Black Lagoon (2006)

Black Lagoon is a 2006 action-adventure anime TV series. While it was made in 2006 the setting seems to be a bit earlier, maybe the early 1990s.

Rokuro Okajima is a young Japanese salaryman. At times he feels vaguely dissatisfied but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’ll rise slowly through the ranks and become a middle-aged salaryman, probably with a wife and kids. He’s resigned to living a boring life.

Until he gets captured by pirates.

He was on an assignment for his company. Very low-level courier stuff. A computer disk to be delivered to a client. He has no idea what is on the disk. He certainly didn’t expect an organised crime syndicate to hire pirates to steal the disk.

Now the pirates have the disk, and they have Rokuro. They figure on making some extra cash by holding him for ransom. That plan doesn’t work out and now the pirates have a whole army of mercenaries after them, and Rokuro is of no further use to them. The obvious step would be to kill him but they don’t do that for two reasons. Firstly, they’re pirates, not cold-blooded murderers. They’ll kill people in battle, but not a helpless unarmed civilian. The second reason is that killing Rokuro would be like killing a friendly well-meaning puppy. So they’re stuck with him.

The pirates are a black American ex-US Navy dude named Dutch, an American  computer guy named Benny, and Revy. Revy is young, female, crazy, wild and deadly. And sexy. She provides the combat arm of the team. 

And now Rokuro Okajima is part of the team, and he’s become known as Rock.

The pirates have a ex-US Navy PT boat called Black Lagoon. They are based in Roanapur, a fictional South-East Asian city which is a haven for gangsters, smugglers, thieves and pirates.

The Black Lagoon pirates undertake jobs for various client, notably Balalaika. She’s a big-time Russian gangster. She’s head of the Hotel Moscow organised crime syndicate. As gangsters go she’s fairly honourable. That cannot be said of some of the pirates’ clients.

There are no yakuza in this saga but the Hotel Moscow group do resemble yakuza in some ways. Like yakuza they think of themselves as adhering to a warrior code, a code of honour. They’re all ex-military and Afghanistan War veterans. They’re adrift in the post-Soviet world. They’re a bit like yakuza in postwar Japan, clinging to a warrior code in order to give their lives meaning. Balalaika thinks of herself as a soldier. In her own way she is a woman of honour.

Black Lagoon also has links with the nuns of the Ripoff Church. They’re not your run-of-the-mill nuns, being essentially gun-toting gangsters. Sister Eda and Revy have always been rivals for the title of the most formidable dangerous psycho bitch in Roanapur.

By episode three we’re into the saga of the attempted salvage of a German U-boat wreck. There’s something valuable on board but it’s not gold. And others are interested in the wreck. Lots of mayhem ensues.

Later the pirates are taking a cargo to Roanapu, a kidnapped South American boy. The boy is confident that the family’s maid Roberta will rescue him. Roberta is a sweet lady who always carries an umbrella. She’s a bit like Mary Poppins, if you can imagine Mary Poppins as an unstoppable killing machine.

Later the Black Lagoon team encounters the twins. A cute brother and sister, from Transylvania. There are lots of horror references including some very obvious references to Kubrick’s The Shining.

Like most good anime TV series Black Lagoon gradually becomes more and more interesting and more and more morally complex. When it comes to loyalties and motivations there are wheels within wheels. There are many different criminal factions and many shifting alliances.

And there’s the question of belonging and of in-group loyalty. To what extent is Rock really part of the Black Lagoon group? Is he prepared to commit himself fully? 

The relationship between Revy and Rock is interesting because you expect some kind of romantic or sexual attraction to develop. That’s not quite the case but an odd kind of emotional bond does develop.

Black Lagoon is an action-packed, fast-moving exciting and stylish series. Highly recommended.

It's available on Blu-Ray.

Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982-83)

Tales of the Gold Monkey is a U.S. action/adventure TV series which ran for a single season from 1982 to 1983. It was created by Donald P. Bellisario who was also responsible for such cool 80s TV classics as Magnum, P,I. and Airwolf. The cancellation of the series was not due to poor ratings. The show was a huge hit. It was network politics that killed it.

Although you could certainly be forgiven for assuming that Tales of the Gold Monkey was clearly hoping to capitalise on the recent success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (it does belong to the same “rugged individualistic adventurer in exotic locales” genre) in fact Bellisario pitched the series to the network a year before Spielberg’s movie was released. His inspiration was the classic 1939 Howard Hawks movie Only Angels Have Wings.

The setting is the fictional South Pacific island Bora Gora, a French colonial possession.

Jake Cutter (Stephen Collins) is an American airman with a small air cargo operation using a Grumman Goose amphibian (which happens to be my favourite aircraft of all time). He has an offsider named Corky (Jeff MacKay), a genius mechanic but with a chronically poor memory due to over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages. He also has a bad-tempered one-eyed dog named Jack.

Jake has a habit of trying to rescue damsels in distress but in the pilot episode his latest attempt, involving cute red-headed chanteuse Sarah Stickney White (Caitlin O’Heaney), gets him into all kinds of trouble. Sarah will become a regular character. There’s something very important about Sarah that Jake doesn’t know. She’s a spy.

Another regular character is Bon Chance Louie. He owns the Monkey Bar which is the island’s social hub and he’s the local representative of the French Government. He has the reputation of being lucky. He did after all survive the guillotine. In the pilot he is played by Ron Moody but Roddy McDowall takes over the role in the series.

Another regular is German missionary Willie Tenboom (John Calvin). We know from the start that he’s a German spy but he’s a sympathetic character and a nice guy. He is devoted to his parishioners who seem to be entirely attractive young women. One of them acts as his personal assistant. If she’s a good girl he gives her a blessing. She looks forward to that. There’s nothing a girl likes more than a good blessing. The Reverend believes that young women need to be blessed as often as possible.

And then there Princess Koji (Marta DuBois). She’s a Japanese princess involved in various ventures of dubious legality. She has a private samurai army. She’s a sexy bad girl, but not really evil.

Jake is also in trouble with Jack, having lost the dog’s false eye (which is a sapphire mounted in an opal) in a poker game.

There are monkey-men, venomous snakes and samurai warriors. And the island of Baku is an active volcano. A very active volcano.

There are spies everywhere on Bora Gora, from various nations. There are German, American and Japanese spies and possibly some freelancers. The German spies are in search of the legendary gold monkey of the island of Baku.

You have to remember that this is 1938. Japan was at peace with the U.S. and France. Germany was at peace with the U.S. and France. Princess Koji does not have the slightest dislike for the French or the Americans. She’s a businesswoman. Louis has no issues with her as long as she doesn’t break any French laws within French territory (which she never does). She’s oddly fond of Jake and would rather like to get him into bed. The Reverend Willie Tenboom is an agent of German military intelligence but he’s not Gestapo and he’s a seriously nice guy. Everyone likes him and he likes everyone. Sarah is an American agent but it’s peacetime so her job is just to gather information. All the recurring characters are in fact good guys. They all get along pretty well.

