Hawaii Five-O season 1 (1968)

Hawaii Five-O was one of the longest-running cop shows in the history of American television. It ran for twelve seasons and 279 episodes from 1968 to 1980. It was a series that truly deserved the epithet iconic.

Five-O is a special Hawaiian police/counter-intelligence unit led by Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord). It’s a bit like a small-scale state version of the FBI. While most of the stories are crime stories and conform to a straightforward police procedural format there are a few episodes in each season with more of a counter-intelligence/counter-terrorism theme.

The series was shot entirely in Hawaii and this was unquestionably its biggest asset. It makes superb use of the setting. What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t just focus on the glamorous Hawaii that the tourists see. It delves into the shady underside that every society has. It deals at times with the rich and famous but it also deals with very ordinary Hawaiians, including native Hawaiians and the Chinese community.

While it is certainly “socially aware” it generally avoids bludgeoning the viewer with political messages. And while it does deal with the seedy underbelly of Hawaiian society it doesn’t ignore the glamour and the natural beauty of the setting. In fact it provides a remarkably balanced and nuanced portrayal of Hawaiian society.

The pilot episode, Cocoon, is extremely interesting. It’s very much a spy story rather than a police drama story. Hawaii Five-O would at various times feature stories that involve international intrigue or even espionage but Cocoon is a pure spy story which suggests that the concept of the series was altered quite a bit the time the pilot was shot and the time filming of the series proper began. Cocoon is actually a very good spy story but shifting the focus more towards crime stories was probably a sound decision.

The Five-O deal with crime but being an elite unit they deal with large-scale crime or cases that may have international complications. This means the series can quite plausibly ignore dull routine cases and concentrate on the more exciting stuff.

Deathwatch is an episode that uses a plot mechanism which is far from original but it’s an exciting enough story as McGarrett tries to persuade a gangster to give evidence against his boss. McGarrett’s problem is to keep his witness alive long enough to get to court. It’s an example of a typical tough gangster tale this series always handled extremely well.

Pray Love Remember illustrates another side to the series. A female Indonesian student is strangled. The main clue is a set of very large footprints. Unfortunately there are two suspects with very large feet! The vital clue is provided by a little girl who wants McGarrett to help her to find a missing fish. McGarrett gently explains that Five-O doesn’t normally deal with kidnapped fish, but then he changes his mind as he realises the fish may lead him to the solution of the murder. A nifty little episode and it gives Jack Lord the chance to show McGarrett’s more compassionate side.

Hawaii Five-O was a program that tried to grapple with the issues that seemed to be tearing the US apart at the time, one of them being the Vietnam War. King of the Hill deals with a Vietnam vet who is both a hero and a psycho although his psychosis may be only temporary, and he is a hero so McGarrett has to stop his potentially lethal rampage and save him at the same time.

Up Tight tries to confront the problem of drugs, with mixed success. It’s still a brave attempt.

In Face the Dragon McGarrett and his team have to battle an outbreak of bubonic plague. Plague is not all they have to deal with - there is espionage as well. This is one of the spy story episodes that added a slightly unusual spice to the series and it’s a lot of fun.

The Box, dealing with a prison escape, is one of the less successful episodes. It gets bogged down towards the end and even veers perilously close to preachiness. One for the Money is a serial killer story, although McGarrett finds one of the crimes to be particularly puzzling.

In Six Kilos McGarrett goes undercover as a safe-cracker, but he has no idea what the target of the robbery is to be. It’s a fun if fairly straightforward crime thriller.

The Big Kahuna is more interesting. Sam Kalakua is a descendant of Hawaiian royalty. He’s now an old man and he’s been arrested for shooting off a rifle in he grounds of his house. He claims he was defending himself from the Hawaiian goddess of fire. It appears that he may be losing his mind, but McGarrett is inclined to suspect there’s more t this than meets the eye. It’s a good episode that avoids the pitfall of excessive sentimentality while treating traditional Hawaiian beliefs with respect.

No-one would accuse Jack Lord of being a great actor but what he does have is charisma in abundance and that’s a considerably more important attribute for the star of a television series. He does the tough guy stuff with a great deal of style and he does the caring compassionate cop thing without being excessively sentimental about it. It’s one of the most iconic performances in television history and it still works.

The supporting actors - James Macarthur as Danno, Kam Fong as Chin Ho and Zulu as Kono - are also not great actors in a conventional sense but they are all memorable in their different ways and the teamwork between the four principal actors is perfect.

The decision to film the series entirely in Hawaii was exceptionally bold, given that suitable television production facilities were non-existent there at the time. The series paid off handsomely for Hawaii, providing a major boost for the tourism industry. 

