Remembering Roger Moore

The great Sir Roger Moore has passed away after a short battle with cancer, according to numerous news outlets. And this is the piece I have most dreaded writing ever since I began this blog. Roger Moore may not have been the screen’s "best" James Bond in terms of realizing Ian Fleming’s literary character, but he is certainly one of the most appealing. He is the one you most want to hang out with. He was my favorite Bond as a kid, and was always the Bond actor I most fancied having a conversation with. Even now, when I’m in the mood for a Bond movie in general but have no specific title in mind, I find myself most frequently putting on a Moore movie—usually For Your Eyes Only (1981), easily in my Top 5 Bond movies.

Roger Moore personified the witty playboy adventurer who brushes off danger without creasing his immaculately tailored suits. He perfected this persona most famously across three different characters—TV’s Simon Templar on The Saint and Lord Brett Sinclair on The Persuaders!, and of course 007—each distinct, and yet each distinctly Roger Moore. He sold a personal brand long before we spoke in such terms, and he sold it to perfection. Critics have accused him of turning all of his roles into Roger Moore rather than adapting Roger Moore to the roles, but for a movie star, I’ve never seen that as a bad thing. In fact, I’ve always found it incredibly appropriate that at the height of his Saint fandom in the 1960s, while every popular TV character (including The Saint) had his own Annual (hardcover books for children packed with stories, comics, and puzzles), Moore was the only actor to have his own—The Roger Moore Adventure Book.

It was a narrative often put forth by Moore himself that he was not a good actor. Always charmingly self-deprecating, he once famously reduced his own acting ability to, “left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.” He was, of course, selling himself short, and I’m saddened to see that many obituaries today still persist with that narrative. Many James Bond purists lament that Moore played the character so comically, and they certainly have a point. But ask any actor what’s harder, comedy or drama, and nearly unanimously they all answer comedy. It’s true that Roger Moore was not one of the screen’s great dramatic actors (though he was certainly capable of fine dramatic performances, as evidenced in The Man Who Haunted Himself and several crucial scenes in For Your Eyes Only, among others), but he was an incredibly gifted comedian, and deserves recognition as such. His comic timing was impeccable, and his wry delivery of innumerable oft-quoted one-liners unequaled. For proof, one need look no further than other, subsequent James Bond actors who have been saddled with similar lines and unable to pull them off despite their undeniable dramatic gravitas. Roger Moore had a unique talent to sell even the most ridiculous double-entendres or pithy asides, and that talent more than anything else carried the Bond franchise to new Box Office heights in the Seventies and ensured its continuation after Sean Connery.

This is another part of Moore’s legacy that should never be overlooked. While all the other popular spy series of the Sixties (on the big and small screen) dried up in the Seventies (as public perception of spies themselves shifted from heroic to underhanded in the wake of Watergate, COINTELPRO, the Church Committee Hearings, and other scandals), James Bond thrived during Moore’s tenure. Moonraker may not have pleased critics, but it broke Box Office records. What Roger Moore brought to the franchise was exactly what audiences craved in the 1970s. Without him, the series may well have languished, but instead it became more popular than ever.

Despite eventually personifying the upper-class English gentleman, Roger Moore was born into a working class London family. He grew up idolizing suave leading men like George Sanders and Stewart Granger, and following his compulsory army service and a stint as a male knitwear model (which briefly earned him the nickname of “The Big Knit”), had the chance not only to follow in their footsteps, but eventually to work with both. After a string of supporting roles as an MGM contract player opposite the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner (during which, Moore wrote in his autobiography*, he and his neighbor William Shatner “whiled away many an evening… sitting around the pool [of their Westwood apartment complex], having a drink or three”), Moore found success on television. First as the titular knight on Ivanhoe (for England’s ITV, where he would later find stardom as The Saint), then as a cowboy with an unlikely accent on The Alaskans and Maverick (both for Warner Bros.), where he had the unenviable task of filling the void left by James Garner, playing Brett (Garner) and Bart’s (Jack Kelly) English cousin Beau Maverick. In the former he found himself speaking Garner’s lines (a writers’ strike led to scripts from Maverick being recycled wholesale for The Alaskans), and in the latter wearing his clothes (from his autobiography: “They assured me that I wasn’t replacing [Garner]. Oh yeah? Then why did all of my costumes have ‘Jim Garner’ in them, semi-scratched out?”). It would prove valuable experience for later, when he once again found himself taking over from a very popular actor!

Moore’s real fame, however, came not from American television, but UK television. After trying himself, unsuccessfully, to acquire the rights to Leslie Charteris’ Saint stories several years earlier, Moore jumped at the chance to play Simon Templar for producers Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker at Lord Lew Grade’s powerhouse production company, ITC. He made 118 episodes of The Saint, the first batch in black and white, and the second (without Berman) in color. Charteris had imbued his hero with ample wit to match his wits, and Moore, naturally, excelled at conveying that wit on screen. His Simon Templar would break the fourth wall to directly address the audience, making the most of Moore’s innate charm. Simon Templar was the absolute perfect part for Moore, the idea match of character and star. In America, The Saint played on NBC, making Moore a household name on both sides of the Atlantic. It was also his first major brush with spy stardom, as, though Templar was no agent, his adventures frequently brought him into espionage territory.

Once The Saint wrapped, Moore was eager to segue from television into movies. He and Baker, now producing partners, made Crossplot, a highly entertaining Hitchcock knock-off (parts North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much) in which Moore played an advertising executive caught up in an espionage plot who has to stop an assassination. Bernard Lee, best known as M from the Bond movies, co-starred, and the advertising campaign traded heavily on Bondian imagery, prominently featuring Moore in a white dinner jacket brandishing a pistol. It wasn’t the first connection between Moore and 007. His name was linked with the Bond role as soon as the first movie was announced, but of course Sean Connery was cast instead. Still, Moore played the character in a 1964 sketch on the BBC comedy series Mainly Millicent, and in the Saint episode “Luella” (co-starring future Felix Leiter David Hedison), Templar jokingly introduced himself as James Bond. In another episode, he ordered his drink “neither shaken nor stirred.”