Episode Guide

In the first episode there are spies and double agents everywhere and a plot to build a super-bomb. In the second episode, Shanghaied, Corky is shanghaied by a disreputable sea captain who needs his ship repaired. The captain is involved in an illicit and very nasty trade.

In the third episode, Black Pearl, a flying buddy of Jake’s from the old days in China shows up. He’s a bit disreputable but mostly he’s just an irresponsible dreamer, forever chasing after imaginary treasures or lost cities. Now he’s hooked up with a Watusi tribe who live on a nearby island. It’s crazy. What is a Watusi tribe doing on a Pacific island? Jake’s buddy is sure it has something to do with King Solomon’s Mines.

In the fourth episode, Escape from Death Island, Jake and Corky fly a visitor to a French penal island and find themselves imprisoned.

In Trunk from the Past a trunk is sent to Sarah containing relics collected by her late archaeologist father. He devoted his life to finding the tomb of a certain Egyptian Pharaoh and came up with a crazy theory that the tomb was located on an island in the South Pacific.

In episode six another old flying buddy of Jake’s turns up. And Randall McGraw (Lance LeGault) is always trouble. His cargo plane has gone down and it was carrying something that simply must be retrieved.

In Honor Thy Brother a Japanese fighter pilot wants revenge, Corky gets a wife he doesn’t want and Jack gets his eye back. Next up Jake crash lands on an island within the Japanese Mandate and it’s inhabited by Amish. And a tiger. And a Japanese officer obsessed with cowboy movies. In the next episode something very bad has happened to Sarah on a mission to Manila. It has something to do with General Macarthur.

In the next episode a baseball star visiting the island lands himself in very big trouble involving a local girl. Trouble that could get him lynched. In the following episode Jake, Corky and Sarah crash land on an island inhabited by apes, and they find an ape-boy. In High Stakes Lady Jake is tempted by high stakes poker and a glamorous blonde and of course he falls for her. But the stakes are more than just money.

In Force of Habit Jake discovers that nuns can be pretty dangerous.

In Last Chance Louie it’s Louie who finds that the past cannot be escaped. A new guest arrives on the island and Louis immediately shoots him. It seems that Louis is embarked on a course of self-destruction but he refuses to explain his strange behaviour.

In the next-to-last episode the trouble starts with an eclipse and then a politico-religious cut leader decides that Sarah must be punished for offending the gods. And then things get explosive. Literally.

In the final episode Princess Koji hires Jake as his bodyguard. It’s a very dangerous occupation.

Final Thoughts

There’s plenty of cheesiness but it’s undoubtedly deliberate and it’s combined with a considerable amount of coolness which for me is an intoxicating mix. The cast is uniformly excellent.

For my money Tales of the Gold Monkey is the best action-adventure series of the 80s. There’s just enough humour and romance, the plots are delightfully implausible but fun, the entire cast is excellent and it looks like a very very expensive series (which it was) in which the money was well spent. Very highly recommended.

The DVD release is still in print and extras include a very good “making of” documentary.

The Lost World (1999-2002)

The Lost World is an adventure TV series based (rather loosely) on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. It was a Canadian-US-New Zealand-Australian co-production and was shot in Australia (in Queensland). It ran for three seasons.

The two-hour pilot episode (which was later split in two to comprise the first two episodes of the first season) is more than enough to get me interested. The fact that it’s directed by Richard Franklin helps. He was not only experienced but had an impressive background in feature films and gives it a cinematic look and feel.

The time setting is the 1920s, a good choice. This is a story that would be just too wildly implausible in a later time period.

Professor Challenger has found a manuscript, apparently the record of a journey to a hitherto unknown plateau in the wilds of South America. Challenger is convinced that the evidence in the manuscript will cause all existing theories on human evolution to be tossed out the window. The dinosaurs were not creatures that existed millions of years before humans. They are our contemporaries! The scientific establishment mocks him. The mockery is led by Dr Arthur Summerlee (Michael Sinelnikoff). Challenger announces that he will lead an expedition to find hard evidence. Dr Summerlee can join the expedition if he dares. Dr Summerlee does dare.

Other volunteers include experienced hunter and explorer Lord John Roxton and American newspaperman Ned Malone (David Orth). Malone has experience with hydrogen balloons and there’s no other way to reach the plateau. But there’s no money to fund the expedition until wealthy heiress Marguerite Krux offers unlimited funds as long as she can go along.

All of the characters have their own quirks. Challenger was one of Conan Doyle’s great creations, a gloriously bad-tempered argumentative tempestuous scientific genius. Peter McCauley plays him as rude, arrogant and overbearing but clearly a man with vision and charisma. That’s close enough to Conan Doyle’s conception for me. William Snow as Lord John Roxton is extremely good - he’s cynical and abrasive but he has charisma.

The weak link is the cast Jennifer O’Dell as jungle girl Veronica - she’s not terrible but she doesn’t convince us that she is a young woman who has lived alone in the jungle for eleven years. She seems too modern, too citified. Her attitudes are stridently and irritatingly late 90s. She’s totally out of place in this series. I found myself disliking her quite a bit at first, even though I have a thing for cute scantily-clad blonde jungle girls. I did however gradually warm to her quite a bit.

The standout performer is Rachel Blakely as Marguerite Krux. From the start Marguerite is a Woman of Mystery. We soon suspect that she is a Sexy Bad Girl. And then we discover that she is a treacherous scheming bitch and she’s well-versed in the art of using sex as a weapon. Which just made me love her even more. Marguerite isn’t trustworthy but she isn’t evil. Rachel Blakely oozes delicious naughtiness. She’s a delight.

The best thing about this series is its old-fashioned feel. The writers are not constantly agonising over whether the scripts might be problematic. What matter is - would this be a cool story for the next episode? There’s a refreshing lack of ideological lecturing.

And the writers are not afraid to let their imaginations run a bit wild.

The CGI dinosaurs are really only there because they were a commercial necessity. They were a major selling point. They’re of no importance. The focus is invariably on the strange bizarre human societies that our explorers find. And they’re strange and bizarre in interesting ways. There are villains who are not necessarily villains, wise virtuous leaders who may be neither wise nor virtuous, evil queens who might me misguided rather than evil. The stories are impressively varied and are not always resolved by heroic deeds.

It must have become obvious early that six regular cast members would be unwieldy so in most episodes we get two storylines running in parallel, each featuring three of the regular characters.

The Episodes

The pilot episode gets our adventurers to the plateau. There are indeed dinosaurs. And hostile tribes. And ape-men. Professor Challenger can easily collect the hard evidence he needs. The one fly in the ointment is that there is no way off the plateau.

They meet a cute blonde jungle girl, Veronica. She has lived on the plateau for eleven years since her scientist parents disappeared. She doesn’t care about science but she is obsessed with the idea of finding her parents.

In the next episode, More Than Human, our explorers find a lost culture. It’s like ancient Rome but ruled by lizard-men with humans as their slaves. This episode borrows a little from Planet of the Apes and very heavily from countless gladiator movies. How many clichés can you pack into 45 minutes? A lot! It doesn’t matter. The action keeps racing along and it’s fun.

