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).

The Six Million Dollar Man: The Solid Gold Kidnapping (1973)

The Solid Gold Kidnapping, which went to air in late 1973, is the third of The Six Million Dollar Man TV movies. Like the previous movie it was directed by Russ Mayberry. This one was written by Alan Caillou and Larry Alexander.

As in Wine, Women and War this is very much Steve Austin in James Bond mode. The pre-opening credits action prologue is rather Bondian. Even the theme song (sung by Dusty Springfield) is a bit Bondian. And as in Wine, Women and War there’s a lot of rather risqué sexual innuendo which Lee Majors tries to deliver in as Bondian a manner as possible. There are exotic settings (thanks to the copious use of stock footage) and there are three Bond girls (sorry, Austin Girls). And one of them is a beautiful but deadly Contessa. There’s even a casino scene. I keep expecting the hero to say, “The name is Austin. Steve Austin.” And then to order a vodka martini, shaken not stirred.

This time Steve is up against an international criminal organisation, very much like SPECTRE. Very very much like SPECTRE. They specialise in kidnapping high-ranking diplomats and governments officials for immense ransoms. Their target this time is not just a very senior American diplomat (named William Henry Cameron), he is also a man who knows all of America’s military secrets. He should be worth every penny of the billion dollar ransom they’re asking. Yes, a cool billion. In gold.

That action prologue is actually a very good action set-piece in a ruined Mayan temple.

The really cool idea in this movie (and it’s a very science fictional idea) is the method the OSI uses to find the kidnappers. Genius scientist (who also happens to be young, attractive and female) Dr Erica Berger (Elizabeth Ashley) has developed a technique for transplanting brain cells in rats to give one rat the memories of another rat. She hasn’t tested it on humans yet but now she’s going to have to do just that - with herself as the guinea pig. She transplants brain cells from one of the kidnappers who was killed into her own brain. Now that she has that man’s memories she should be able to direct Steve to wherever the kidnappers have stashed Cameron. Which means she’ll have to go with him, offering an excuse for Austin to have a beautiful woman with him on his mission. And for some hints of an emotional attachment. Steve sees Erica as being a bit like him - a human experiment. And the experiment might threaten her humanity.

The US Government agrees to the ransom and the gold is sent by freighter to Rome, with (weirdly) just one guy to guard it.

I thought Lee Majors was fine in the first two movies but I like him more in this one - he seems just a bit more relaxed and more confident. And a bit more convincingly Bond-like.

Elizabeth Ashley gives an effective enough performance, especially when she has to portray the trauma of having someone else’s sometimes unpleasant memories. Luciana Paluzzi is fine as the Contessa, a typical Bond movie female. Richard Anderson is suitably ruthless as Steve’s boss Oscar Goldman, a man who has no qualms about sacrificing people to get the job done.

John Vernon was always good at being cold-blooded and ruthless and he makes a good chief villain. Not quite Bond villain stature but still pretty menacing.

There’s quite a complex plot here and it has some very neat twists. The twist with the gold is very clever. The subplot with Erica possibly losing her mind is handled well without unnecessary histrionics. Steve Austin gets quite a few opportunities to demonstrate his super powers. The opening action set-piece is the best but the speedboat chase is good and there’s some decent suspense.

Wine, Women and War is perhaps just a little better but The Solid Gold Kidnapping plays very well as a cut-price Bond movie with some nifty science fiction elements. This is pretty entertaining stuff and it’s highly recommended.

The A-Team season 3 (1984-85)

The A-Team returned for its third season in 1984. It was the formula precisely as before. It was a formula that was working so presumably there was no reason to change it. Eventually, inevitably, the formula was going to wear thin but at this stage it’s still working just fine. Disaster would finally strike in season four as the formula started to grow stale and the audience started to evaporate but during the third season the series was still riding high in the ratings.