Moore and Baker had planned several other films together (including, according to Andrew Pixley, the spy drama The Patterson Report and an action-adventure called Vanishing Point**), but never had the chance to make them. Instead, Moore was lured back to television by Lew Grade, who had already sold The Persuaders! based on Moore’s involvement, but without his permission! He then persuaded Moore to make the series by urging him to think of all the jobs it would create, and the boon it would be to the British economy. (“Think of the Queen!”) And thank God it worked, because The Persuaders! is fantastic. It’s one of my favorite TV series, and it's actually his character from that show, Lord Brett Sinclair, that I think of first when I think of Roger Moore... much as I love his Saint and his Bond.

The Persuaders! arose from an idea Moore and Baker had had while shooting the final season of The Saint—the idea of a buddy series teaming Moore with a brash American co-star. The Saint episode “The Ex-King of Diamonds” served as an unofficial pilot, pairing Moore with The Champions star Stuart Damon. When it came to the series, however, a bigger name was required, and when Rock Hudson proved unavailable, Tony Curtis came aboard as self-made oil millionaire Danny Wilde. When Brett and Danny first encounter each other on the French Riviera, the two wealthy alpha males find themselves instantly in competition, first in a road race (Brett’s Aston Martin DBS versus Danny’s Ferrari Dino), and then in a fist fight over the proper way to make a ridiculous drink called a Creole Scream. In the course of this fight, they tear apart the whole hotel bar and find themselves facing a judge, Judge Fulton (played by Diamonds Are Forever’s Laurence Naismith), who offers them an alternative to a jail sentence. It turns out he manipulated their meeting, having selected them to be his personal vigilante crime fighters. It’s a tenuous premise, but it serves its purpose, setting Brett and Danny on numerous missions against kidnappers, counterfeiters, and, of course, spies. (Somehow this judge is also privy to information about classified British Intelligence operations when the plots require that.) The Persuaders! had a top-notch roster of talent (including Avengers writer Brian Clemens and Casino Royale director Val Guest) both behind and in front of the cameras, and their skills combined with lush location filming in exotic European locales (as opposed to The Saint’s stock footage and studio backlots) made every episode of the series look like a feature film. But more than anything, it was the fantastic chemistry between Moore and Curtis (whose off-screen relationship influenced their friendly on-screen competition) that made the series work so well. While The Persuaders! faced stiff competition in America from Mission: Impossible, it was a huge hit around the world, and a second season was in the offing… until Moore received a life-changing phone call from Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

During his Bond tenure, Moore made numerous other action-adventure movies, including Gold (for Bond director Peter Hunt), The Wild Geese (opposite Richard Burton), Shout at the Devil (with Lee Marvin), North Sea Hijack (aka Ffolkes, with Bond alumni David Hedison and George Baker), and The Sea Wolves (with Patrick Macnee and David Niven). He even found time to, unlikely though it may seem, play Sherlock Holmes on TV, in Sherlock Holmes in New York with Macnee as Watson and John Huston as Professor Moriarty. All of these movies are well worth watching. He also displayed that considerable gift for comedy in Cannonball Run (sending up his own image as an Aston Martin-driving racer who thinks he’s Roger Moore) and Blake Edwards’ Curse of the Pink Panther (1983). While the latter is a pretty lousy movie, Moore elevates it considerably in his brief cameo as a post-plastic surgery Inspector Clouseau, ably aping Peter Sellers’ famous French accent and pulling off the requisite pratfalls with great aplomb. (You can watch his scene on YouTube, saving yourself from slogging through the entire film.) In my opinion he’s the only actor to ever successfully fill Sellers’ shoes in that role (once again demonstrating his ability to rise to the challenge following in famous footsteps), and it’s a real shame that Edwards didn’t make Moore’s Clouseau the star of the film.

Moore played James Bond in seven official entries in the series, more than any other actor (though tied with Connery if you count the unofficial Never Say Never Again), and until he was 57, making him the oldest actor to play 007. Too old, really. Moore himself was the first to admit that A View to a Kill was at least one movie too many, and stretched credibility when he switched off with stuntmen for the outlandish action. He had actually tried to leave the series, but Broccoli simply offered him too much money to pass up.

After finally hanging up the Walther PPK, Moore focused more on charity than acting, devoting much of his time to children’s health as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. (His friend Audrey Helpburn had recruited him to the cause.) He played two more spy roles (in The Enemy, based on a Desmond Bagley novel, and as a guest star on J.J. Abrams’ TV show Alias), and made an intriguing mystery for director Bill Condon, The Man Who Wouldn’t Die, but primarily focused on comedy when he did act. His comedic roles included Bullseye! (an unfortunate miss, but an opportunity to star with his good friend Michael Caine), Boat Trip (an awful movie in which Moore is nonetheless hilarious), and Spice World. The latter was the first of several cameos sending up his Bond image. More recently, he starred in a Lifetime holiday movie, A Princess for Christmas, and played an important supporting role in the unsold pilot for a new version of The Saint starring Adam Rayner. (Sadly, that remains unreleased.) He also found time to record many excellent DVD commentaries, and to pen three memoirs (co-authored with Gareth Owen), My Word is My Bond, Bond on Bond, and One Lucky Bastard. My Word is My Bond is essential reading for any 007 fan, and one of my very favorite showbiz autobiographies, full of humorous and typically self-deprecating anecdotes from Moore’s amazing life.

