knight Templar) are enormous fun.

In the late 1940s the character went through a metamorphosis. The Saint of the later stories is a bit older, a bit wiser and a bit sadder. He still feels the lure of adventure and he’s still the scourge of the ungodly but one gets the feeling that he is just a little lonely. The tone of the 60s television series is very much derived from these later story collections such as The Saint on the Spanish Main. Roger Moore captures the spirit of late-period Simon Templar remarkably well. One gets the feeling in these stories that Simon Templar is not quite at home in the new post-war world, which makes the 1960s setting of the television show even more interesting since Templar is definitely not a man of the 60s. 

The Baron was a series with obvious similarities to The Saint and the books (by the incredibly prolific John Creasey) which inspired this series were also somewhat close to the spirit of the Saint books. Judging by the first of the books, Meet the Baron, the TV series seems to have had little in common with its literary source!

Ellery Queen was another notable writer to have a television series based on his work (although Ellery Queen was of course two people, Frederic Dannay and his cousin Manfred Bennington Lee). In fact there were several Ellery Queen TV series but it's probably the 1975-76 Ellery Queen series that will be best remembered by most people. It's set in the late 1940s (actually 1947) but seems fairly close in tone to the early Ellery Queen novels of the 1930s, which happen to be some of the best detective stories of their era. Of the novels The French Powder Mystery and The Dutch Shoe Mystery are particularly good and The Greek Coffin Mystery is even better. The slightly later The Siamese Twin Mystery saw the authors moving into more bizarre territory but still with the same breath-taking mastery of plotting. The Egyptian Cross Mystery goes even further, being at times positively macabre.

Back in the late 50s Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (the one with Darren McGavin as Hammer) was a surprisingly successful attempt to bring the works of this most controversial of crime writers to the small screen. Spillane created a sensation with his first novel I, the Jury in 1947. My Gun is Quick, Vengeance Is Mine! and Kiss Me, Deadly are all worth reading. Be warned though - they are much more violent than the series and very politically incorrect. 

These are of course only a small proportion of the many novels that made it to TV in this era. There are countless other examples. Several of Dorothy L. Sayers' stories such as The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club were adapted very successfully for the 1970s Lord Peter Wimsey series.

It's intriguing to note the sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic, differences between the original books and their TV incarnations. In some cases the changes are for the better (I personally think Lord Peter Wimsey works better on TV). In other cases the changes are not so successful (The Baron being the obvious example). 

Sherlock Holmes (1954)

The 1954 Sherlock Holmes television series was made for the American market but filmed in France. Producer Sheldon Reynolds (who also wrote many of the episodes) wanted to present a slightly different view of the great detective - Holmes as a young man, more human, more fallible, already egotistical and eccentric but a warmer more affable kind of character.

He was fortunate enough to find exactly the right actor. Ronald Howard, the son of the great English actor Leslie Howard, was enthusiastic. Like his more famous father Ronald Howard was inclined to underplay, an unusual approach for an actor playing Sherlock Holmes but one that worked quite successfully. Howard also has the necessary twinkle in his eye - his Holmes regards the world with a kind of benevolent amusement.

Reynolds was just as lucky with his choice of actor for the role of Dr Watson. Howard Marion Crawford was a wonderful character actor and was very keen to play Watson. He plays him as a bluff hearty cheerful type, less of a fool than Nigel Bruce’s Watson in the Universal movies but still providing a certain amount of comic relief.

The other regular cast member was Archie Duncan as Inspector Lestrade. He plays him as a conscientious but unimaginative policeman - a man who does his best within his limitations. He also provides some humour but without being a mere figure of fun.

The series is, not surprisingly given the era in which it was made, very studio-bound. That really doesn’t matter too much - I’ve always thought of the Sherlock Holmes stories as taking place in a London of the imagination anyway. The sets and the costumes are very good. Sheldon Reynolds got hold of Michael Weight, who had been responsible for the construction of the Sherlock Holmes exhibit at the Festival of Britain, to supervise the construction of the Baker Street sets at the Epinay-sur-Seine studio and to ensure that the set decoration was as authentic as possible. As a result this series looks quite impressive and quite expensive (which it was).

A few episodes were based on Conan Doyle stories but most were original tales (although often inspired by events from the stories in the Conan Doyle canon). The aim was to try to give these original stories an authentically Holmesian touch and for the most part they succeed. The crimes are mostly solved using the methods you’d expect Sherlock Holmes to employ. The half hour format was a bit limiting but most of the episodes are thoroughly enjoyable.