The formula worked mainly due to sheer exuberance plus the inspired performances of the four regulars - George Peppard as Colonel Hannibal Smith, Dirk Benedict as Templeton Peck (The Face), Dwight Schlutz as Howling Mad Murdock and of course Mr T as B.A. Baracus.

If you try to pick a favourite character then you’re really missing the point. It was the combination of four wildly different characters played by four wildly different actors who somehow just had the right chemistry that made The A-Team work. There is simply no way any of the four leads could have been successfully replaced.

Melinda Culea, who played Amy, had departed during the second season (which I think was rather unfortunate). The series really needed a female cast member to add a bit of balance so Marla Heasley as Tawnia Baker was brought in as a semi-regular. Unfortunately she didn’t last long.

Of course this series was always going to run out of steam eventually. The formula was really quite rigid. It’s amazing that for three seasons, even with plots that were often pretty similar and with stunts that followed similar patterns as well ways were found to inject enough variety into that formula to keep things interesting. Somehow new ways were found to con B.A. into flying even though flying was the one thing he feared. New ways were found to bust Murdock out of the psych ward at the Veterans’ Hospital. Murdock found new ways to enrage B.A. and to express his craziness. Hannibal was still coming up with outlandish disguises. New ways were found for the A-Team to evade the Military Police. It couldn’t last but in season three these things still manage to be genuinely amusing.

There are a few signs that maybe the formula was going to start wearing thin sooner rather than later. There are a few episodes that are enjoyable enough but you start to notice at times that the spark is not quite there. There are too many episodes where the writers have been content to recycle the same plot. The episodes which work are the ones that vary the formula a little, or have settings that are colourful enough to make things interesting (just as the Wild West Show episode).

With all the mayhem and the explosions and the gunplay no-one ever gets badly hurt. The A-Team was both ultra-violent and yet not truly violent at all. Curiously enough this upset a lot of people at the time. They either felt there was too much violence or they felt that somehow there was something immoral about violence in which nobody gets hurt. It was a series that contrived to combine violence and wholesomeness.

The A-Team is supposed to be a bunch of urban mercenaries but they only ever take on cases where there are bad guys who need to be taken down. They’re mercenaries with morals. And they only work for people who really need help - rich people have plenty of other options. That’s about as close as the series ever comes to having a political subtext - they’re on the side of the little guy. Of course the people they work for usually don’t have much money but The A-Team doesn’t care too much about money. And they are on the run so I guess they don’t have much use for lots of money.

Episode Guide

In Bullets and Bikinis a couple of girls own this nice hotel in Miami and a gangster is trying to force them to sell. They don’t want to sell so they hire the A-Team. This one follows the standard A-Team formula. In fact to be honest almost every episode follows the standard A-Team formula. It doesn’t matter. The four regular cast members go through their paces with their usual style, there’s a generous helping of mayhem and there’s plenty of humour. Plus, since this is a resort hotel, there are plenty of babes in bikinis. It’s lots of fun.

The Bend in the River is a two-parter. Archaeologist Dr Brian Lefcourt is captured by river pirates on the Amazon. He was there looking for cultural artifacts and a lost city although there were rumours of buried treasure. Lefcourt just happens to be engaged to (well, almost engaged to) Tawnia Baker so naturally the A-Team sets off for South America to rescue him.

A good A-Team episode need colourful villains and this one scores highly in that regard. There’s El Cajon (“The Coffin”), the outrageous cut-throat river pirate, and there’s the sinister and utterly ruthless Doyle (Mike Preston). The question is, why is El Cajon preventing anyone from going down the river and what is Doyle up to? He’s not a man likely to be interested in cultural artifacts. It turns out that there’s a lot more hidden in the jungle than a lost city. There’s something much more menacing by far. This is an ambitious totally over-the-top episode that works very neatly indeed.