One more thing that has to be added - this series has the greatest theme tune in the history of television.

The US first season DVD set includes an hour-long special filmed for Hawaiian television in 1996 featuring interviews with many of the people involved with the series.

Mrs Columbo (1979)

Have you ever asked yourself the question - what was the worst decision ever made by any television network anywhere in the world? You might imagine it would be a very tough answer question to answer. You would be wrong. The answer is very easy to answer. The worst decision ever made by a TV network was NBC’s decision to commission a spin-off from the Columbo series. The new series would be Mrs Columbo.

The decision was breathtakingly clueless.  Throughout the long, successful and illustrious run of Columbo there had been frequent references by Lieutenant Columbo to his wife but we never ever see her. In fact it has been plausibly suggested that Columbo was unmarried and that his stories regarding his wife (and various other relatives) were simply part of his armoury of psychological weapons to be deployed in order to unnerve suspects. Nonetheless this never-seen and possibly mythical character was to be the heroine of the new series and she was to be a journalist and amateur detective.

There were a whole series of reasons why the spin-off series was a bad idea. Firstly, Mrs Columbo was only an interesting character in Columbo because we never saw her and we could therefore speculate endlessly on what she was really like, whether she was really as Columbo described her and whether she really existed or not. Secondly, making her a journalist and amateur detective was a hackneyed idea. Thirdly, when we are actually introduced to Mrs Columbo we know instantly that she is just wrong. This is not the kind of woman Lieutenant Columbo would marry. Fourthly, the actress chosen for the role is at least twenty years too young to be Mrs Columbo. Fifthly, the unlucky actress in question, Kate Mulgrew, is hopelessly miscast as an amateur detective. Sixthly, judging by Murder is a Parlor Game, the quality of the writing was absolutely deplorable.

Remarkably, even though the series was cancelled after just thirteen episodes during that mercifully brief run the title of the series was changed twice. It started in 1979 as Mrs Columbo. It was changed to Kate the Detective but the ratings remained dismal. It was then changed to Kate Loves a Mystery, and the ratings remained dismal. The name changes were part of a desperate attempt to persuade viewers to forget that there had ever been any connection to Columbo. Even the heroine’s name was changed, supposedly after a divorce.

Murder is a Parlor Game was the second episode aired under the Mrs Columbo title and is included as an extra in the US Columbo third season DVD set.

This is an inverted murder mystery (the formula used so successfully in Columbo). This means we know the identity of the killer right from the start and our interest is in seeing the detective unravel the mystery and outsmart the criminal. A retired Scotland Yard detective is confronted by a figure from the past. Chief Inspector Morly (Donald Pleasence) is threatened with either death or a revelation about his past or both. A struggle ensues and the other man is killed. Morly’s bungling attempts to make the murder look like suicide are good enough to fool the police but not good enough to fool his neighbour Mrs Columbo.

The fact that the story is far-fetched is not a major problem. Realism is not a necessary ingredient for a good murder mystery. The problem here is not the story but the totally inept execution.

This episode achieves something that I would have considered to be impossible - getting a lousy performance out of Donald Pleasence. This achievement was made possible because the episode is hopelessly ill-conceived. Is this a serious murder mystery? Is it a seme-serious murder mystery with a slightly tongue-in-cheek flavour? Is it an out-and-out parody? I don’t know, and it’s obvious that Donald Pleasence didn’t know either which is why his performance is all over the map.

There is yet another reason why this show was doomed. It tries to adhere to the successful Columbo formula with each story being an inverted murder mystery. This is a very risky formula. It requires very disciplined writing. It depends on the viewer accepting that the detective hero  really is smart enough to outwit the murderer. It needs a reasonably smart murderer - he has to make at least one mistake otherwise he’d never get caught and there’d be no story but the murder has to be clever enough to provide the detective with a genuine challenge. It also requires, crucially, superb acting chemistry between the actor playing the detective and the actor playing the murderer. Columbo was able to get away with an inherently risky formula because (mostly) all of these requirements were fulfilled.

Sadly Murder is a Parlor Game fails to fulfill a single one of these requirements. Most fatally the murderer is such a bumbling incompetent that we feel embarrassed for him. 

An inverted murder story has to be exceptionally well done if it’s going to hold our interest. We already know the answer to the mystery so persuading the viewer to keep watching is a challenge. There is no real reason to keep watching Murder is a Parlor Game. Even if you ignore the incredibly ill-advised concept of a series about Mrs Columbo and judge this episode on its own merits it has to be accounted a failure - the inept writing, the hopelessly confused tone, the miscasting of Kate Mulgrew and the generally poor acting are enough to sink it like a stone. It doesn’t even have a so-bad-it’s-good quality to it. Avoid.