The Case of the Shy Ballerina is fairly typical. The main clue is a handwritten note. A man like Holmes can tell a great deal about a person from their handwriting but in this instance what it tells him puzzles him a great deal. It just doesn’t fit.

The Case of the Winthrop Legend is in the style of the various Conan Doyle stories dealing with apparently supernatural events. A family curse seems destined to claim yet another victim. Holmes is however more than a little sceptical about family curses.

There are a few episodes that are mainly for laughs, such as The Case of Harry Crocker. Fortunately it really is quite amusing, a tale of a music hall escape artist accused of murder, who naturally keeps on escaping ever time Inspector Lestrade arrests him. And it does have a decent enough detection plot as well. It also illustrates one of the series’ odd endearing features. Since it was filmed in France they used a lot of French actors in guest roles. Eugene Deckers, who appears in this episode and several others, was a fine actor but his accent is priceless - a bizarre mix of a Cockney and a French accent. 

The Case of the Shoeless Engineer is unusual in including some actual location shooting, and it’s a fun episode involving counterfeiters, a beautiful mute girl and a hapless engineer who loses a shoe and can consider him very fortunate that that’s all he lost. The Case of the Split Ticket provides an amusing instance of the over-confidence and inexperience of the younger Holmes - his demonstrations of sleight-of-hand very nearly land him in prison. Luckily his skills improve sufficiently to allow him to solve the mystery of a missing sweepstakes ticket.   

The Case of the Red Headed League is a rare episode based directly on a Conan Doyle story, in fact one of the most celebrated of his Sherlock Holmes stories. It works quite well.

Ronald Howard not only enjoyed playing Holmes, he also thoroughly enjoyed the relaxed working practices of a French television studio - starting work at noon proved to be a very agreeable experience.

The series was very well received, both by critics and the public.

Unfortunately this series has passed into the public domain. The prints are in acceptable condition but far from pristine. That’s a pity because the producers went to a lot of trouble to get the look of the show right and it really deserves a decent restoration. Mill Creek’s three-disc set includes all thirty-nine episodes. It’s inexpensive and quite watchable. It also includes a very brief introduction by Sir Christopher Lee, a very keen Sherlock Holmes fan. There are various other public domain DVD releases of the series.

It’s the two leads who make this series so enjoyable. Their performances mesh perfectly while at the same time they bring something quite distinctive to the characters.

A very entertaining series that manages to capture the Sherlock Holmes spirit while also presenting the great detective in a fresh and original manner. Highly recommended.

Callan, the 1974 movie

I’ve posted a review of the 1974 Callan movie at my cult movies blog. While it’s not quite as good as the television series it’s still well worth seeing.

It is of course an extended colour remake of the original black-and-white pilot episode for the series, A Magnum for Schneider. And it does feature Edward Woodward and Russell Hunter, although sadly not Anthony Valentine (whose presence is sorely missed).

Here’s the link to the review.

Jason King (1971-72)

Jason King was in many ways a TV series that nobody wanted. Lew Grade, the head of ITC who owned the show, hated it from the word go. Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner, who were responsible for making it, thought it was a dubious idea. And star Peter Wyngarde had serious misgivings about it. In fact it’s a series that probably never have been made. With Department S having been extremely successful the obvious thing for ITC to have done would have been to commission another season of a proven success. That was not how Lew Grade saw it.

Grade always seems to have had a tendency not to follow up on obvious success. His bizarre decision in 1967 to commission Gerry Anderson to do a brand new series (Captain Scarlet) rather than another season of the immensely successful Thunderbirds was an early example of this trend and a decade later he cancelled The Return of the Saint after a single season even though it was a hit. Grade had never particularly liked Department S and he actively disliked Peter Wyngarde. Wyngarde claims that Grade told him that her was only giving the go-ahead for Jason King because his wife loved the character so much. 

Grade also at times seems to have had trouble understanding why his popular series were popular. It was obvious to everyone else that one of the main reasons Department S was a winner was that the three lead characters (and the three lead performers) balanced each other so perfectly. Jason King was indeed the most popular character with the public but that was because he provided the spice in a well-balanced dish. Too much Jason King was likely to be too much of a good thing. And so it proved. 

An equally ill-considered decision was to shoot the series in 16mm rather than 35mm. This made the series immensely difficult to sell in the US. It also meant that a series that relied on colour and glamour ended up looking cheap and shoddy.