Nectar is great fun. Giant killer bees! A sinister bee-woman! And a hideous fate awaiting if your heroes cannot escape from the world’s largest bee-hive.

Cave of Fear gives us a deliciously evil villainess, Lady Cassandra Yorkton (Rebecca Gibney). And the various members of the party have to confront guilts and fears from their pasts.

In Salvation Summerlee saves a drowning child and is accused of witchcraft. The most interesting thing here is a tribe that follows a religion that is a blending of Aztec religion and Roman Catholicism. And we discover something odd about Marguerite. She can read ancient inscriptions in a language of which she knows nothing. She doesn’t know how, but somehow she just knows the meaning of the inscriptions.

There’s been plenty of fun so far but obviously the series needed vampires. So in Blood Lust we get vampires. We get a sexy lady vampire who lives in a gothic castle. Both she and the castle look like they’re straight out of Hammer gothic horror film. It’s all very silly but very enjoyable.

In Out of Time Marguerite may have discovered her destiny as a high priestess and Veronica may have discovered her destiny as a mother. Packed with too many ideas most of which are pretty cringe and coherence falls by the wayside but somehow it works. It works because this series has that pulp fiction/old-time adventure yarn/B-movie sensibility that just makes it so much fun.

Paradise Found turns out to be the most flawed paradise imaginable.

In The Beast Within Malone is killed, but maybe not permanently. Whether the sham who saved him intended to do him a favour or not remains to be seen.

In Creatures of the Dark Marguerite, Malone and Challenger are trapped in a cave-in, they find a lot of gold and a lost race. All very interesting but the fact that they’re all sitting on top of an active volcano is of more immediate concern.

Things get seriously weird in Absolute Power. The explorers find an ancient ruin but there are some odd things about it. Such as the presence of a nuclear reactor. And then things get much stranger and maybe we’re dealing with two different realities at once. An ambitious episode but it’s pretty cool and it makes excellent use of the two storylines running in parallel technique.

Camelot is delightfully quirky. A distant descendant of King Arthur rules a tiny kingdom in which time has stood still. There are brave knights, dragons to slay (the dragons are of course dinosaur) and maidens to rescue. And of course, like King Arthur, this young king has a traitor in his midst. This episode is whimsical fun.

In Unnatural Selection Challenger meets an old scientific colleague who is conducting certain experiments. We quickly find out that he is a full-blown mad scientist. There are definite Island of Dr Moreau vibes here. And the secondary storyline involves a fairy princess!

Time After Time involves two time travellers with two very different agendas and Marguerite learns things about her destiny. There are also ninjas, but fortunately they’re remarkably incomp
etent ninjas.

In Prodigal Father Veronica finally finds her long-lost father but the reunion doesn’t turn out as she’d hoped. At this stage in the series you’re probably thinking that the one great disappointment is that we haven’t seen Marguerite and Veronica mud-wrestling. Well that omission is corrected in this episode.

Birthright begins with Marguerite, Ned and Roxton digging up the mummy of a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh. Only he’s not so dead. And he has a sister and our adventurers get mixed up in the family feud.

Resurrection starts with Roxton getting killed. Well, sort of. A strange disturbing child offers him a deal. He can live, but another man must die in his place. Roxton doesn’t like this idea but the kid adds that unless he accepts the deal Marguerite will die. Roxton will accept any conditions in order to save her. There’s also a magical sword involved.

In The Chosen One Roxton and Marguerite save a young man.

In Prophecy our explorer meet a larcenous gypsy fortune-teller, and there are disturbing signs that the raptors and capable of learning.

In Barbarians at the Gate one of those lizard-men makes a reappearance but maybe this time he will be an ally, albeit not a very reliable one. The episode ends with a fine old-fashioned cliffhanger.

Final Thoughts

Rip-roaring rollicking adventure just like in the good old days. Immensely entertaining and highly recommended.

The Saint in colour, part 2

A few selected episodes from the colour era of The Saint. I slightly prefer the black-and-white episodes but there was plenty of fun to be had in the colour seasons as well.

Locate and Destroy

Locate and Destroy (scripted by John Stanton and directed by Leslie Norman) went to air in December 1966.

Locate and Destroy begins with what seems to be an attempted hold-up in an art dealer’s shop in Lima, Peru. Simon Templar naturally just happens to be on hand and foils the robbery. Except that it wasn’t a robbery. This much is obvious to the Saint. He decides that he’d like to find out what was really going on. The fact that it’s none of his business is merely an added attraction. In fact what is really going on is a bit too obvious from the start, and the story relies on too many clumsy clichéd narrow escapes.

This one is a bit disappointing. It’s not terrible, it’s just very average.

The Better Mouse Trap

The Better Mouse Trap (scripted by Leigh Vance and directed by Gordon Flemyng) screened in November 1966.

The Saint is in Cannes and of course crime has followed him there, in the shape of a series of daring jewel robberies. Naturally the police assume Simon is the thief. They always do. 

And naturally this adventure involves a woman, a Canadian. The thieves are trying to cover their tracks by framing Simon.

As often happens in Simon’s adventures the woman is somewhat ambiguous. The viewer certainly has plenty of reason to suspect that she’s mixed up in the robberies.

This is very much a stock-standard Saint episode, enlivened by a comic turn by Ronnie Barker as a bumbling French policeman. There’s the usual stock footage to convince us we’re in the south of France.

Nothing special, but it’s executed competently.

Little Girl Lost

Little Girl Lost (scripted by Leigh Vance and directed by Roy Ward Baker) went to air in December 1966.

Simon is in Ireland where he rescues a young woman from a couple of thugs. The woman claims to be Hitler’s daughter! Simon is sure she’s either mad or lying but he likes a good story and she is pretty and it all sounds like it could be an amusing adventure.

There’s a millionaire mixed up in it and a couple of crooked private detectives, Simon and the girl get chased through the countryside and there’s young love thwarted and a matter of a hundred thousand pounds. And quite a bit of fisticuffs. 

Oh, and there’s a castle and a dungeon as well.

All in all this is a delightful light-hearted romp.

Paper Chase

Paper Chase (directed by Leslie Norman and written by Harry W. Junkin and Michael Cramoy) went to air in December 1966.

A chap named Redmond from the Foreign Office has defected to East Germany taking with him a vital file. Simon gets inveigled into working temporarily for British intelligence since he can identify the defector. But it’s not as simple as that. The East German spy who was Redmond’s contact wasn’t what he seemed to be. And Redmond finds he’s been conned.

There’s also a pretty girl (naturally). She’d like to go to London with Redmond. Or with Simon. Or with anybody who’ll take her.

This story gives Roger Moore a chance to do the James Bond thing which of course he does pretty well. There’s a lot more action than usual and some decent suspense.

All in all this is a pretty good spy thriller episode.

Flight Plan

Flight Plan (directed by Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Alfred Shaughnessy) went to air in December 1966.

Diana Gregory (Fiona Lewis) arrives in London to meet her brother Mike but a phoney nun tries to kidnap her. Luckily when a damsel is in distress you can be sure that Simon Templar will be at hand to rescue her. But then there’s another mystery - her brother, an R.A.F. pilot, is nowhere to be found.