Sir Francis Drake (1961)

Before turning their attentions to contemporary action adventure series Lew Grade’s ITC had enjoyed great success with a succession of historical adventure series beginning with Robin Hood. The last of these ITC historical series was Sir Francis Drake. It was made in 1961 by which time the success of Danger Man had already pointed towards the future for ITC.

Sir Francis Drake ran for a single season of 26 episodes but while it failed to achieve the level of success that had been hoped for it’s actually highly entertaining.

As always Lew Grade was prepared to spend the money to make the series look good. ITC even built a full-size sailing replica of Drake’s famous ship The Golden Hind (not as expensive an undertaking as you might think since The Golden Hind was a fairly small ship). The costumes look terrific and the sets are mostly very good. With some reasonably decent scripts and a generous helping of action scenes the results are most satisfactory. Like ITC’s other historical series it’s aimed at a young audience but compared to The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the tone is less whimsical and it’s less obviously a mere kids’ show.

The Prisoner kicks off this series in impressive style. It has a sea battle, and a beautiful Spanish lady taken prisoner by Drake, a lady who is determined to avenge Spain’s disgrace by sinking The Golden Hind. There’s adventure, intrigue and action and all pretty well executed as well.

The series tries to provide a balance between adventures afloat and ashore and to provide plenty of variety in story lines. In The Lost Colony of Virginia the fledgling colony’s survival is in serious doubt. Drake is determined that it will survive and gets some unexpected help from a feisty girl who happens to be an expert gunner. 

In Queen of Scots the imprisoned Scottish queen may have engaged in one too many conspiracies but Drake suspects she may be less guilty than she seems. 

The writers were obviously determined to feature every famous and colourful character of the Elizabethan Era. Scientist, magician and astrologer Dr John Dee qualifies as both famous and colourful. In Dr Dee he runs foul of Sir Francis Drake but Drake cannot afford to make such a powerful enemy (the Queen trusts Dr Dee implicitly) and perhaps Dr Dee is more innocent dupe than villain.

Bold Enterprise has Drake risking his neck by defying an explicit order from the Queen. The temptation to raid a Spanish outpost is just too much for him. Lots of action in this one - a very fine piece of swashbuckling adventure. 

The English Dragon has Drake trying to rescue the Queen’s cousin Lord Oakeshott (David McCallum), a difficult task since Oakeshott considers he has very good reasons for not wanting to be rescued and soon Drake himself may be in need of rescue as he blunders into a trap set by the crafty Spanish Ambassador Mendoza.

The Garrison sees Drake delivering supplies to a beleaguered English garrison in the Netherlands, but it turns out to be a phantom garrison. What has happened to the 500 English soldiers? An excellent episode with a few dark overtones and a nicely ironic ending. And a rare episode in which the chief villain is not a Spaniard.

The Flame-Thrower involves an English secret weapon with the perfidious Spaniards trying to steal the secret, the problem for both sides being that the inventor does not want his brainchild used as a weapon. 

The Governor's Revenge offers us another example of Spanish wickedness and treachery. The governor of one of the King of Spain’s colonies in the New World has hatched a plot to take his revenge, the governor’s brother having been slain in a sea fight with Drake. He finds that it is not so easy to outwit Sir Francis Drake.

The series is set at a time when England was not formally at war with Spain although the possibility that war might erupt at any time is ever-present. Drake’s plunderings of Spanish treasure ships were in theory private adventures and were in fact not too far removed from piracy but both Drake and the Queen (who supported his ventures) always had to be careful not to go too far. With the two countries being officially at peace many of the episodes are tales of diplomacy rather than war. This actually gives the writers more scope than straight-out war stories would have done. It’s also worth mentioning that Sir Francis Drake’s approach to diplomacy tends to be very proactive. For Drake diplomacy shades easily into espionage and can be a very exciting and very dangerous (and sometimes quite bloody) business. In this respect the concept of the series was thought out very well - it can be considered to be more a spy series than a war action series. 

Visit to Spain is typical of these episodes. Sending Drake as her official representative to a Spanish royal wedding is the kind of thing that is almost bound to result in adventure and quite possibly bloodshed, although the Queen may not have expected the adventure to go so far as the kidnapping of a princess. 

In Boy Jack the Queen sends a very young courtier on a delicate diplomatic mission. The mission might have gone very wrong had it not been for Captain Drake’s presence.