With Roger Moore’s passing, we have lost one of the true titans of the spy genre, and a very talented comedic actor who never got proper credit for those talents. Fortunately, that Roger Moore brand will live on in his incredible body of work, preserved for posterity on DVD and Blu-ray and no doubt all formats to come. There is truth to the criticism that his Bond movies aren’t so much Bond movies as “Roger Moore movies.” But so what? I find myself frequently craving Roger Moore movies, and I don’t expect that will ever change. It may well be that I'm a bit more of a Roger Moore fan than I am a James Bond fan. Roger Moore was truly one of my heroes, and I am genuinely crushed by his passing. But what a legacy he leaves behind!

*Moore, Roger with Gareth Owen: My Word is My Bond, 2008
**Pixley, Andrew: The Persuaders! Read and Destroy: A Complete Series Guide, 2011

Trailer for the New Saint!

Well, this proves that the new Saint series is one step closer to reality! And that the pilot actually exists. Not that I doubted it, of course, but after so many years of false starts and productions falling apart at the last minute, it's great to see videographic evidence that this one is really in the can. The promotional artwork at the left was created for the MIPTV media market, where the producers will attempt to sell this pilot to networks internationally. Hopefully it sells and we end up with a whole new Saint series!

As previously reported, the pilot was directed by Simon West, and you can get a good taste of the result from the MIPTV trailer below. There's a lot to love! I love that it uses the familiar Saint theme music. I love that they found a believable way to get the Saint into a dinner jacket in this day and age. I love that there's a fight on a funicular! I love the international locations and the high productions values. It looks like a very slick production, for sure. And new Simon Templar Adam Rayner, from what I can tell based on these short clips, looks good in the role! (Needs a shave, though.) Eliza Dushku looks great, too, as the Saint's on-and-off girlfriend from the Leslie Charteris novels, Patricia Holm. I worry, though, about how heavily this trailer leans on cliché. Just about every tried and true trope of genre is touched upon, but maybe that's what you need to sell a TV show. I've read the script for this pilot, and I know that it goes beyond the clichés, and does indeed feel appropriately Saintly. I'd like to see a trailer that focuses more on what sets Simon Templar apart from the pack rather than what makes him part of it, but that might freak out potential buyers. They probably perfer the familiar. Already, though, it feels like this production redeems the character from the Val Kilmer movie. And, of course, as the icing on the cake, we're treated to some dialogue between two venerable Saint stars, Ian Ogilvy and Sir Roger Moore! I really, really hope this pilot gets sold all over the world and goes quickly to series! I desperately want a new Saint on the air.

Upcoming Spy CDs: Crossplot

Quartet Records will release Stanley Black's fantastic score to the 1969 post-Saint, pre-Bond Roger Moore spy movie Crossplot. I love Crossplot. Sure, it feels more like a TV production than a film (not surprising considering it was made by  a number of people from the Saint crew), but the TV production it feels like is The Saint, so what's wrong with that? It's like The Saint plus helicopter chases, or James Bond minus the budget. Either way, it's pretty awesome and I highly recommend it. (It is available on DVD and streaming on Amazon.) And either way, it's got a great score. Furthermore, since it belonged to Roger Moore and Bob Baker's production company, some of the music was later re-purposed for use in The Persuaders! And regular readers know that a full album of Persuaders! music is my own soundtrack Holy Grail, so the fact that this release gets us a little closer to that is yet another reason to celebrate. Also very cool is the fact that Quartet used such awesome artwork for the cover of the album. Crossplot is one of those movies (like Deadlier Than the Male and Hot Enough For June) that inspired me to collect posters from every country it was released in, and of all the cool Crossplot art (some of which intentionally made it appear to be a Saint movie), this art from the U.S. 1-sheet is the coolest.

Crossplot comes paired with another great Black score from that era, AIP's War Gods of the Deep. The release includes a 28-page booklet with liner notes by Gergely Hubai, who, according to the Quartet website, "discusses the composer and the films with a track-by-track analysis for both titles." You can listen to samples on the Quartet site and pre-order the album from Screen Archives Entertainment. It's due out later this month.

Network to Release ITC Spy Soundtracks on Vinyl in 2013

Following the success of their multi-disc CD soundtracks for such Sixties and Seventies spy staples as The Saint, Danger Man, Department S, Man in a Suitcase, The Prisoner, Jason King and other ITC adventure series, Network has announced that they will begin releasing soundtrack albums for these series on vinyl in 2013. These editions will be aimed at audiophiles and collectors. The first such release is a limited edition EP called Themes for Action! coming out on Record Store Day and available exclusively in participating record stores on that day, containing themes and cues from a handful of those ITC series. Then in September we'll see "newly restored original soundtrack albums" for Man in a Suitcase, The Saint, The Prisoner and The Protectors containing "the very best themes and cues from each show." Newly created, retro sleeve retro artwork evokes the style of each show's era. (I love what they've come up with!) Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) will follow in October, with more titles slated for 2014. Meanwhile, I remain ever hopeful that someone uncovers the supposedly lost masters for Ken Thorne's incidental music for The Persuaders! and that Network releases a full set of that Holy Grail...

Tradecraft: Former Templars Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy Join the Cast of the New Saint Pilot!