Mike had been one of the pilots testing the new top-secret British fighter the Osprey (which appears to be the supersonic version of the Harrier that was planned at one stage) and it doesn’t take Simon long to figure out that there’s some kind of plot afoot involving that aircraft. Mike turns out to be a bit of a loose cannon, being a drunkard who passes bad cheques. Just the sort of person who get mixed up in an espionage plot.

This is a decent spy thriller episode with the added bonus of aerial adventure (although the aerial stuff is of course almost entirely stock footage). William Gaunt (from The Champions) plays Mike.

Final Thoughts

Five episodes, two of them a bit on the routine side but three of them very good.

Hannay (1988-89)

Hannay is a thirteen-episode (spread over two seasons) TV series featuring the hero of John Buchan’s classic thrillers, Richard Hannay. The series serves as a kind of prequel to The 39 Steps.

The episodes really have nothing to do with Buchan, apart from borrowing his hero. They’re all original stories. If you’re expecting the stories to be in the same class as Buchan’s novels you’ll be disappointed.

The stories are all over the place as far as tone is concerned. The best episodes are very lightweight and rely to an embarrassing degree on unlikely narrow escapes carried out by methods that are both silly and corny. These stories are much more like a cross between an Edwardian Boys’ Own Adventure Paper tale and an episode of Ripping Yarns. But they are fun in their own way. Other episodes are much more humourless and try to be serious. Many episodes are not spy tales at all but mysteries, some good while others are not so good.

The series does have one huge asset - Robert Powell as Hannay. He played Hannay in the 1970s movie version of The 39 Steps and he was by far the best thing about that film. In fact I’d go so far as to say that Robert Powell is the definitive screen Richard Hannay. Even better than Robert Donat in Hitchcock’s 1935 movie (which I rate as one of the ten best movies ever made).

At least he should be a huge asset. Unfortunately his performances are uncharacteristically restrained. A bit too restrained. If you’re going to put Robert Powell in an adventure series then you expect him to go totally over-the-top. You expect him to sparkle. But he doesn’t.

I can’t help thinking this series would have been much much better had it been made fifteen years earlier. For starters a younger more vigorous Robert Powell would have been a lot more fun. And it would have featured fewer ludicrously anachronistic social attitudes.

The biggest problem with this series is that not a single character behaves as you would expect people to behave in 1912. They’re all 1980s people wearing period costume. All the political, social and cultural attitudes are pure 1980s.

The characters we’re supposed to find sympathetic never express a single thought that is at variance with the orthodoxies of late 1980s social attitudes. This has the effect of making them seem self-satisfied and at the same time lacking in any actual personality. The characters we’re supposed to find unsympathetic come across as cardboard cut-out villains. Richard Hannay himself has no real personality whatsoever.

The TV series was shot entirely on videotape. Even the location shooting (of which there’s quite a bit) was shot on videotape. In spite of this looks it looks quite handsome. This is British TV at the tail end of its golden age so the costumes are terrific and it takes advantage of the abundance of superb character actors in Britain at that time.

Episode Guide

The first episode, The Fellowship of the Black Stone, opens with Hannay getting shot in South Africa. He is left for dead and is found clutching a black stone. His would-be assassin was notorious German spy Count von Schwabing (Gavin Richards). And a fine melodrama villain he turns out to be. He doesn’t actually twirl his moustache before carrying out dastardly deeds but you know that he’d like to.

On the ship carrying him back to Britain Hannay encounters the Earl of Haslemere (David Waller) and the earl’s daughter, the Lady Anne. Hannay is charmed by Lady Anne, to say the least.

Hannay had worked for the British Secret Service but had left their employ some years earlier. He finds himself caught up in a spy drama anyway, with the Germans hatching dastardly plots and poor Hannay getting himself repeatedly captured, tortured and threatened with certain death. Fortunately, although the German secret service is very efficient their agents have never been taught to tie a knot properly. Hannay keeps escaping by slipping out of his bonds.

The highlight of this episode is Charles Gray as a senior Scotland Yard man.

It’s all breathless stuff with a reasonable amount of action. A fine episode.

In A Point of Honour Hannay meets Lady Madrigal Fitzjames on a train. They get off at the wrong station and then arrive at the wrong country house. The staff assume they are the honeymooning couple whose arrival they were expecting. Hannay and Madrigal decide to have a bit of fun. They pretend they really are the honeymooners.

As it happens there’s an immensely valuable diamond necklace sitting in the safe. And things will soon get complicated and dangerous.

Historical anachronisms are always a problem in series such as this. I have to say that in this episode I just didn’t buy Lady Madrigal’s behaviour. The story takes place shortly before the First World War. We assume it’s around 1912. I don’t believe any well brought up lady at that time would have risked her reputation so recklessly. It would have been social suicide and would have wrecked any chance she might have of making an even halfway respectable marriage. Had she been one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s then I might have found it plausible. But not in 1912.

It’s still an amusing, clever and entertaining story with a certain amount of charm.

In Voyage into Fear Hannay is accosted in an art gallery by a young girl who insists that there is a dangerous man who is trying to kidnap her. She insists that Hannay should pretend to be her father, to get her out of the gallery and back home safely. Hannay is inclined to think it’s all nonsense until he realises that the girl might be telling the truth.

Then things start to go badly wrong, Hannay and the girl are drugged and they wake up on board a ship, having absolutely no idea where they are. This is a really fun episode.

Death With Due Notice is a murder mystery story. Several men have received anonymous threatening letters, all in the form of quotations from Shakespeare. A routine episode that doesn’t really have the right flavour.

Act of Riot is one of the worst pieces of television I have ever seen in my life. A clumsy embarrassingly obvious script, stodgy direction, heavy-handed political messaging, atrocious acting, leaden pacing, a total lack of action, dull and humourless. Robert Powell is clearly bored and uninterested and I can’t say that I blame him.

The Hazard of the Die is better. At least it’s a spy story. The wife of a Cabinet Minister loses heavily at the casino at Monte Carlo and is trapped into espionage. The first problem is that there really aren’t enough plot twists. It’s a bit predictable. The second problem is a total lack of action. This is an adventure series. We’d like to get some adventure. It all falls just a bit flat.

So the first season of six episodes is a mixed bag. The first three are terrific fun. The next three are pretty dull.

The second season opens with Coup de Grace. Hannay gets involved with a woman and he’s charmed by her, and he meets charismatic hard-driving businessman and gambler Sir Marcus Leonard (Anthony Valentine). And Hannay gets caught in the middle. With Anthony Valentine as guest star you assume you’re going to be in for some fun and Valentine certainly delivers the goods. What’s strange is that Robert Powell allows himself to be totally overshadowed by Valentine. It’s a crime plot rather than an espionage or adventure tale but it’s a decent story.

The series gets right back on track with The Terrors of the Earth. Not only is it a spy story, it’s a totally outrageous spy tale. There’s actually some action and Hannay gets to be much more energetic and pro-active than usual. And Robert Powell’s performance has some zest. A very entertaining episode.