The Spanish are portrayed without exception as cruel, violent, treacherous and also remarkably inept. The anti-Spanish tone is rather startling. The Spanish attempt to invade England was after all four hundred years in the past. I can only assume that the producers meant us to see the Spanish as stand-ins for a much more recent enemy - the Nazis. Or that the somewhat authoritarian Philip II of Spain was meant to remind us of modern dictators like Hitler and Stalin, which seems a little unfair to Philip II! 

A major asset to this series is the very strong supporting cast. Jean Kent is a glamorous but shrewd and slightly coquettish Queen Elizabeth. Roger Delgado plays the wily, scheming and totally perfidious Spanish Ambassador Mendoza as an out-and-out melodrama villain and his performances are a delight. Actually Delgado is used as an all-purpose Spanish villain, playing a Spanish governor in The Governor’s Revenge.

Terence Morgan makes a very solid hero. He perhaps doesn’t quite convey the large-than-life quality of a man who became a legend but he does capture the right blend of daring and sometimes insane risk-taking and he plays the rôle with a bit of a twinkle in his eye which is I think the right way to approach it. 

Don’t expect too much in the way of historical accuracy from this series. This is escapist adventure fun not a history lesson.

Sir Francis Drake is one of the very best television swashbuckling adventure series. Enormously enjoyable. Highly recommended.

It’s Dark Outside, season one (1964)

Chief Inspector Rose was a central character in no less than three Granada Television series during the 1960s. He made his first appearance in the final two seasons of the police drama The Odd Man. He then featured in a new cop series, It’s Dark Outside, the first season of which included another character from The Odd Man, Detective Sergeant Swift. Then in 1967 he was the subject of yet another series, the superb Mr Rose.

Chief Inspector Rose was played throughout by William Mervyn, a fine character actor with a particular gift for comedy but who was quite capable of being serious or even sinister when required.

Rose does change somewhat between It’s Dark Outside and Mr Rose but the change is plausible enough. In Mr Rose he has mellowed quite a bit. He has also inherited a great deal of money, taken early retirement and now lives in gracious comfort in the country. I imagine I’d mellow as well if that happened to me.

The subject of this review is however It’s Dark Outside, which lasted two seasons from 1964 to 1965. In the first season Rose’s sergeant is Detective Sergeant Swift (Keith Barron). Barron left after the first season and was replaced by Anthony Ainley as Detective Sergeant Hunter.

Chief Inspector Rose is a rather pompous character but it would be a dangerous mistake to dismiss him lightly for that reason. Under the pomposity there’s a sharp mind and a streak of considerable ruthlessness. 

The first episode, The Grim World of the Brothers Tulk, introduces us to the series’ two other regular characters, Anthony Brand (John Carson) and his wife Alice (June Tobin). Anthony is a barrister and human rights campaigner and is even more pompous than Chief Inspector Rose while lacking the positive qualities that make Rose so fascinating. Alice is a typical crusading journalist. This episode is certainly very dark indeed, dealing with a child murder, a couple of faded music hall performers and an unfortunate sequel to an interrogation. DS Swift finds himself in trouble and feels he is being stabbed in the back by Rose.

There are two ongoing story arcs intertwined with the individual stories that make up the eight episodes of the first season. One arc concerns a tentative romance between Detective Sergeant Swift and Alice Brand; the other concerns a figure from Anthony Brand’s past. These story arcs will gradually assume more and more importance as the series progresses. They’re not really apparent in the first episode but it does lay down the groundwork by giving us some insights into the characters involved.

This is a series that must be watched in sequence and from the beginning otherwise you will find the last few episodes quite mystifying.

In the second episode, One Man’s Right, Brand is organising a human right convention but his illustrious guest speaker proves to be rather embarrassing - his view of human rights is not at all the view that Brand takes and more alarmingly he puts his principles into practice. Which brings Chief Inspector Rose into the picture.

Speak Ill of the Living opens with a hanging, but then a day later another woman confesses to the murder. Her confession is however just a little suspicious. Anthony Brand sees this as a wonderful opportunity to advance yet another of his human rights causes. Chief Inspector Rose and DS Swift are meanwhile making their own investigation.

This is typical of the approach taken by this series. The case is complex, even more complex than it seems to be at first. The truth is shadowy and elusive and the moral dilemmas prove to be fiendish traps. Anthony Brand is as usual convinced that his cause is just and seems unable to perceive that his self-righteousness is leading him into dangerous moral territory. His own conduct is ruthless and unscrupulous, ethically very questionable indeed and possibly illegal. While he likes to think of himself as being morally superior to his friend Charles Rose it is clear that Rose would never stoop to such dubious methods.