Wow! After years and years of percolating and percolating and nothing ever reaching fruition, the brand new Saint project that finally materialized (and is already shooting) just keeps getting better and better! Yesterday, Deadline reported that former Saint stars Roger Moore (who played Simon Templar in the classic ITC TV series of the 1960s before he became Bond) and Ian Ogilvy (who played Templar in the Seventies revival series Return of the Saint) have joined its cast. As previously reported, Adam Rayner (Hunted) plays the new Simon Templar in this latest incarnation of Leslie Charteris' immortal literary and screen hero. I take it as a good sign that my two favorite Saints to date are now on board. Hopefully, they'll rub off on Rayner and he'll become my third favorite! Moore was already attached to this version as a producer (along with his son Geoffrey), and had previously been slated to do a cameo in the defunct Saint in New Orleans project (which was to star James Purefoy), so it's very welcome news, but not that surprising to learn that he'll turn up on screen in this one. But Ogilvy is a bit more of a surprise, and equally welcome. Let me just take a second here to give him his due. Moore's Sixties interpretation was so definitive that Ogilvy is sometimes overlooked (and his series was not nearly as successful), but he's a great actor who made a truly wonderful Saint. The first thing I ever saw him in was an episode of The Avengers, and I immediately thought, "wow, that guy should play the hero in his own series!" I didn't realize it at the time, but he did exactly that in the following decade, and he did a fantastic job filling Moore's very large shoes. So it's a thrill to see them both on board this latest incarnation of a character to whose history they've both contributed so greatly. In the newest version, Moore will play "Jasper" and Ogilvy will play "The Banker." (The name Jasper rings a bell with me... Is that a character I should recognize from the Saint books?) Those kind of sound like cameos, but the rest of the cast is shaping up quite impressively as well. Alias' Greg Grunberg will play a government agent, Enrique Murciano (CSI) will play recurring Saint foil Inspector Fernack, and Thomas Kretschmann (24, Cars 2, King Kong) will play the villain Rayt Marius, who appeared in several Charteris novels. It was previously announced that Eliza Dushku would play another recurring character from the books, Templar's sometime girlfriend Patricia Holm. This list of characters would certainly seem to back up the producers' claim that this version of The Saint will stick closer to Charteris!

Tradecraft: Eliza Dushku Joins the new Saint

This latest version of The Saint (first reported last week) looks very much like it will actually happen! (If I sound surprised, it's because of all the false starts over the last half decade.) Things are shaping up quickly. Today, Deadline reports that Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, True Lies) has been cast opposite Hunted's Adam Rayner (who's playing Simon Templar) as the Saint's on-and-off girlfriend, Patricia Holm. Holm was a regular character in Leslie Charteris' books, but I don't think she ever made it to the small screen before. (Though she did appear in one of the RKO Saint movies in the Forties, The Saint Meets the Tiger.) I always pictured the books' Patricia Holm as British, although I can't recall if Charteris ever explicitly stated that was the case. Either way, I think Dushku is a great choice who will easily embody her spirit of adventure. Hopefully she's got good chemistry with Rayner! The trade blog also reveals more of the names involved behind the scenes that we heard last week... and some of those names will be mighty familiar to Saint fans! In addition to Brad Krevoy, Sir Roger Moore himself will be a co-producer, along with his son, Geoffrey Moore, Lulu Moore and Luisa Macdonald. As most fans have known all along, Saint expert Ian Dickerson (who wrote The Saint on TV) will serve as a creative concultant, ensuring that this version will likely hew closer to Charteris' books than any other before it. Dickerson has continuously kept fans updated on the progress (or, more often than not, lack thereof) of a Saint revival on the CBn forums for years. As previously reported, Simon West will direct the backdoor pilot (meaning it's not yet set up as a series at a network), which starts shooting this Friday(!) in Los Angeles, Toronto and London. Alias veteran Jesse Alexander penned the script.

Tradecraft: The Saint Returns! (Again.)

Well, here we go again! After stops and starts for the last half-decade (at least!), a new version of The Saint is once again up and running. Hopefully for real this time! And Adam Rayner (who co-starred on the recent Cinemax spy series Hunted) has been cast as the newest incarnation of Simon Templar. Leslie Charteris' debonair thief with his own strict moral code has been played over the years by (to name just a few) George Sanders (in a fun series of 40s B-movies), Roger Moore (in the awesome Sixties TV show, which remains the most famous incarnation of the character), Ian Ogilvy (in the Seventies reboot Return of the Saint) and Val Kilmer (in the disappointing 1997 feature version). Five years ago, James Purefoy was attached to a new TV version which fell through, and then attached again to star in a TV movie/backdoor pilot last year... which also fell through. In the interim, we also heard Dougray Scott's name mentioned. But hopefully this Adam Rayner version will actually happen. It sounds closer to being a reality than any of the prevoius versions! According to Deadline, Simon West (The Expendables 2) will direct the Rayner pilot... and it's set to start shooting later this month! Alias writer/producer Jesse Alexander wrote the script and executive produces; Brad Krevoy produces. Roger Moore was involved in a producing capacity in previous revival attempts, but there's no word now on whether or not he's involved in this version. (It would seem like a possibility, however, since he previously worked with Krevoy on A Princess For Christmas and Boat Trip.) There is no U.S. network involved yet, but the plan is to shop the completed pilot.

The Saint is not a spy, but he's had plenty of espionage experience nonetheless in his history in print and on screen. It sounds like this version of The Saint will play up the espionage angle. According to the synopsis reported by the trade blog, "A master of disguise, improvisation, martial arts, firearms and espionage and the quintessential English gentleman, [Templar] is hired by certain government agencies for special assignments."

This isn't the only Saint production in the works. In January, RKO announced plans to remake one of their Saint features... but supposedly their rights preclude them from altering any of the 30s or 40s dialogue, and restrict them to the brief running time of the originals, so I'm not sure how far they'll get with that.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week and Last: Saints and Liquidators

Finally! I've been waiting years for an official release of The Liquidator (1965), and this week, thanks to the Warner Archive, we've got one, on MOD. The Liquidator is Boysie Oakes, John Gardner’s pre-Bond anti-Bond. Gardner's Oakes books were sort of a direct response to Fleming’s Bond books, and parodies of them. Jack Cardiff's film version certainly latches onto that, firmly hitching its wagon to 007, but feeling more like Flint. (It's got that lavish, widescreen studio feel of a Sixties Fox movie, even if it was made by MGM... and now released by Warner.) It never quite lives up to its amazing Bob Peak poster, or its classic Lalo Schifrin-penned Shirley Bassey theme song, but it's nonetheless a real treat for Sixties spy fans! Rod Taylor (who also starred in the enjoyable Eurospy flick The High Commissioner) stars as Boysie, and Jill St. John’s along for the ride looking great and maybe even contributing just a little bit more to the plot than does her useless Tiffany Case character in Diamonds Are Forever. (The film, that is. Tiffany was actually quite an enjoyable character in the novel.) Warner's manufactured on demand release is completely remastered and anamorphically presented in its original 2.40:1 aspect ratio. It's available now directly from Warner Archive for $17.95, and beginning September 6 from Amazon.