In Double Jeopardy a rich dying man entrusts Hannay with some diamonds. Hannay is to pass them on to a man named Desmond Leigh but only on certain conditions. This puts Hannay in a very awkward spot. Leigh has failed to meet those conditions but he has a young wife. Then the plot gets really convoluted with a murder and a kidnapping and Hannay under suspicion and all manner of conspiracies. The plot might be convoluted but it’s quite nicely constructed with some fine twists. A very good episode.

The Good Samaritan gets off to a promising start. Hannay is in central Europe, he’s on a train and he’s just met a beautiful mysterious woman. There’s a shady oilman of indeterminate nationality. And oh yeah, there’s a corpse. And a vanishing lady. It’s hard to go wrong with those ingredients. This is a terrific episode which movies along at break-neck pace.

In That Rough Music an old friend of Hannay’s dies and leaves his estate and fortune to his half-African daughter. A totally unconvincing story told in a very clumsy manner.

The Confidence Man is a major improvement. Hannay comes to the rescue of a music-hall proprietress menaced by an extortion racket. Hannay’s initial attempt to help ends in disaster. He realises he’s going to have to be much cleverer and he turns out to be a rather goof confidence trickster, all naturally in a good cause. A lightweight episode but it moves along briskly and it’s fun.

Say the Bells of Shoreditch involves a disappearing bridegroom. The young man works for his father who runs a shipping and insurance empire. There’s something strange going on in the company with all sorts of rumours flying around.

The jilted bride is Hannay’s goddaughter so he feels compelled to find the missing young man. Hannay discovers an ingenious and dangerous conspiracy.

Final Thoughts

Most of the episodes are quite entertaining but the series just doesn’t quite ring true. It’s very very uneven. The bad episodes are absolutely terrible but the good ones are very good. And the good episodes do outnumber the bad.

The biggest problem is that the series can’t decide if it wants to be fun or if it wants to be serious. Hannay is a slight disappointment but it’s still worth a look.

Network have released the complete series on DVD.

Knight Rider season 3 (1984-85)

Knight Rider returned for its third season in 1984. Knight Rider was one of the three great American action/adventure series of the early 80s, along with The A-Team and Airwolf. They were all thoroughly enjoyable and while the first season of Airwolf was the supreme achievement of the genre Knight Rider was still enormous fun.

The premise was pretty darned cool. An undercover cop is badly wounded but his life is saved by a mysterious tycoon. The cop gets a new identity and a new partner - an ultra-high tech car named K.I.T.T. (pretty much a mobile fortress) - and a new career as an unofficial crime-fighter. He works for a kind of vigilante justice outfit (but a respectable one) called the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG), headed up by a suave if somewhat pompous Englishman named Devon Miles (Edward Mulhare).

The series had just the right mix of science fiction, fun, action, stunts, car chases, gadgets, humour, occasional seriousness and romance. Getting that mix right is quite an art and it’s something that the show’s creator, Glen A. Larson, was pretty good at.

David Hasselhoff may not be a great actor but he was perfect for this series. There’s one thing that has to be said for him - his performance is always enthusiastic. The car itself has its own personality and qualifies as the fourth regular cast member. It’s not easy to have chemistry with a machine but the chemistry between Michael and K.I.T.T. really does work.

For the third season some cosmetic changes were made to K.I.T.T.’s interior and the car gained even more formidable capabilities but the big news for fans was that Bonnie was back. Bonnie Barstow (played by Patricia McPherson) was the genius girl scientist/engineer who maintained K.I.T.T. and added various refinements to the car. She left after the first season to be replaced by April Curtis (Rebecca Holden). Rebecca Holden was an OK actress, April was pretty, she wasn’t an irritating character and I don’t think any Knight Rider fans actively disliked her but she wasn’t Bonnie. Bonnie just seemed to be an essential part of the team. So, wisely, the producers brought her back for the final two seasons.

K.I.T.T. is not just a super-car but a super-computer as well. The trick to making this series work was to ensure that K.I.T.T. could play a real rôle in each episode. It wasn’t enough to just throw in a car chase every time, there had to be something that needed doing that Michael could not possibly do without K.I.T.T. and could not possibly do with an ordinary car - something that required K.I.T.T.’s array of gadgetry and ability to do things that no conventional car could do. And ideally Michael had to get himself in a jam from which only K.I.T.T. could rescue him.

Of course this was the 80s so there had to be babes as well. Every case seems somehow to involve at least one glamorous young person of the female persuasion. The difficulty is that the whole concept of the show is that (apart from K.I.T.T.) Michael is a loner so you always know that any budding romance isn’t going to go anywhere. So any romances have to end one way or another before the closing titles but without making Michael appear to be a heel. This is something that the series managed to do pretty successfully.

A lot of K.I.T.T.’s super-abilities are in fact pretty much magic. They’re totally impossible and there’s no attempt to make them even the slightest bit plausible. K.I.T.T. can do just abut anything. This should be a weakness of the series but somehow it never seems to matter - Knight Rider, like The A-Team, has very much a comic-book feel.

Knight Rider has had several DVD releases. The Mill Creek complete series releases on DVD and Blu-Ray are extremely good value. The transfers on the DVD set (which is the one I own) are pretty good.

Episode Guide

Season three kicks off with the two-parter Knight of the Drones. Which starts promisingly - a prisoner (a killer named C.J. Jackson played by cult movie icon Jim Brown) breaks out of jail with the help of a cassette player that is really a robot, and a self-driving car. And there’s a glamorous female diabolical criminal mastermind named Margo Sheridan. She has plans for Jackson but neither Jackson nor the viewer has any idea what her plans actually are. Since Jackson killed Michael’s predecessor at FLAG the Foundation is taking a very keen interest in his recapture. A fine episode to kick off season three.

In The Ice Bandits diamonds belonging to the estate of an elderly lady and earmarked for the Foundation are stolen. Michael discovers that he is not the only one able to get a new face, and he also discovers that monks are not always what they seem to be. A fun episode.

Knights of the Fast Lane introduces Michael to the world of banzai racing - illegal street races for the super-rich, with super-cars. A young woman is a victim of a hit-run driver and she happens to be the daughter of a cop who was Michael’s partner when he was a rookie in the police force. And Michael used to know the daughter so this case is very much a personal matter for him and he thinks banzai racing is involved. So naturally we get lots of automotive action in this story. Plus football is involved, so K.I.T.T. has to learn to play football. And where there’s football there will be cheerleaders so we get lots of scantily-clad cheerleaders. Car racing, murder, football, babes. Is there anything else that the target audience for this series could possibly want? It works for me.

Halloween Knight I've talked about elsewhere.

In K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R. Michael and K.I.T.T. come up against the K.I.T.T.’s original prototype, K.A.R.R. (Knight Automated Roving Robot). K.A.R.R. looks the same as K.I.T.T. and has much the same capabilities but unfortunately he also has a bad attitude. K.A.R.R. was found buried in the sand by a guy with a metal detector. He was foolish enough to dig up his find and K.A.R.R. thereupon offered to take him for a ride. It’s going to prove to be quite a ride. K.A.R.R. made his first appearance in season one and he wants revenge. The evil twin idea has been used countless times and using it for a super-car works pretty well in this case. It culminates in an epic machine vs machine showdown. Good stuff.