More Ways of Killing a Cat is a more straightforward crime story without the obvious political subtexts of the earlier episodes. DS Swift is being stalked by someone from his past, someone who had been in a mental hospital but is now completely cured and has therefore been released. At least the psychiatrists thought he was cured (psychiatrists do not come off very well in this tale).

Wake the Dead is a major improvement on earlier episodes. Mercifully Anthony Brand is relegated to a minor role. An old lady is found dead under very mysterious circumstances - with alcohol and barbiturates in her bloodstream although she was a non-drinker and several letters are found from her late husband. The trouble is the letters were posted three years after his death. Meanwhile Alice Brand is once again trying to rescue a poor downtrodden criminal - in her mind no criminal has ever been responsible for his actions and no amount of evidence or experience will change her views. It’s starting to become obvious by now that we’re expected to have much more sympathy for Chief Inspector Rose’s worldview (do your duty as efficiently as you can with decency and commonsense) than for the worldview of the Brands (everything is the fault of society and criminals are always victims). Wake the Dead is neatly plotted and benefits from fine guest performances by Patrick Newell as a phony spiritualist and Liam Redmond as a cheerful habitual thief.

A Room with No View has two completely unconnected plots. The main plot concerning a rent collector is heavy-handed and preachy and makes no sense. The subsidiary plot though, involving Anthony Brand’s war service that might in reality have been a good deal less than glorious, is subtle and very very clever. 

With A Case for Indentification the series starts to fall apart really badly. Excruciatingly poor acting, a ludicrous plot involving a disturbed young man and it’s all made worse by the increasingly embarrassing ongoing story arc detailing a squalid entanglement between Sergeant Swift and the awful Alice Brand. This may be the worst single episode of any 1960s British TV series.

The final episode, You Play the Red and the Black Comes Up, is surprisingly good. In fact it’s very good indeed. This one resolves both of the two ongoing story arcs and does so quite satisfactorily. This was one of the three episodes written by Marc Brandel (the other two being Speak Ill of the Living and Wake the Dead) which are by far the strongest of the first season. Anthony Brand’s past catches up to him in a very unpleasant way but what’s most impressive about this episode is that it makes sense given what we’ve already learnt about his character in the preceding seven episodes. It’s believable.

It’s worth pointing out that It’s Dark Outside and Mr Rose had entirely different production teams - different producers and a quite different roster of writers and directors. In fact the only connection between the two series is the character of Chief Inspector Rose and even he’s not quite the same.

It’s Dark Outside is very much an oddity. It’s wildly uneven and it suffers from a certain amount of genre confusion - it’s not sure if it wants to be a quirky cop series, a soap opera or a slice of heavy-handed moralising social realism. It doesn’t quite succeed on any of these levels although it’s an intriguing attempt and it does avoid being overly obvious. Social commentary was common enough in 60s British TV but It’s Dark Outside doesn’t always follow the ideological line you think it’s going to follow. At times it will strike modern audiences as being very politically correct while at other times it will seem to be almost shockingly politically incorrect.

Two years later when Philip Mackie revived the character of Chief Inspector Rose in Mr Rose he was careful not to fall into such a trap. Mr Rose focuses entirely on being a quirky crime drama and it’s one of the very best examples of the genre from its era. It’s Dark Outside on the other hand never quite manages to resolve its internal contradictions and ends up being less successful although it remains interesting. You’d probably want to rent it first before risking a purchase.

Network’s DVD release includes the whole of the first season plus the two surviving episodes of the second.

Out of the Unknown - The Last Lonely Man (1969)

The Last Lonely Man, originally transmitted in early 1969, is the only episode from the third season of Out of the Unknown to survive in its entirety. I’ve already blogged at length about the first two seasons of this interesting but wildly uneven BBC science fiction anthology series.

Out of the Unknown was intended to be a series of adaptations of notable stories by well-known science fiction authors. This formula was largely adhered to in the first three seasons but abandoned in season four.

The third season saw the series switch to colour and also saw changes to the production tram with Alan Bromly taking over from Irene Shubik as producer and Roger Parkes coming in as script editor. They had however limited control since Shubik had already commissioned scripts for all thirteen episodes.

The Last Lonely Man was adapted by Jeremy Paul from a story by John Brunner.

This episode deals with an intriguingly different future. Society has been changed dramatically by the advent of Contact although at this stage no-one has quite realised the true significance or scale of the change. Contact is a government program that offers  citizens a kind of technological immortality. Everyone is to have at least one and preferably several Contacts. Contact is achieved by visiting a free government clinic. A complete copy of a person’s brain patterns is recorded and implanted into the brain of their Contacts. If the person dies his personality instantly jumps into the brain of one of his Contacts.