In Fire a big fire fighting company is trying to take over a contract from small fire-fighting company run by a feisty lady fire-fighter. But the contract is really small so why would such a big company be interested? That’s one of the things the A-Team will have find out. In this one the A-Team gets some good news. Colonel Decker isn’t after them any more. The bad news is that now there’s a Colonel Briggs after them, and he’s just as determined. You can’t dislike an episode which features a fire-engine chase. Good stuff.

In Timber! it’s small loggers under threat, this time from a crooked union which isn’t really a union at all. The Face has a lot of fun impersonating a forestry inspector spouting gobbledegook about horrible insect menaces. Another episode that follows the formula rigidly but gets away with it through sheer exuberance.

Double Heat lands the A-Team is in the middle of a war between rival gangster, with a kidnapped girl’s life at stake. What Hannibal would like to do is to make sure both gangsters lose. It will be tricky, but he likes a challenge. A good episode.

In Trouble on Wheels there’s a racket going on at an auto plant. Hannibal and Face go undercover to find out who’s behind it. The usual mayhem ensues. A routine episode.

In The Island an ex-army doctor named Fallone lives on a tiny island which happens to be a sovereign state, and that’s what attracts the bad guys who want to take over and use the islanders as slave labour in their narcotics business. The A-Team has no intention of allowing this to happen. When the A-Team has to assault a fortress you expect them to take a car or an old truck and convert it into an improvised armoured vehicle. But not this time. This time they have an actual tank. This story also features a memorable villain. A pretty decent episode.

In Showdown! we get the A-Team as the bad guys, battling against the good guys - who are of course the A-Team. Yes, two rival A-Teams. The bad A-Team is trying to intimidate the the owner of a travelling Wild West Show. The real A-Team has plenty to keep them busy since the military police are hot on their trail again and this time surely there can be no escape. Plenty of fun in this episode.

In Sheriffs of Rivertown the A-Team is hired to take over law enforcement in a South American mining town. There have been several mysterious accidents in the mine. The A-Team has fun running around with their badges before they discover that there’s a nefarious conspiracy behind the accidents. Of course they have to build a makeshift vehicle but this time it’s something more interesting than an armoured vehicle. A solid episode.

In The Bells of St. Mary’s the way in which the A-Team gets involved in the case makes no sense at all. The case involves a girl singing group who have major problems with their record company, for reasons that make no sense at all. It leads to kidnapping. The most surprising thing about this one is that it was written by series creator Stephen J. Cannell so he has no-one but himself to blame for the fact that it’s a bit of dud, enlivened only by an interesting twist in the B.A.-Murdock dynamic.

Hot Styles takes the A-Team into the world of high fashion. Face’s latest girlfriend is involved in some way with notorious hoodlum Johnny Turian. The A-Team rescues her but she doesn’t seem to appreciate their efforts one little bit. Face is determined to figure what’s going on. And Murdock turns fashion designer. B.A. doesn’t appear in this episode. This is a very routine episode, lacking any real cleverness or sense of fun. Even the fight scenes are very flat.

Breakout! begins with disaster for the A-Team - B.A. and Murdock get arrested in a hick town after getting caught in the middle of an armed robbery. As soon as B.A.’s prints are checked the sheriff will know he’s got a member of the A-Team in his hands which means Colonel Decker will soon be on his way. Hannibal will have to break his friends out of a chain gang but there are lots of complications and he’s not the only one planning a breakout. And there’s a woman and child under threat from murderous hoodlums and even if it means risking capture the A-Team is not going to walk away a situation like that. Naturally B.A. gets to construct an improvised vehicle but this one is really clever. Plenty of action and Decker is right on their tail all the way. Pretty good fun.

Cup A' Joe has an absolutely stock standard A-Team plot. If you’re a regular viewer you can predict the entire course of the story within the first few minutes. The owner of a chain of restaurants is trying to force the owner of a small diner to sell out which doesn’t seem to make sense unless that diner is worth more than appearances suggest. It’s executed well enough but that rigid adherence to a formula was becoming a problem. Murdock is amusing masquerading as an army bomb disposal specialist but apart from that it offers no surprises and no inspiration. A very routine story.