Michael and K.I.T.T. battle cattle-rustlers in The Rotten Apples. Rancher Rebecca Hammond isn’t really a rancher, she’s a child psychologist. And her ranch isn’t really a ranch, it’s a kind of halfway house for New York street kids. But if those cattle-rustlers can’t be stopped she’ll lose the ranch. K.I.T.T. has a disagreement with a horse and has to battle not one but two giant trucks. Michael has to ride a mechanical bucking bronco. The silliness level is off the scale in this episode but it’s good fun silliness. It’s like a western but somehow it works and it’s a lot of fun.

In Knight in Disgrace Michael is framed by a big-time New Orleans gangster named LaSalle. Michael is kicked out of the Foundation but LaSalle offers him a job - the job being to steal K.I.T.T.. Surely Michael is not going to go to work for a mobster? OK, so this one is a bit predictable but it’s OK.

In Dead of Knight Michael is on the trail of a criminal selling deadly chemicals to revolutionaries. An attempt to kill Michael ends with a girl dead by mistake, which gives him an added incentive to crack the case. There are deadly orchids and there’s a race against time with two lives at stake, including Michael’s. Not a bad episode, even with K.I.T.T.’s jokes.

The episode is called Lost Knight but it’s not Michael who is lost, it’s K.I.T.T. - he gets electrocuted and loses his memory. They were chasing some bad guys who’d stolen some new super high explosives. K.I.T.T. doesn’t know who he is any more but he befriends a boy. And the boy could be a key witness.

In Knight of the Chameleon Michael is up against a renegade arms dealer known as the Chameleon. He’s a man of a thousand faces, a master of disguise. The Chameleon has just escaped from custody and he has two objectives - to pull off a huge arms coup and to kill Michael Knight. Of course you know that at some stage he’s going to disguise himself as Michael. The gee-whizz jetpack is amusing and finally someone has found a real use for K.I.T.T.’s ejector seat mechanism. Good fun.

The garment trade is the scene for murder in Custom Made Killer. A series of murders in fact, all involving a deadly custom car. This episode is a good blend of action and glamour and it gives K.I.T.T. a worthy opponent in the form of the fairly scary killer car. Good stuff.

In Knight by a Nose Michael gets mixed up with a girl and a racehorse. Maxine’s beloved horse King Jack, a rising champion, has to be put down after a fall. Michael suspects that whatever happened it wasn’t as simple as that. A fairly innocuous episode in which K.I.T.T. develops a gambling habit.

Junk Yard Dog pits Michael against a ruthless toxic waste dumper but it’s K.I.T.T. who ends up in real trouble. He gets dumped in the toxic waste and it may be the end of the line for him. Even if he can be fixed, will he have lost his nerve? Can a car lose its nerve? Apparently so. This one could have been an embarrassing misfire but somehow it works. It works because David Hasselhoff makes it work - he really makes us believe that Michael believes that K.I.T.T. has emotions and since Michael believes it we believe it.

In Buy Out a company specialising in ultra high tech armoured limousines is about to make an important sale when their sales demonstration is spectacularly sabotaged. Michael has to find out what was behind the disaster. The employees were planning a buy out of the company so they stand to lose everything if the company goes under. Plenty of explosions, plenty of opportunities to show off K.I.T.T.’s capabilities and plenty of automotive mayhem. A good solid episode.

In Knightlines an employee at a high-tech corporation is accidentally killed while stealing company property, although maybe that wasn’t what he was doing and maybe it wasn’t an accident. It’s all about bugs and it’s a pretty good episode.

In The Nineteenth Hole the grand-daughter of one of Devon’s friends is organising a car race in a small town but someone is trying to stop the race. And they’re prepared to kill her to do it. The story also involves gangsters and golf, and it’s pretty entertaining.

Knight & Knerd is an obvious attempt to cash in on the unexpected success of Revenge of the Nerds. The Foundation gets a new recruit, a nerd named Elliott. The case involves the use of a new top-secret laser in a diamond robbery. It’s strictly played for broad comedy and you’ll either love it or hate it. I’m afraid I hated it. Rather cringe-inducing.

Ten Wheel Trouble deals with an attempt by a big trucking combine to put independent operators out of business, and with a trucker who may or may not have resorted to murder in order to stop them. Michael also has to deal with a precocious and feisty fifteen-year-old girl who’s as hot-headed as her big brother (the one accused or murder). It’s a pretty standard episode but there’s plenty of big rig action and K.I.T.T. takes on a truck loaded with ten tons of concrete.

An old friend of Bonnie’s is found dead in Knight in Retreat and since he was involved in top-secret work there’ll have to an investigation. Bonnie wants Michael to do the investigation even though she might not like what he finds out. There’s a glamorous lady criminal mastermind with lots of glamorous henchwomen. There’s a plot to steal a missile and a guidance system. It’s typical Knight Rider over-the-top nonsense and it’s fun.

In Knight Strike a cache of impounded weapons has been stolen from a police lock-up. The cache includes a couple of super high tech laser rifles. The case takes Michael to a survivalist convention were he gets to play with cool guns and a cute blonde. And there’s another babe who seems to want to play as well. It’s standard Knight Rider stuff but it’s executed with style and energy.

Knight Rider goes to the circus in Circus Knights. And there’s murder and mayhem. Michael decides to go undercover as a daredevil, complete with super car. I just love TV shows and movies with circus settings. K.I.T.T. gets to jump through the ring of fire, there’s a sexy tiger lady and there’s a great fiery action scene at the end. It’s good stuff.

Final Thoughts

The third season of Knight Rider is just as much fun as the first two seasons. Michael and K.I.T.T. remain a great team and there’s the right mix of action, humour and pretty girls. It’s great comfort TV. Highly recommended.

I've also reviewed season one and season two of Knight Rider.

The Six Million Dollar Man season 1 (1974)

The three TV movies having been successful The Six Million Dollar Man was given the go-ahead as a regular series in 1974. With Lee Majors as the star, obviously. Richard Anderson, who took over from Darren McGavin as Steve Austin’s boss in the second TV movie, remains in the regular cast.

Astronaut Steve Austin (Lee Majors) loses an arm, a leg and an eye in the crash of an experimental aircraft but he is rebuilt - faster, stronger and better. The only catch is that in return he has to work for a government intelligence agency known as OSI. He gets assigned the missions that only a cyborg can carry out.

The Six Million Dollar Man made Lee Majors more than just a star. He became an icon.

And of course if you are of a certain age its nostalgia appeal is immense.

One thing that is rarely mentioned is that The Six Million Dollar Man is very similar in concept to the earlier (and vastly superior) British series The Champions which dealt with three secret agents who possessed superhuman powers. In fact the beginning of the opening episode of The Six Million Dollar Man follows the same pattern as The Champions which invariably began with one of the three agents demonstrating his (or her) super powers in an everyday setting.