Jason King also represented a change in format compared to Department S. Whereas Department S (like its non-ITC contemporary Special Branch) had been a clever blending of the secret agent and crime genres Jason King put much less emphasis on the secret agent side of things. Jason no longer works for Department S. He is now more or less a freelance amateur crime-fighter, although he does on occasions get inveigled into doing jobs for intelligence agencies. 

Jason King in fact belongs to the 1920s and 1930s British thriller tradition of wealthy amateurs for whom solving crimes is an amusing hobby and whose crime-fighting overlaps with the world of espionage. This is the world of Bulldog Drummond and The Saint, of Dornford Yates and Berkeley Gray, but with 1970s fashions (and social attitudes).

The 1970s social attitudes are crucial. Of all the TV heroes of that era Jason King is the most cheerfully irresponsible and hedonistic. He makes Simon Templar look like a prude. Simon Templar was a 1950s hero in a 1960s world. Jason King is a 1970s hero in a 1970s world. Jason King marks the high water mark of the Permissive Society. But not quite - Jason King is no hippie. He has no interest in changing the world. He certainly has no interest in challenging the consumer society. King is the epitome of conspicuous consumption. He is rich and he enjoys the good life. So did Simon Templar, but Simon Templar had a sense of duty. The Saint had made a lot of money (perhaps not entirely honestly) but he sees wealth and a sense of duty to society as being two sides of the same coin. Jason King undertakes crime-fighting and occasionally espionage because it amuses and entertains him.

In the Jason King series the character becomes even more flamboyant and outrageous than he’d been in Department S. In fact while Department S trod a fine line between seriousness and parody Jason King descends into pure parody. That’s the weakness of the series but it’s also its principal charm. Jason King is so deliriously over-the-top that it almost works. More surprisingly, quite often it really does work. For all its faults it has to be admitted that it’s often a great deal of fun. 

The series is also quite clever in the way it deliberately mixes up fiction and reality. Jason King is the author of the fabulously successful Mark Caine crime thrillers and at times he finds himself living out the plots of his own novels. We’re never quite sure if Jason is really capable of distinguishing himself from his fictional creation, just as we’re never quite sure if Peter Wyngarde is playing himself or Jason King. Other characters seem to be equally incapable of telling Jason apart from his fictional detective. At its best the series carries off this ploy with considerable wit and panache.

Most of those involved with the show felt that the quality of the scripts was not quite up to the standards of Department S. Generally speaking that’s true. There’s nothing here to compare to the brilliance of Department S episodes like The Man in the Elegant Room or The Pied Piper of Hambledown. There are however some quite good Jason King episodes - The Constance Missal, Toki, As Easy as A.B.C. and the two-parter All That Glisters are all  excellent. To Russia - with Panache (in which Jason finds himself working for the Kremlin) is fun.

And then of course there are the clothes. Nobody but Peter Wyngarde could get away with wearing such clothes. Jason King likes to surround himself with beautiful things, although his ideas on fashion and interior decoration are somewhat idiosyncratic and outrageously 1970s. He also likes to be surrounded by beautiful women and the series is not lacking in glamour, especially with actresses like Ingrid Pitt appearing as guest stars.

I own the old Region 4 Umbrella DVD boxed set. The transfers are decidedly iffy but that is probably due to the source materials - a series shot on 16mm is never going to look as good as one shot on 35mm. The series has also been released in Region 2 by Network.

Jason King is an indulgence, a guilty pleasure if you like, but it does have a great deal of style. It also has Peter Wyngarde at his most deliciously excessive (and no-one ever did excess quite as well as Wyngarde did). For all its flaws it’s remarkably enjoyable, and it’s certainly distinctive. Highly recommended.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (season one, 1955)

I bought the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on DVD recently. I already have the third season and I’ve watched quite a few episodes of that but I thought it might be worthwhile going back to very first episode of the first season. And it was.

Anthology series were all the rage during the 50s and early 60s. The most famous anthology series was The Twilight Zone but the most successful by far at the time was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It ran for seven seasons as a half-hour series (for a total of 268 episodes), then after a name change to The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ran another three seasons in an hour-long format.

The very first episode, Revenge, was one of the seventeen half-hour episodes Hitchcock directed himself. Does that make a difference? I think it does. The other directors who worked on this series were all very competent and some were very good indeed. Revenge though includes a few shots that seem just a little bit better thought-out than you generally expect from series television. 

It’s a nice little story of the kind that appealed to Hitchcock. Not quite black comedy, but getting close to that territory. A newly married couple have moved to California where the husband, Carl (Ralph Meeker) has just landed a job at an aircraft factory. His wife Elsa (Vera Miles) is recovering from a “nervous breakdown” and she’s still a bit fragile. Carl goes off  to work but when he returns home he finds to his horror that Elsa has been assaulted. This being 1950s network television the word rape is not used but it’s certainly implied strongly enough to leave us in no doubt. Carl is determined to get revenge but things don’t work out the way he expects. To say any more would be to risk giving away spoilers. 