Cinemax's first U.S. season of Strike Back finally hits DVD and Blu-ray in North America today. The excellent true first season of Strike Back (reviewed here), produced for the UK's Sky satellite network, never aired in America. But the show that ended up on Cinemax, that American viewers know as the first season of Strike Back, functioned as Season Two of the series in Britain. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray there last fall as Strike Back: Project Dawn. While the superior original series still has yet to be seen here, HBO Video has come up with a pretty good, not too confusing way of labeling their release: Strike Back: Cinemax Season One. I really hope that down the road (maybe when The Hobbit opens this winter and makes star Richard Armitage more of a household name?) they also give U.S. viewers a chance to see the "UK Season One" or however they decide to label it, but for now this isn't a bad consolation prize. (Spy fans with all-region players can get the Region 2 DVD of the original show fairly cheaply from Amazon.) So far I've only seen the first two episodes of the Cinemax version (reviewed here) during the cable channel's free preview weekend, but they were packed with fun, exciting, over-the-top spy action of a sort rarely seen on American television, and I'm very much looking forward to following the rest of the adventures of Section 20 operatives Stonebridge and Scott (Philip Winchester and Sullivan Stapleton) on home video. The violent hunt for an elusive terrorist mastermind named Latif takes the two agents around the world to locations including New Delhi, Capetown and Darfur. There's a standard DVD version and a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack to choose from, retailing for $49.98 and $59.96 respectively, and both significantly cheaper on Amazon right now. Both versions include audio commentaries. Be warned, though, that the packaging on the combo pack is annoyingly chunky. There's no reason in the world why a 10-episode cable season needs to be in thick gatefold packaging like the early seasons of 24!

And the rarest one for last! I honestly never thought I'd see this one get an official release... but here it is! A few weeks ago, Australia's Madman label released a Region 4 PAL DVD of the rarest of all The Saint's TV incarnations, the 1987 telefilm (and failed series pilot) The Saint in Manhattan, starring Australian Andrew Clarke as the infamous Simon Templar. This is the version that, true to its time, recast Templar in the Magnum mold, complete with mustache and Italian supercar (a Lamborghini Countach). Obviously it didn't go to series, but I personally think it's better than its reputation would indicate... and I like Clarke. (More than Simon Dutton, in fact.) But I've only ever seen it in a grainy, third generation VHS recording, so I look forward to watching it again on DVD as if for the very first time! This makes Australia the first country to get all the Saint TV shows on DVD. As far as I know, the 1989 Simon Dutton series has only been released there so far as well, on Madman's sister label Umbrella. You can watch a short clip from The Saint in Manhattan on the Madman website... but it's not totally indicative of the production as a whole. The cost is $14.95AU, which might seem steep for a single 50 minute TV episode, but for Saint completists it's definitely worth it. No if only someone would release The Saint Lies in Wait (which I also like)...

Saintly Ian Ogilvy to Appear at L.A. Convention This Weekend

Return of the Saint star Ian Ogilvy will make a very rare U.S. convention appearance this Sunday, May 6, at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center. Ogilvy, who also starred in Witchfinder General, And Now the Screaming Starts and From Beyond the Grave and made memorable guest appearances on The Avengers and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (among many other shows), will be a featured guest at the show and sign from 12-2pm. (There will be a charge for autographs, for which he will either sign your memorabilia or provide a photo.) I was fortunate enough to meet Ogilvy a few years ago at a West Hollywood Book Fair where he was promoting his latest children's book, Measle and the Wrathmonk (he's written a whole series of Measle titles), and found him to be very friendly and humble. He graciously signed my Return of the Saint and Amicus DVDs and told some funny and self-deprecating stories about being mistaken for Roger Moore. For any Saint fans in the L.A. area, this chance to meet the Seventies Simon Templar in the flesh is an unmissable opportunity! Admission to the Con itself, which runs from 10am-5pm, is $8.

Tradecraft: RKO Attempts New Saint Movies

Following the frustrating collapse (yet again) of the latest attempt to bring Simon Templar back to the small screen, Variety reports that RKO will attempt a big screen revival for Leslie Charteris' famous modern-day Robin Hood. According to the trade, the studio has signed Eagle Eye co-writer Travis Wright to pen a remake of one of the 1930s or 40s RKO Saint films (exactly which one is unclear) for producer Rick Porras (The Lord of the Rings) with an eye toward a trilogy of Templar tentpoles. But according to all-around Saint expert Ian Dickerson (author of The Saint on TV and erstwhile co-producer of the stalled television revival), Wright will have his work cut out for him. "RKO have the rights to remake their old B&W films but they cannot change the dialogue and they cannot change the length of the picture," Dickerson posted on the CommanderBond.net forums, where he has been updating fans for some time on his own Saintly efforts. He adds that RKO's rights apply to movies only, not to television. Does this really mean that an RKO remake would have to be 69 minutes long with all the same lines spoken by Louis Hayward or George Sanders? Maybe... but maybe not. Remember, Kevin McClory was actually able to get pretty creative in Never Say Never Again, even though his rights were strictly limited to an exact remake of Thunderball. Granted, the individual cases could be quite different, and I'm certainly no expert on copyright law, but I'm betting RKO have some experts on their legal team working hard to find loopholes. But the prospect of a fairly faithful, period-set remake of The Saint in New York actually quite appeals to me! While I'm very eager for Dickerson and his colleagues to get a new TV Saint up and running, I'd be curious to see what RKO can come up with as well. The more Saintly irons in the fire the better, as far as I'm concerned. It just increases the odds of one of them actually coming to fruition, right? Fingers crossed, but (to paraphrase a CBn poster) breath not held.