In The Big Squeeze the A-Team is trying to break a loan-sharking operation. Jack ‘The Ripper’ Lane runs the loan shark operation for big-time mobster Nathan Vincent. Lane (played with gusto by Wings Hauser) is a seriously crazy and unhinged villain. Since none of Lane’s victims will stand up to him the A-Team set themselves up as victims. Hannibal spends most of the episode regaling anyone who will listen with Irish proverbs (when he isn’t dead). Nothing wildly original here but it’s done with more style and energy than most season three episodes and it works.

Champ! is a slight change of pace. The members of the A-Team find themselves owning 60% of a fighter named Billy Marquette. But petty gangster Sonny Monroe wants Billy to take a dive, and he’s threatening Billy’s sister. Fortunately Hannibal has a plan. It involves B.A. taking Billy’s place in the ring. Lots of boxing action in this one and some tension as Hannibal’s plan starts to unravel. A good episode.

Skins takes the A-Team to Kenya, hunting down poachers who killed a game warden. Hannibal’s plan to take down the whole poaching operation is pretty clever. It’s the basic A-Team formula but with a few subtle changes (such as B.A. flying, but for the first time ever doing so voluntarily) and with the change of setting it all works rather nicely.

Road Games deals with Gentleman Jim Sullivan who (along with his daughter) runs a home for troubled children. Gentleman Jim has one weakness, gambling, and it’s landed him in big trouble. He’s now in debt to a racketeer named Royce and as a result he could lose his house which means he, his daughter and five troubled kids will be homeless unless the A-Team can help him. This one follows the standard formula pretty closely but in this case it works beautifully. There’s the right mix of humour and action and there are a few inspired moments (such as chasing a mobile casino with a helicopter). A very good episode.

Moving Targets is another attempt to vary the formula a little. The A-Team is hired by a north-west African sheikh to protect his daughter. She’s about to marry a neighbouring prince which will bring peace between the two countries, but a revolutionary group intends to stop the marriage. There are multiple double-crosses, lots of action and the ever-awesome John Saxon as the revolutionary leader. B.A. gets conned into flying again but this time it looks like he really will get his revenge. He hates flying, but he hates crashing even more. Not a bad episode.

Knights of the Road is a by-the-numbers episode. A small towing company is being driven out of business by a larger outfit, for some unknown mysterious reason. So the A-Team finds itself in the tow-truck business. B.A. builds a monster tow-truck. The usual mayhem ensues. An average episode.

Waste ‘Em! sticks absolutely rigidly to the established formula and you can predict everything that is going to happen after the first 30 seconds. A waste disposal company is trying to force a small delivery service to sell their despatch centre. The dart bug is cute and the flamethrower is a nice touch but otherwise it’s strictly routine.

Just when the series seems to be hopelessly stuck in a rut along comes Bounty. It’s not just a very very good episode it’s also a very unusual one that departs from the standard formula. Murdock is captured by hillbilly bounty hunters who want the whole A-Team. Murdock has to be rescued but even if the rescue succeeds the bounty hunters will try again so they’re going to have to be persuaded not to do that. Murdock actually gets rescued by a pretty female veterinarian but the A-Team still has problems - Colonel Decker is hot on their trail as well.

And Murdock falls in love with the pretty vet. Any kind of serious romance just doesn’t happen in this series but this is true love. Two things make this more interesting - the vet is played by Wendy Fulton, who was (and still is) Dwight Schultz’s real-life wife so as you would expect there is genuine chemistry there. And Schultz, for the first time in the series, plays Murdock dead straight. Which raises really intriguing questions. Is Murdock’s madness all just an act? Which actually makes sense - by pretending to be mad he keeps out of the clutches of Colonel Decker and he can’t be used to trap the rest of the A-Team. And, even more unusually, the romance angle is all played very seriously.