The Six Million Dollar Man can certainly be cheesy at times but it was a bona fide television phenomenon and if you have any interest at all in 70s pop culture it can’t be ignored. The series ran for five seasons, it was preceded by three TV movies and followed by another three TV movies and of course it spawned a very successful spin-off series, The Bionic Woman. And it was a marketing bonanza with Steve Austin action figures being particularly popular. It was the most successful American science fiction TV series of its era.

It was also hugely influential. The series permanently added the word bionics to the language. It really introduced the idea of human-machine hybrids (or cyborgs) into mainstream popular science fiction. Just about every movie and TV series made since then that has addressed that concept has been influenced by this series. You could go so far as to say that it made the idea of posthumanism (or transhumanism) one of the enduring themes in modern science fiction.

Adding to its appeal (as was the case with The Champions) is that it straddled the boundaries between the spy thriller and science fiction (although the first season of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was actually the first TV series to do this).

There are occasional fascinating subversive moments. For Steve Austin to breathe a word to anybody about his bionic abilities would be a major breach of national security but in one episode he tells his buddy Vasily Zhukov the whole story even though Zhukov is a colonel in the Soviet Air Force. To hell with national security - you don’t keep secrets from a buddy. In any case Steve’s attitude towards rules and orders is that if you don’t like them you just ignore them. What is the US Government going to do to him? He’s an astronaut who walked on the Moon. He’s a national hero.

One of the show’s signatures was the use of slow motion to represent Steve’s ability to run super-fast. In the earlier TV movies they tried speeding up the action but it just looked silly. The slow motion idea worked much better. It was a clever way to give the impression that something extraordinary was happening - a fine example of an improvised inexpensive special effect that works. The show’s fans loved it.

Episode Guide

The opening scene of Population: Zero takes place in a tiny town called Norris where the entire population is suddenly and mysteriously dead. It’s is a direct rip-off of The Andromeda Strain (one of the best sci-fi movies of the ’70s). In fact it even uses footage from the movie! But it’s really quite a different story. It’s all about blackmail for very high stakes. There are some plot holes but generally speaking it’s a pretty good way to kick off the series.

In Survival of the Fittest someone is trying to kill Oscar Goldman. They try again when Oscar and Steve are on a flight to Washington and the plane goes down and they end up on an uninhabited island and they know that one of the survivors is the killer. It’s a solid story with a decent surprise ending.

In Operation Firefly an American scientist has perfected a new portable laser weapon but an international crime syndicate has kidnapped him. Luckily there is a way to find out where he’s being held - his daughter Susan has extra-sensory perception. She knows he’s somewhere in the Everglades. She and Steve set out to rescue him but they’re being trailed by the bad guys and there are other obstacles to overcome as well. Luckily wrassling ’gators is child’s play for Steve Austin. It helps that the ’gator is obviously made of rubber. This is an episode in which nothing quite works and the silliness level is a bit too high and it just generally falls flat.

Day of the Robot involves a conspiracy so over-complicated and so silly that it simply has to fail but there are compensations. We get to see Steve battling with a killer robot and we get the awesome John Saxon as Steve’s buddy, missile scientist Fred Sloan, and as the robot! Saxon does the robotic stuff just right - he’s almost convincingly human but he’s not quite right and this leads to Steve’s suspicions that something weird is going on. The robot effects are good and they’re creepy. A pretty good episode and pitting the bionic man against a robot is an obviously excellent idea.

In Little Orphan Airplane an American spy plane has come down in an African country. The US Government wants the film that the pilot (played by Greg Morris from Mission: Impossible) took but they don’t want to risk starting a war. Retrieving the film has to be a one-man job, and of course it’s a job for Steve Austin. He finds the plane, and the film and the pilot but the plane is totally smashed up. Unfortunately there’s no other way out so Steve will have to use his super powers to rebuild the plane. He also has to rescue two Flemish nuns who were hiding the pilot. The biggest failing of this episode is the ill-advised decision to speed up the film to show Steve’s ability to move super-fast. It looks embarrassingly silly. In fact the whole episode is far-fetched and silly. This one just doesn’t work.

In Doomsday, and Counting Steve flies to Khamkov Island to help out an old buddy, a Russian cosmonaut named Zhukov. Zhukov has a plan to turn the island into a base from which to launch a joint US-Soviet mission to Mars using a nuclear-powered rocket. Unfortunately there’s been an earthquake and Zhukov’s girlfriend is trapped in one of the underground levels of the reactor complex. Steve agrees to help Zhukov to rescue her, because that’s what buddies do. There’s an added complication - the whole base is about to be blown up by a nuclear explosion. They have one hour to prevent it. An exciting episode, surprisingly dark and without any hints of silliness. Excellent TV science fiction.

In Eyewitness to Murder Steve is not up against international spies or terrorists but plain old-fashioned gangsters when he witnesses a murder. The problem is that he saw the murderer from along way away with his bionic eye and nobody is going to accept his identification, given the distance involved. There’s another mystery as well - the killer has an absolutely water-tight alibi. And he will strike again since he missed his intended target. This one plays more like a cop show episode than an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man and the solution to the puzzle is a bit too obvious. An interesting experiment that doesn’t quite come off - the bionic/science fiction elements just don’t fi in here.

Farrah Fawcett, already married to Lee Majors, guest stars in Rescue of Athena One. This is just a straight space adventure story which I guess makes sense - there’s not much point in having an astronaut as your hero if he never goes into space. Farrah Fawcett is Major Kelly Woods and she’s about to be the first American woman in space. Steve has the job of training her. Her mission almost ends in disaster when there’s an explosion aboard the spacecraft and only Steve Austin can rescue her and her co-pilot. I always thought Farrah was at her best when she was being cute and ditzy (as she was in Harry O and Charlie’s Angels) but this time she has to play things dead straight. And she does OK. It’s an unusual episode but it adds a bit of variety to the season and it’s not too bad.

Dr Wells Is Missing takes Steve to Austria where Dr Rudy Wells, the man who gave him his bionics, has been kidnapped by gangsters who want to to build a bionic man for them. This is pretty far-fetched - it’s hardly likely gangsters are going to have the ultra high tech medical facilities that would be needed. This is an episode that makes very heavy use of Steven’s bionic capabilities. The slow-motion fight against four bad guys is a highlight. There are lots of fight scenes and they’re pretty violent. There are some odd touches - apparently everybody in Innsbruck drives vintage cars. Steve is in full-on James Bond mode which is something we saw in the third pilot but haven’t really seen in the series itself. It’s exciting and fun.

In The Last of the Fourth of Julys OSI have discovered that a mercenary named Quail has something big planned to happen in July. Something really really big but they have no idea what it is. It has something to do with a laser. So Steve is torpedoed(!) ashore to Quail’s secret island headquarters. This is a very very James Bond-style episode with a Bond villain equivalent (with a very Bondian plan in mind), a Bond girl equivalent (the glamorous but sadistic Violette), lots of gadgetry and lots of action. It’s just pure Bond all the way. And it works extremely well.