Hayward, Sanders and Hugh Sinclair all played Simon Templar for RKO; in later movies he was played by Felix Marten, Jean Marais (who gets a bad rap, but I quite liked in the role) and Val Kilmer (who deserves his bad rap). Vincent Price was among the actors to voice the Saint on the radio, and on TV he's been played by Ian Ogilvy, Simon Dutton, Andrew Clarke and, most famously, of course, Roger Moore.

DVD Review: The Baron: The Complete Series

DVD Review: The Baron: The Complete Series


In Memory of Sue Lloyd, 1939-2011

I’ve joked before that the ITC formula was simply to fill in the blank in the phrase “a _____ who gets mixed up in espionage and into adventures” and then copy The Saint. And perhaps no show better demonstrates that formula than The Baron, starring Steve Forrest (S.W.A.T.). If you thought that filling in that blank with “import/export agent” in The Sentimental Agent (review here) was stretching it, then you’ll probably be scratching your head as to how an antiques dealer can manage to fall in with spies and kidnappers and, of course, beautiful damsels in distress week after week. But such is the fate of John Mannering (Forrest), a Texas cattle baron (just to extend credulity even further) turned antiques dealer turned amateur secret agent. So there’s the blank-filling; now how about the Saint-copying?

In the case of The Baron, that part’s more literal than any of the others. The Baron is ostensibly based on a series of novels by John Creasey (in which the character was an actual Baron and not an American, and he moonlighted as a thief, not a spy), which more or less follow the same “gentleman adventurer” format as Leslie Charteris’ Saint stories. Roger Moore saw the two series of novels as interchangeable enough that he pursued the rights to both of them as potential either/or star vehicles for himself in the late Fifties—without success.* He later came around to The Saint again in a circuitous and coincidental manner. When The Saint’s producing partners Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker parted ways following that show’s final black and white series, Baker went on to produce the color Saints and Berman transitioned to The Baron, a series so similar to The Saint in formula that the Saint episode “Lida” by Terry Nation was virtually remade as the Nation-penned Baron episode “Portrait of Louisa.” (This wasn’t that uncommon a practice in Sixties British adventure shows, but proved particularly problematic when the two episodes aired on the same night in America!**) But The Baron’s similarities to The Saint weren’t limited to the types of stories it told. Berman also managed, quite successfully, to duplicate the sense of fun of his former series. And that’s the key to the ITC formula. They may have simply plugged in a different profession to the same formula, but they made all of their shows entertaining enough that it simply didn’t matter. It also made Lew Grade’s ITC a very successful brand. Audiences knew what they were going to get. And if they liked what they saw, they knew where to go for more.

Despite the blatant similarities between the two shows, The Baron in its better episodes actually does manage to feel unique and separate from The Saint. Those episodes take advantage of two key differences: Mannering’s profession and his nationality. The antiques dealer angle lets the show’s writers create some stories (like the great closer, "Countdown") that actually originate from his job, and don't just have him stumble into things coincidentally week after week like Simon Templar. And though casting an American in the lead–especially as a “Baron,” with the weak justification that he’s of the cattle variety–was a concession to the US market, the producers make it work to their advantage. It differentiates the Baron from the Saint. Whereas TV’s Templar (as opposed to Charteris’) and other British heroes had to be very noble, stiff upper lip and stereotypically British the whole time, Mannering was permitted to play faster and looser, and exhibit the gruffness and spontaneity expected of Americans in Europe. (As he climbs out the window of a private train compartment in one episode, the upper-class occupants barely raise an eyebrow and merely comment that “he must be an American.”) This also allows the Baron a less gentle touch when it comes to getting what he wants. John Mannering isn’t above smacking someone around (quite a bit, even) for information. He does it quite frequently, in fact, like a proto-Jack Bauer. The Saint (ITC’s version, that is) would never do that. As a result, The Baron is more two-fisted, and significantly more violent than the color Saint series. (But less so than Man in a Suitcase.) Mannering even gets to mow down his enemies with a machine gun in the episode “Storm Warning.” I don’t think Roger Moore's Saint ever got to do that!

Of course, there are downsides to the choice of nationality as well. Mannering’s one of those annoying characters seen frequently in adventure television of the era who are too perfect. The Saint pulls that off only because he’s British and self-deprecating. Mannering isn’t either. He’s brash and full of the annoying swagger and crass self-assurance that the British associate with Americans. (The only American who ever pulled off playing an overly perfect spy character and remained charming was James Coburn.) Furthermore, poor Steve Forrest was saddled with an annoying haircut, probably also meant to delineate him as “American.” But at least it all helps him stand apart from Roger Moore!

Unfortunately, it’s the more grating aspects of Mannering’s Americanisms that manifest themselves on the first disc of Koch Vision's Region 1 DVD set.

Even Barons sometimes have to adjust themselves--when they're American

Like Acorn’s Man in a Suitcase, the episodes are not presented in production order, though it’s clear that “Diplomatic Immunity,” the first one presented here, is indeed supposed to be the pilot. The first scene introduces us to the character in a decidedly Eurospy fashion: the Baron gets recognized on an airplane. Not by a beautiful young woman, though, but by an aging hausfrau. “My dear,” she tells the young stewardess excitedly, “I heard you mention that gentleman’s name. He’s not John Mannering?”

“That’s right,” smiles the attractive attendant.

“The man they call ‘the Baron’?” the older woman clarifies.

“Yes! You’ve heard of him?”