Of course there’s the usual action as well, and some very effective tension. This story was a bold experiment, coming at a time when the series needed to do something a bit different, and it works surprisingly well. It may even be the best episode of the season.

Beverly Hills Assault takes the A-Team into the world of art. More specifically, the world of crooked at dealers. Young painter ‘Speed’ Miller gets beaten up by goons and his friends hire the A-Team to find out why. First they have to convince the dealer that Murdock is a great artist. This is another very good episode that breaks away just a little from the standard formula, and also moves away from the A-Team’s usual milieu. You don’t expect to encounter the A-Team on Rodeo Drive.

We’re back to the standard formula with Trouble Brewing. A brewery is trying to take over a small soda-pop business. A routine episode but competently executed.

In Incident at Crystal Lake the A-Team decides to take a vacation but Colonel Decker has other plans for them, as does a gang of psycho armed robbers. Face learns that fishing is a lot safer than chasing girls, B.A. has to watch in horror as his beloved van is about to be blown up, Murdock finds a new friend (a shop dummy) and Hannibal’s love of disguise is put to more imaginative use than normal. This episode is a fine example of the basic formula executed with real flair. A great way to end the season.

Final Thoughts

An uneven season with too many episodes just rehashing the basic formula but with a few inspired episodes thrown in. If you’re not a fan of the series this season won’t convert you but if you are a fan you’ll enjoy it.

Halloween Knight (Knight Rider, 1984)

With Halloween almost upon us I thought I should watch some Halloween-themed cult TV. As it happens all I could come up on the spur of the moment was Halloween Knight, the fifth episode of the third season of Knight Rider. But it is an actual Halloween-themed episode so that’s something.

Halloween Knight, written by Bill Nuss and directed by Winrich Kolbe, originally went to air on 28th October 1984.

With Patricia McPherson returning to the series after being absent during season two it made sense to include at least one episode in the third season centred on her character, computer whizz-kid and genius engineer Bonnie Barstow. And this episode puts her right at the centre of the action.

Bonnie has just moved into a new apartment. It is two days before Halloween and she’s been kept awake by a noisy Halloween party in Apartment 302. From her apartment she can see straight into Apartment 302 across the courtyard and she sees something very disturbing - a woman being strangled by a guy in a gorilla suit. At least that’s what it looked like, but she’s been suffering from a fever so maybe she was hallucinating. Michael takes her story seriously anyway and decides to investigate. Especially when Bonnie sees a dead girl in her bathtub, and then the dead girl vanishes.

Michael gets cursed by a witch (admittedly a very pretty witch) and then someone tries to kill him. And then a gorilla tries to run him down in a car. Maybe Bonnie could have been hallucinating but Michael knows that someone really did try to kill him so he’s convinced that something sinister is going on.

The investigation leads Michael and Bonnie to a creepy old house which looks just like the Bates house from Psycho. Because it is the Bates house from Psycho, which was still there on the Universal backlot in the 80s (and as far as I know is still there today). Since Knight Rider was a Universal Television release and they had access to the Universal backlot it was a pretty obviously cool idea to use the famous house for a Halloween episode.

When you see that house you’re expecting some further Psycho references, and there are a couple. In fact given that one of the chief suspects has some movie industry connections the whole story is a bit of a movie/pop culture in-joke exercise, although it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one.

There are two spectacularly destructive KITT stunts and there’s an action finale in a drive-in theatre.

And the movie being screened is Creature from the Black Lagoon, which just happens to be (by an amazing coincidence) a Universal release. And it's being screened in 3D!

Patricia McPherson gets a rare chance to do at least a little bit of real acting.

This being Knight Rider there are of course glamorous women (not all of them witches).

All in all Halloween Knight is a great deal of fun and turned out to be a pretty good pre-Halloween viewing choice.