No-one need ever fear death again. No-one need ever truly die. The only disadvantage is that when you die you have to share a brain with another person - and that other person will from that time on have to share a brain with you. This is however a very minor problem  - the government has done studies and it’s really no problem at all. 

In this new world of virtual immortality everyone is much happier, although they are a little more careless. Not having to worry about dying means not having to fuss so much about taking precautions. In fact when people go to the movies and see images of people being slaughtered they laugh uproariously. Death is something to be light-hearted about.

If you decide you no longer want someone to be your Contact you can always cancel the contract - this is known as expunging the person. It’s no big deal. It happens all the time. You can do this at any time - as long as the person is still alive. Once they’re dead and they’ve made that final jump into your brain the process is permanent. The government has done studies on this as well and it’s also no problem. In any case they provide Adjustment Clinics for the tiny handful of people who have really very minor problems as a result.

James Hale (George Cole) is sure that the government is right to tell people not to worry. He’s not worried. He’s quite happy when Patrick (Peter Halliday) begs him to be his Contact. Patrick has just been expunged by Mary (Lillias Walker). Patrick’s problem is that Mary was his only Contact. Now he is not covered. This means if he dies now he will be really dead. James is a nice guy though and he’s happy to be Patrick’s Contact, purely on a short-term temporary basis until Patrick can make other arrangements with one of his many friends.

Needless to say James will find out that Contact is not quite as foolproof and trouble-free as those reassuring government television commercials claim. He will also discover, indirectly, a paradox about immortality. Immortality can actually make some people more afraid of dying.

This is a clever and well-constructed story with several neat and genuinely unexpected twists. It’s the kind of science fiction story that does not require much in the way of special effects In fact it requires none, nor does it require elaborate futuristic sets. It’s about ideas, not gadgetry. This future world looks pretty much like 1969. The fact that it could be done at minimal expense must have been a considerable relief to the BBC which was notoriously tight-fisted when it came to television science fiction budgets. Amazingly enough though it still manages to look cheap even by BBC standards.

Of course if considered in any detail the whole premise is pretty much scientific nonsense but it’s the idea in the broadest sense that is the point of the story and it’s a provocative idea.

Apart from the excellent script the major plus here is the terrific performance by George Cole. 

The first season of Out of the Unknown had varied quite alarmingly in quality and this inconsistency continued in season two, with brilliant moments such as The Machine Stops and some fairly dire moments as well. The Last Lonely Man is one of the better moments and it’s excellent television. Highly recommended.

The Baron (1966-67)

The Baron was one of ITC’s less successful action adventure series, running for a single season (of 30 episodes) in 1966 and 1967. The series was based, fairly loosely, on the character created by John Creasey and starred American Steve Forrest (brother of Hollywood star Dana Andrews) in the title role.

The character in Creasey’s books belonged to the gentleman-thief tradition, a tradition that began in the 1890s with Raffles and Simon Carne and was still going strong in the 1920s. John Mannering, known as The Baron, was something of a latecomer making his literary debut in Meet the Baron in 1937. Mannering is a jewel thief who is gradually transformed into an amateur detective.

The TV series turns Mannering into a thief-turned-crimefighter in the style of The Saint and downplays the character’s criminal past to the point where that aspect is practically non-existent. The problem with this is that what makes such characters so fascinating is the hint of moral ambiguity, and in the case of Simon Templar it’s the fact that although he often helps the police (and they accept his help) they still believe he’s a thief and they still want to see him behind bars. The John Mannering of the TV series comes across as an eminently respectable antique dealer, which unfortunately makes him rather dull.

ITC were firm believers in the theory that the best way to crack the US market was by casting American actors. Sometimes this worked. Casting Richard Bradford in Man in a Suitcase was an inspired choice - being an American effectively exiled from the US makes him an even more convincing haunted loner, a man who really does live out of a suitcase. In the case of The Baron it was a mistake. The character would have worked better had he been portrayed as an Englishman, as he was in the novels. 

Making Mannering a former Texas cattleman was an even more dubious idea.

Casting an American to play the role might not have been a fatal error but they certainly chose the wrong actor. This is the kind of series that desperately needs a witty and charismatic star. Someone like Roger Moore. Steve Forrest, alas, is entirely lacking in charisma and is not suited to the sort of witty repartee that such a series needs. It’s not that he’s a terrible actor or that his performance is terrible. He’s just the wrong actor and he gives the wrong performance. Forrest could have been a perfectly convincing hard-boiled private eye but that’s not what this series needed.

Forrest had apparently been very impressed by Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man and was trying to model his performance on McGoohan’s. Sadly Forrest just doesn’t have McGoohan’s combination of subtlety and charisma.