It was a fine episode to start a new TV series which of course went on to be enormously successful (and made Hitchcock a household name to an extent that no other director has ever achieved). Hitch’s intro shows him already getting into his stride as a TV personality. His celebrity status is something he enjoyed very much.

The second episode, Premonition, is a nicely twisted tale and a perfect follow-up to the strong opening episode. Famous composer Kim Stanger returns to his hometown after a very long absence. His return was prompted by vague premonitions and these become steadily more troubling. He is anxious to see his father again but learns that he is too late - his father is dead. The accounts of his father’s death given by other family members and friends just don’t seem to add up. Kim is determined to find out what really happened, and he does. And he finds out why nobody wanted to tell him the truth. This is the sort of story at which this series excelled, darkly ironic and with a nasty little sting in the tail.

The third episode, Triggers in Leash, is about two gunfighters in the Wild West, each  determined to kill the other. The woman who runs the town’s eatery is equally determined to stop them from doing so, which she does by a very ingenious method. It’s an amusing little story. This is followed by Don't Come Back Alive. Frank Partridge and his wife are getting on in years and their financial position is far from secure. They hatch a brilliant plan to swindle  their life insurance company by pretending the wife is dead. The only problem is that without a body they will have to wait seven years after which she will be assumed to be legally dead and the husband can claim the money. For seven years the husband is harassed by a very determined insurance investigator. Again the tone is bleakly ironic and the final payoff packs a very nice little punch.

The sixth episode is another very strong story, Salvage. Gene Barry plays a mobster who has just been released from prison. He is determined to avenge his brother’s death by killing the woman he believes was responsible. He is about to kill her when he realises he’d be doing her a favour. What happens next is exactly the sort of vicious twist that this series specialised in.

The seventh episode, Breakdown, was another episode that Hitchcock directed himself. Joseph Cotten is a hard-driving businessman who believes in never showing weakness. Then he is involved in a horrific traffic accident. We see what follows entirely from his point of view. It’s a good story but what makes this one special is Hitchcock’s extraordinarily bold and experimental approach to telling the story. Most of the episode looks almost like a series of still images but it’s a brilliantly effective technique, and wildly innovative for 1950s television. 

The Case of Mr. Pelham is another Hitchcock-directed episode. It’s interesting in being a very rare episode with a genuine hint of the supernatural, something this series was generally scrupulous in avoiding.

The stories were often by very celebrated writers indeed. Our Cook's a Treasure, in which a realtor suspects his new cook might be a serial killer, is based on a story by Dorothy L. Sayers. Shopping for Death was written by Ray Bradbury and is an example of his writing at its best. 

The Older Sister is a potentially interesting take on the infamous Lizzie Borden case but it’s one of the rare episodes in this series that falls rather flat. It’s just too obvious and doesn’t really go anywhere.

Season one comprised no less than 39 episodes and the high standard is maintained to a remarkable degree. The tricky thing with an anthology series is to establish a consistent tone. The series has to have its own distinctive flavour. In this case that flavour had to be characteristically Hitchcockian - dark sardonic stories with a nasty sting in the tail and a touch of black comedy. This is achieved quite successfully. This was made easier by the fact that producer Joan Harrison had worked with Hitchcock for many years. She knew his style and his approach and she made sure the stories reflected this. All story ideas had to be approved by Hitchcock and he had to OK the final scripts. He made a few changes but he did this only occasionally - he trusted the people involved the series and there was no need for him to try to micro-manage proceedings.

TV networks in the 50s insisted that criminals should never be allowed to get away with their crimes. This series got around this rather neatly by having cynical endings and then having Hitchcock appear at the end to assure us that the perpetrator got their just desserts, but he always did so in such a way that the audience was well aware that this was merely a device to placate the network.

The enormous success of the series blazed the trail for other anthology series such as Thriller, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Alfred Hitchcock Presents has stood the test of time better than most such series. The stories hold up well, there’s a definite cynical edge to them and the quality is there. 

The DVD boxed sets are very good but be warned - the text intros tend to give away spoilers so it’s a good idea to avoid them.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents was innovative and quite daring for its time and it remains superb television. Very highly recommended.