“Well, anybody who knows antiques knows about him. I expected him to be an older man. He’s… well… handsome!” Because he’s handsome (which doesn’t exactly contradict being “older;” Forrest is no spring chicken in his early 40s), she scrabbles down the aisle to approach him. “Mr. Mannering,” she coos, “I simply had to meet you! I’ve read so much about you! I’m terribly interested in antiques.” The woman then goes on to tell him about her brass rubbings which he politely acknowledges as being “very interesting.” She threatens to show him a wallet full of photographs, but luckily the young stewardess intercedes and saves the Baron by telling the older woman they’re about to come into London and she needs to take a seat. 

Mannering thanks the stewardess and she assures him it’s all part of the service. He says perhaps he can thank her properly over dinner.  (You see where this is going, right?) She says, “My place, or yours?” He says, “Mine. I’d like to show you my… brass rubbing.” With the salacious emphasis and everything. Just like a tacky Eurospy. Honestly, it’s not that suave an introduction… and there’s probably a bigger age difference between Mannering and the young stewardess than Mannering and the old hausfrau!

Mannering is met at the airport by his assistant, David Marlowe (Paul Ferris). David specializes in getting knocked out, and that happens for the very first time before we’ve even met Mannering in this episode, when an attractive young woman in a wig gets him with the old knockout-powder-in-the-cigarette-case trick in order to steal a Faberge carriage model right out from under his nose. Consequently, he greets his boss with bad news: “It’s about Lord Carleton’s Faberge…”

Security cameras identified the thief as a girl who works as a courier in the Pomoranian embassy. (A classic ITC made-up-Eastern-Bloc-country name.) Because she has diplomatic immunity, the police can’t lay a finger on her, despite the evidence.

Being a private citizen, the Baron posits that diplomacy shouldn’t stop him from bursting into the embassy and demanding the return of his property, so he sets off to do just that, which affords us a good introduction to his cool—and very unique—car, a Jensen CV8 MkII. (This is a more exotic cousin to the Jensen Interceptor recently touted on Top Gear as a car that should have starred in its own ITC adventure show.) Whereas the Saint’s vanity plate on his trademark Volvo P1800 reads “ST1,” the Baron's reads “BAR1.” See what they did there?

Cool car or not, though, Mannering never makes it to the embassy to start a row. Instead, he’s intercepted by men with guns who take him to a mustachioed gent with glasses. This is John Alexander Templeton-Green of the “Special Branch, Diplomatic Intelligence,” and he will recur throughout the series as Mannering’s envoy into the shadowy world of spies. On the occasion of their first meeting here, Templeton-Green (Colin Gordon, Inspector Clouseau’s sidekick in the first Pink Panther) recruits Mannering to go behind the Iron Curtain into Pomorania to retrieve not only his own property, but also four other priceless items that have been stolen in the same way. Because the Baron is an “expert” on antiques, he’s apparently deemed more qualified than a British agent. Templeton-Green turns out to be both M and Q rolled into one, so he gives Mannering a bunch of gadgets for his mission including a lighter that doubles as a gun (which he demonstrates by destroying one of the Baron’s personal antiques—but the Baron doesn’t seem to mind; I don’t think he really likes antiques that much despite his ostensible profession) and a clothes brush with a tape recorder in it. You know, basic stuff.

When the Baron checks into his hotel room in Pomorania, he hears splashing in the bathroom. So he opens the door—naturally—and we’re treated to some beautiful-girl-in-the-bathtub music. And, sure enough, there’s a beautiful girl in the bathtub to go with it. The beautiful girl in the hotel bathtub is such a common Sixties spy trope (in TV and movies) that I should really give it it’s own tag on this blog. In this case, the girl in question is Sue Lloyd from The Ipcress File (as well as The Saint and The Avengers and other spy shows), and she introduces herself as Cordelia Winfield, Mannering's contact in Pomorania.

After leering appreciatively, Eurospy-style (again), the Baron then proceeds to tell her how to do her job—this despite her being a professional spy and him being an antiques dealer. This dynamic basically defines their relationship to come. Cordelia conveniently ends the episode persona non grata in Pomorania, which suits the Baron just fine. He says as much in an overly suggestive manner and for some reason that makes her smile. Perhaps she’s got a thing for older men. (Steve Forrest is only in his early 40s, but like his brother, Dana Andrews, he’s got that sort of post-war American look that makes him appear older than he is.)

Mannering’s charms don’t improve right away. In “The Legions of Ammak,” the Baron demonstrates that he lacks the savoir-faire of Simon Templar by tussling with a nightclub dancer who’s trying to protect her boyfriend and then telling her, “If you ever want to wrestle again, I’m in the phone book.” While I could see Moore pulling off a line like that (not that he’d ever get into a scrap with a lady), Forrest doesn’t manage to come off as very charming spewing such come-ons. He again seems more like a Eurospy jerk, in fact, than a debonair ITC hero! Since Mannering’s naught but an uncouth Texan, it’s up to the fey David (“the boy who works with the Baron!” as someone calls him in this episode, even though he’s obviously in his late 20s at least) to spot that the supposed king of a Middle Eastern nation is wearing the wrong school tie. Fortunately, “The Legions of Ammak” has other stuff going for it. Besides sharing the occasional plot, ITC shows also frequently shared guest stars. One of my favorite guest stars who made the rounds of pretty much all the British spy shows in the Sixties (and even one American one, I Spy) before starring in his own was Peter Wyngarde. Wyngarde turns up on The Baron fairly early on. And in dual roles, no less, as the eye-patched Middle Eastern monarch and a drunk Gielgudian actor named Ronald Noyes hired to impersonate him.