Initially John Mannering was to have an assistant named David Marlowe, played by Paul Ferris. After filming eight episodes it was decided that a beautiful female assistant would be a better idea and the Marlowe character was replaced by Cordelia, played by Sue Lloyd. Given that Steve Forrest is not the world’s most exciting actor giving him a glamorous co-star who was a decent actress was on balance a smart move. Cordelia is quite an interesting character. She often manages to get herself captured by the bad guys but when this happens she invariably starts thinking of some ingenious and outlandish method of escape. Her plans don’t always succeed but they’re usually well thought-out and sometimes they do work.

The Baron was reasonably popular with audiences in Britain but attracted little interest in the US and any ITC series that failed to attract American interest had no chance of being renewed for a second season. The fact that the critical response to the series was almost uniformly negative did not help. If critics disliked the series they disliked Steve Forrest even more.

A bigger problem is that the TV series is just too obviously a clone of ITC’s mega-hit series The Saint. You have a debonair man-of-the-world hero, with just a hint of the rogue, who moves in a world of money, high culture, high fashion and style. A member of the jet-set. He solves crimes involving the rich, the fashionable and the powerful. He has adventures in exotic locales. The series are so similar that at least one episode of The Baron was simply a rehash of an earlier script for The Saint. The series was always going to be compared to The Saint, and the comparison was not going to be in The Baron’s favour.

Having said all that, The Baron is not a bad series. Some episodes are rather good. Most are at least watchable. You always end up feeling that even the good stories would have been even better as episodes of The Saint but if you try to put such thoughts aside there’s a certain amount of enjoyment to be had here. The better episodes are the ones that make the most use of the fact that Mannering is a deal in art and antiques, and to be fair the writers do try to make as much use of this as possible. These episodes do give the series at least some of the distinctive flavour it needed but unfortunately they’re outnumbered by rather generic episodes that could have been written for any adventure series.

You Can't Win Them All is an episode that very definitely takes advantage of John Mannering’s expertise as an expert in art and antiquities. The chief interest in this story is the poker game played for very high stakes between Mannering and the criminal. Whether it’s a suspense or mystery or spy novel or movie or TV series poker games always offer the opportunity for a tense battle of wits, nerve and will between hero and villain in this instance writer Dennis Spooner makes very skillful use of this opportunity. One of the best episodes of the series.

The Edge of Fear is another art-centred story and a potentially interesting one involving the theft of a very very valuable painting indeed. Unfortunately it’s let down a bit by an over-reliance on the diabolically clever master criminals suddenly making incredibly stupid mistakes so that the hero can save the day. It’s as bit disappointing to see lazy writing like this from Dennis Spooner.

In The Terry Nation-penned The Seven Eyes of Night it’s jewels rather than paintings being stolen and it’s a very fine story with some very good twists and is also highlighted by a neurotically manic performance by Jeremy Brett. In Time To Kill an exquisite cameo is the driving force of the action. There is a curse, which we are not surprised by, but we may be surprised by the connection with radioactivity. A fine episode (written by Dennis Spooner) in which Cordelia takes centre stage.

With A Memory of Evil we’re back to paintings although this is a much more outrageous tale. In fact the story, involving a neo-nazi plot to finance a plot to resurrect the Third Reich by selling looted art treasures hidden in a cave in the Alps, is ludicrously far-fetched but it’s great fun. Robert Hardy does some serious scenery-chewing as the neo-nazi leader. The alpine setting adds extra interest.

In a 60s adventure series there are always has to be at least one episode dealing with South American revolutionaries and Long Ago and Far Away is a good example of the breed. This time Cordelia gets to play a major role when Mannering sends her to meet an explorer who seems to have discovered more than rare plants or ancient artifacts.

Masquerade and The Killing are actually one two-part episode and it’s an odd one. Doubles were a popular feature in science fiction and spy series in this era but they’re more unusual in this kind of series. It’s the sort of story you’d expect from The Avengers but is a bit out of place here.

The Long, Long Day is more or less a western, with Mannering and a girl under siege in the sheriff’s office holding off attacks by outlaws, only it’s an Italian police station and it’s being attacked by mafiosi rather than outlaws. It’s a decent episode with plenty of action. 

So Dark the Night is fairly routine, with the bad guys trying to find something that they want very badly but that something is very well hidden. The rather gothic house is a plus and Sue Lloyd gets plenty to do in this one including some clever heroic stuff. Routine perhaps but still reasonably enjoyable.