Joe 90 (1968)

Joe 90 was the last of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s science fiction TV series to be filmed entirely using puppets. His next series, The Secret Service, used a mix of puppets and live action. Joe 90 originally aired in Britain in late 1968 and early 1969 and was syndicated in the US in 1969.

Joe 90 represented something of a departure from the earlier Anderson Supermarionation series, being a blend of science fiction and spy thriller concepts.

The series did not do quite as well as earlier series. There are several possible reasons for this. Ironically the sheer technical sophistication of the series may have counted against it. The previous Anderson series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, had introduced the new-style puppets with realistic human proportions. The puppets were now extraordinarily life-like but they lacked the character and the charm of the older-style puppets used in series like Thunderbirds. This had not been a huge problem in Captain Scarlet with its very dark and brooding tone but it does take some of the fun away in Joe 90.

Joe 90 also suffers from having one of the worst introductory episodes in history. While it does the job of introducing the characters and explaining the background it makes use of a certain plot technique that is just about certain to have most viewers looking for a housebrick to hurl through the TV screen. It’s also the kind of thing that is likely to make viewers suspect that it might turn up again in later episodes. And, unfortunately, it does turn up again, in the very poor episode Three’s a Crowd.

This is a pity because in fact the series as a whole is not all that bad, although it is very uneven.

The central premise is clever, although it has to be said that it's also slightly disturbing. Professor Ian McClaine has invented a machine called BIGRAT which can record a person’s brain patterns and then implant those brain patterns into someone else’s brain. BIGRAT can give any person all the skills and knowledge of any other person. Not surprisingly the World Intelligence Network (WIN) is very interested in this invention. Professor Ian McClaine demonstrates the technique on his nine-year-old son Joe.

WIN super spymaster Sam Loover then comes up with a daring plan. Young Joe can be turned into a truly formidable secret agent. He can be given the skills and knowledge most suited for any mission and he will have the perfect cover - no-one is going to suspect a nine-year-old boy of being a secret agent!

Of course you’d have to wonder whether anyone would agree to have his nine-year-old son sent on incredibly dangerous undercover spy missions but Professor MacClaine rather surprisingly thinks it’s all a splendid idea. Joe McClaine becomes Joe 90, WIN’s Most Special Agent.

Another problem with this series is Professor MacClaine’s jet car. The futuristic aircraft and vehicles in the earlier Gerry Anderson series had always managed to look not just futuristic but sleek, sexy and at least vaguely plausible. And never silly. The jet car in Joe 90 by contrast does look a bit silly and a bit dorky. Gerry Anderson was very unhappy with the design, and rightly so.

By the time Joe 90 entered production Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s team had become extraordinarily technically proficient. The puppets really do look quite life-like. The models of aircraft and vehicles had always looked good but the production team were now able to make them move in a fairly convincing manner. Aircraft really do look like they’re flying. And of course the explosions, which had always been impressive, were now very impressive indeed.

Being essentially a spy thriller series with some science fiction trappings Joe 90 obviously has a different feel compared to Anderson’s earlier series. That’s a good thing in some ways although I do get the impression the writers were less comfortable in the spy genre. Finding story-lines in which a nine-year-old boy (even with expert knowledge) could plausibly play the leading role was a challenge and some of the stories have an edge of silliness. This silliness had been an occasional feature of the very early Anderson series that had largely disappeared by the time he did Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet (in which the standard of writing was generally quite high). To my way of thinking the Joe 90 episodes penned by Shane Rimmer (such as Splashdown, Relative Danger and Big Fish) are more action-oriented and closer in feel to the great Anderson series of the past.

Tony Barwick contributed the dreadful Three’s a Crowd but he also wrote Hi-Jacked (which  is a fun gangster tale) and International Concerto (which includes a clever use of Joe’s abilities). The Unorthodox Shepherd (another Barwick episode) experiments with the use of actual location shooting mixed with the miniatures work, a feature that would be taken much further in the next Anderson series, The Secret Service.

The idea of doing something a bit lighter after the very dark Captain Scarlet was not altogether bad but on the whole Joe 90 was a backward step. Each previous Gerry Anderson series had been just a touch more grown-up than the previous one, which made sense since the kids who’d started out watching Supercar back in 1961 were now that much older. Having a nine-year-old boy as the central character made Joe 90 seem more kiddie-oriented, perhaps just a little too much so. The idea of doing a spy series rather than a straightforward sci-fi series was also by no means bad but it doesn’t quite come off. 

Joe 90 has its moments but after Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet it’s just a little disappointing. If you’re a Gerry Anderson completist you’ll want it, otherwise rent a few episodes before risking a purchase.