Burning Bright is what you might call a high-risk episode. It could so easily have gone horribly horribly wrong. Josh Lang is an astronaut who absorbed a few too many gamma rays during a space walk. Now he appears to have gone crazy. But it’s not as simple as that. Josh always was an eccentric and always was somewhat attracted to off-the-wall ideas. It’s not that he’s gone crazy - he’s just an exaggerated version of what he always was. It’s as if his brain has been supercharged. And now he thinks he’s super-intelligent and the scary part is, he really has become super-intelligent. He really has developed psionic powers. Some of his crazy ramblings turn out to be absolutely correct and scientifically brilliant. The problem is that his brain is burning too bright. Much too bright. If he isn’t helped he could burn out completely and Steve discovers that persuading Josh to accept help is going to be a challenge. 

Against the odds this episode really does kind of work and William Shatner’s performance as Josh is typical Shatner - he manages to be totally over-the-top and emotionally complex at the same time. So Burning Bright is a high-risk story that pays off.

Steve will have to confront the past in The Coward. Not his own past, but his father’s. Steve has to retrieve documents from the wreckage of a World War 2 transport aircraft that has been located near the Chinese border. His father had been flying that plane and according to official records he abandoned his crew. To get to the aircraft Steve will have to climb a mountain that even he cannot climb alone. He knows he might not like what he finds there. He also has to battle bandits and that provides some action but the main focus in this episode is on Steve’s emotions. Not a bad episode.

In Run, Steve, Run the crazy Dr Dolenz (played the ever-wonderful Henry Jones) wants Steve’s bionics secrets, even if it means taking him apart piece by piece. It’s not a terrible idea but not very much is done with it and too much of the running time is taken up by flashbacks to earlier episodes. A disappointing end to the season.

Final Thoughts

I wanted to like this series more than I did. It has its moments but it hasn’t stood the test of time quite as well as some of the other science fiction series of its era and it’s not as good as the earlier TV movies. It’s still fairly enjoyable if very uneven. The fact that the season one boxed set includes the three original TV movies makes it worth a purchase.

The Saint in colour

In 1966 ITC decided it was time to switch to colour for the new season of The Saint. There were a couple of other minor changes as well, the most notable being that we now get a voiceover introduction to each episode rather than having Simon Templar break the fourth wall and address the audience directly.

Overall though it’s the formula as before. If you have a formula that works why change it?

So, some reviews of early fifth season episodes chosen at random.

The Queen’s Ransom

In The Queen’s Ransom (which aired in 1966) Simon finds himself involved, very indirectly, in a revolution after he saves the life of a deposed Middle Eastern king. The revolution is intended to restore King Fallouda to his throne. The Saint has mixed feelings about revolutions but in this case he feels that the restoration of the king really would a good idea. The problem is that the money to finance the revolution will have to come from the sale of Queen Adana’s jewels and they’re in a safety deposit box in Zurich. The Queen will have to fetch them and Simon’s job is to protect her and the jewels.

This episode then becomes a kind of Couple on the Run story as Simon and Queen Adana are chased about Europe by the king’s enemies who intend to get those jewels. It’s a typical Saintly adventure, with Adana and Simon at each other’s throats at first, much to Simon’s amusement.

There’s the usual Saintly mix of adventure with a dash of humour but with quite a bit more action compared to the earlier black-and-white seasons. And the action is noticeably more violent (although it’s still very restrained compared to the direction British television would take in the mid-70s).

The sparks really do fly between the Queen and the Saint. There’s no hint of romance (Queen Adana is very happily married to the King and is absolutely faithful to him). Queen Adana tries her best to be regal and mostly succeeds although at times she is reminded that before she was a queen she was the daughter of a London bus driver. Dawn Addams does a fine job of being queenly while giving us occasional subtle glimpses of her working-class background.

A very entertaining episode.

The Reluctant Revolution

The Reluctant Revolution takes place in the South American dictatorship of San Pablo. Simon runs across an attractive young woman named Diane (played by Jennie Linden) who has a gun in her purse. He fears she might be going to try to kill someone and that proves to be the case. She wants to kill the dictator’s right-hand man, and that gets both Diane and Simon mixed up in an attempted revolution.

The Saint isn’t altogether sure he approves of revolutions. They usually end with a lot of innocent people being killed. If only one could have a revolution without bloodshed. Perhaps it can be done, if Simon can make use of his skills as a confidence trickster.

An enjoyable episode.

Interlude in Venice

In Interlude in Venice Simon is seeing the sights when trouble finds him (as it always does) and he has to rescue an American girl from a too-insistent would-be Lothario. The American girl, Cathy, is about to get herself in more hot water (something she seems to have a talent for), this time with a sleazy prince. 

This one was perhaps a bit too ambitious, with lots of blue-screen stuff to convince us that Roger Moore is really zipping around the canals of Venice when quite obviously the entire episode was shot in the studio. At least the blue-screen stuff is fairly well done.

As you would expect it turns out that things are not quite what they seem. A pretty decent episode.

The House on Dragon’s Rock

The House on Dragon’s Rock, which was directed by Roger Moore, is a very untypical episode of The Saint. It’s more like a 1950s science fiction monster movie with a bit of Hammer-style gothic atmosphere thrown in. Simon arrives in a small Welsh village to find that strange and disturbing things have been happening. The latest mystery is the disappearance of a shepherd named Owen and when Owen is finally found the mystery remains as deep as ever.

The villagers are convinced that it has something to do with the scientific experiments being carried out in the big old house on Dragon’s Rock.

This is not just a monster movie story, it’s also a mad scientist story with Anthony Bate as Dr Charles Sardon making a pretty effective mad scientist. Dr Sardon has his own ideas about the future of the planet.

Much of this episode was actually shot in Wales, with mostly Welsh actors. To venture so far from the studio was highly unusual for 1960s British television. And there are special effects. OK, the special effects are roughly of the standard you’d expect in a 1960s Doctor Who episode but given the tone of the episode they work well enough.

There has to be a pretty girl in an episode of The Saint and in this case it’s Annette Andre (later to be better known from her regular role in Randall and Hopkirk, Deceased).

Roger Moore plays things pretty straight which, given the outlandish plot, was probably a very sound idea.

There’s an obvious attempt to get away from the flat lighting so characteristic of 1960s television and achieve a more atmospheric effect.

The House on Dragon’s Rock is a great deal of fun.

The Man Who Liked Lions

A journalist, a friend of Simon’s, is murdered in broad daylight in Rome. Needless to say Simon makes it his business to find out why. The trail leads him first to artist Claudia Molinelli but what Simon really wants is to find the Man Who Likes Lions. Eventually he finds him. He is Tiberio Magadino (Peter Wyngarde) and apart from being obsessed with lions he is obsessed by Ancient Rome. He dreams of recapturing the glory of Ancient Rome but it’s the way he earns his living that interests Simon.

The plot isn’t all that special but it’s the outrageous execution that makes this a memorable episode.

This is one of several memorable TV guest roles that Peter Wyngarde did in the 60s before finding fame in Department S and Jason King. His most notorious guest role of course was in the A Touch of Brimstone episode of The Avengers (the one with Mrs Peel as the Queen of Sin).