Night of the Hunter is the sort of episode that gave this series a bad name. It’s an uninspired tale of revolution in an unnamed country. The Saint could get away with this kind of thing because Roger Moore had the charisma to carry off even a less than stellar script. As an episode of The Baron it’s just too obviously a second-rate copy of The Saint.

The Maze was written by Brian Clemens who provides a brief introduction to the episode on the DVD. As you might expect from Clemens this story has just a bit of the flavour of The Avengers. It’s a very good episode with nice use of the maze and a reasonably good dream sequence.

Had the producers tried harder to stick with stories that made better use of Mannering’s expertise in art and his position as a leading dealer and had they stuck a little more closely to John Creasey’s original creation The Baron could have been an excellent series. They had Sue Lloyd’s lively and entertaining performance to compensate for Steve Forrest’s adequate but unexciting portrayal of the hero. As it stands it’s still not a bad series and it has its moments. Recommended, but probably better to rent it rather than buy it.

Thriller - Night Is the Time for Killing (Murder on the Midnight Express, 1975)

ITC’s Thriller was one of the most successful of all British television anthology series, in fact one of the most successful such series made anywhere. It ran for six seasons beginning in 1973. Brian Clemens created the series and wrote the bulk of the episodes.

Thriller is generally regarded as a horror series but it avoids the supernatural (apart from occasional hints that usually turn out to have non-supernatural explanations). The title in fact describes the series pretty well - these are crime thriller stories with an admixture of the horrific and occasionally the uncanny.

Night Is the Time for Killing (retitled Murder on the Midnight Express for a later US release)  came midway through the fourth season in 1975. It was written by Brian Clemens and is slightly unusual for this series in being a spy story.

The opening scenes suggest this will be very much a standard espionage tale. A diplomat from an eastern bloc country wishes to defect to the British. Unfortunately the intelligence services of his own country are aware of his plans to defect and are taking active steps to prevent this from happening. Very active steps, including trying to gun him down in a London street. As a result the would-be defector has insisted on setting up a rendezvous with his British contact in an unexpected manner.

Appearances can be deceptive and this spy tale is not quite as standard as it originally appeared to be. After the brief opening sequences it suddenly switches gears dramatically, focusing on a young American woman, Helen Marlow (Judy Geeson), setting out from London’s Euston Station on a long train journey. The other focus of our attention is on one of her fellow passengers - the pompous, opinionated and supremely supercilious bon vivant and celebrity Hillary Vance (Charles Gray).

Some of the other passengers could be regarded as suspicious characters. One does not normally expect to find men wearing shoulder holsters or young women carrying automatic pistols fitted with silencers on the average British train journey.

Hillary Vance does not like trains. He does not like them one little bit. He makes his displeasure very obvious. We have to wonder what a man with such an evident distaste for rail travel is doing aboard a train.

Helen Marlow is deeply unhappy for other (and rather more valid) reasons. She is being packed off to the country after spending a considerable time in a mental hospital following the sudden death of her fiancé. 

Helen is even more unhappy when she discovers a dead man aboard the train. She is more unhappy still when, after she has reported the matter, the body disappears and everyone thinks she’s crazy. Having just left a mental hospital she’s a tiny bit sensitive on the subject of craziness. She will soon have cause to have her own doubts about her sanity.

It’s obvious that some of the passengers are British agents and some are Soviet agents but we’re unsure which is which and we’re even more unsure about what they’re up to. It has to have something to do with that defector but he is nowhere on the train.

Brian Clemens provides a nicely twist-laden plot. It’s hard to go wrong with a spy thriller that takes place on board a train and the setting is used skillfully by director John Cooper.

I have no idea why it was decided to make Helen Marlow American. There is absolutely no reason why she should be American. Judy Geeson is English and while her American accent is just about passable (she very wisely decides not to overdo it) it seems slightly odd and can probably only be explained by ITC’s ongoing obsession with the notion that US sales for their series could only be achieved by including American characters. Luckily Judy Geeson is an accomplished and underrated actress and does a fine job even with the accent.

Charles Gray always relished playing larger-than-life characters and he’s very much in his element. He overacts with superb style.

The supporting cast is quite adequate with Jim Smilie being likeable as an Australian engineer who takes a shine to Helen only to discover that he may have inadvertently managed to get himself  entangled with a crazy woman. Alister Williamson is also good as the rather shabby Barkly who is obviously a spy for one side or the other.

With a slightly offbeat spy story script from Clemens and great performances by Judy Geeson and Charles Gray Night Is the Time for Killing is a superior episode of a very good television series. Highly recommended.

Network have released the entire six seasons (43 feature-length episodes) of Thriller in a Region 2 DVD boxed set while the complete series has also been released on DVD in the US.