Poor David, by the way (who to the surprise of all is revealed to have “ladyfriends”), was an early victim of the all-important American market. U.S. network execs wanted the Baron to have an attractive female assistant instead, probably owing to the success of The Avengers on American television. And guess what? In this rare instance, the American network execs were right. That paved the way for Sue Lloyd to return, and she proved a definite improvement over the luckless Ferris—and she did indeed lend an Avengers-like crackle to her repartee with Mannering as his new assistant. (However, since the episodes didn’t air in the order they were shot, David would still pop up from time to time.)

It’s no surprise that the most Avengers-y episode of The Baron comes from the pen of Avengers mastermind Brian Clemens (writing under the nom de plume Tony O’Grady) in “The Maze.”  The basic premise recalls a number of episodes of that series, especially “Death’s Door” and “Stay Tuned,” and the banter between Mannering and Cordelia is particularly Avengerish (points for me for using the words “Avengers-y” and “Avengerish” in consecutive sentences!), even if these particular stars lack the expert chemistry of Macnee and his female co-stars (especially Rigg). Where Lloyd falls short of Rigg et al. is on the physical side. Cordelia is more likely to sit out the fisticuffs herself and just yell encouraging remarks like “Look out!” to Mannering than to save his butt the way Emma Peel was known to do for John Steed.

“The Maze” opens with a beautiful woman escaping some would-be kidnappers only to find herself chased through the woods by men with guns. As fate (or Clemens) would have it, she just happens to dash out of those woods in front of the Baron’s Jensen. Is she lucky? Well... maybe... but luck is relative. Wouldn’t she have been luckier if she had run out in front of the Saint's Volvo instead? Surely the odds were good it would be one or the other of them! When he tries to help her, the Baron’s car is shot full of holes and he passes out and has a psychedelic dream involving a porcelain Siamese cat morphing into a beautiful woman and some sort of Origami dragon-looking thing as well as giant scales, a plastic bag (looking rather similar to The Prisoner’s Rover), a giant gloved hand that points in various directions and himself running, Vertigo- or Spellbound-style. And all that’s great stuff!

The unfortunate upshot of his bad trip is that the Baron wakes up missing a whole day!  (Which begs the question: If they had a whole day to spare, why didn’t the baddies dump him in a whole other part of the country instead of just down the street from their hideout?) Of course no one believes him when he tells his wild tale—not the local police inspector, not even Cordelia. But viewers who’ve seen any of those Avengers episodes or the Man in a Suitcase episode “Brainwash” might have some idea what’s going on. Not Brian Clemens, though, apparently; in a good audio introduction, he talks about setting out to write a puzzle that felt like a dream; the trick, of course, was that it could not be a dream. He also reveals that he needed to use the O'Grady pen name on the episode: because he was moonlighting from another series to which he was under an exclusive contract.

Sadly, not every episode of The Baron is anywhere near as wildly fun as “The Maze.” Some are downright boring (like the run-of-the-mill recycled blackmail plot in “Portrait of Louisa”) or even offensive, like “Samurai West.” You’re already on thin ice when you devote an entire episode to Englishmen playing Japanese characters and demonstrate a shaky grasp of Japanese culture (though some ITC programs have succeeded in that arena as long as they’re fun); it’s a cardinal sin to then be boring on top of that. But if you put on a stiff upper lip and slog through the more rote early material, you’ll be rewarded; The Baron certainly gets better as it goes on!

“Roundabout,” for instance, is a standout, elevating what could have been a very ordinary drug smuggling plot with good acting and interesting twists. Drugs are being smuggled into England through antiques shipped to Mannering, implicating him in the crime. Luckily, the beautiful narcotics agent assigned to the case finds his American… charm? …irresistible, and she ends up joining forces with him to solve it rather than throwing the book at him. The first step looks to be a trip to the Paris hair salon run by the bad guy’s stunning Lady Macbeth of a girlfriend. As soon as the Baron sets foot in it, of course he’s attacked, which puts him on the right track. From there it’s ITC business as usual, and I mean that in the best sense as opposed to the worst. “Red Horse, Red Rider” is also highly entertaining, with all the behind-the-Iron-Curtain hero-vs.-secret-police action that I crave from an ITC adventure—and the beautiful Jane Merrow to boot!

“Epitaph for a Hero” is another really good episode, in which David accompanies the Baron to the funeral of his friend Jim Cary. A lot of particularly unsavory sorts turn up at the service, where they laugh and behave in a generally un-bereaved sort of way. (That part doesn’t really make sense in the context of the plot that follows, but I’ll never fault a Charade reference.) It transpires that Jim isn’t really dead, and he wants Mannering to help him out in a robbery. British Intelligence, in the person of Templeton-Green, is interested for some reason interested in this larceny plot. They want the Baron to play along, thus conveniently giving him license to participate in a really cool jewel heist, with alarms and metal bars and everything.

This episode features David and Cordelia, who makes contact with Mannering on a train this time, instead of popping up in a bathtub. (But he still bursts in on her in a state of undress: "Don't you ever knock?"/"If I did, I'd miss all that lovely scenery.") The Baron is whisked off the train and Cordelia loses him, but she later catches up at a funhouse thanks to a radio transmitter. Unfortunately, when she follows him inside, the Baron gets found out by the gang, but he’s still forced to help in the heist or they’ll kill Cordelia. The gang, incidentally, is led by the first Mrs. Michael Caine, Patricia Haines, who will probably be more familiar to spy fans from her memorable appearances on The Avengers, The Saint and other contemporary adventure shows.

At this point, it should be noted, the Baron isn’t especially keen on taking Templeton-Green’s jobs, and shows his propensity for threatening to punch people when asked. (Ah, Americans!) “Look, Temp,” he snarls, using his favorite nickname for the spook. “One of these days I’m gonna stop fooling around with your special assignments and get out. And when I do, I’m gonna come in here and bust you one right in the jaw!” Templeton-Green, it’s important to realize, has really done nothing to earn this sudden venom, and presumably there’s nothing stopping Mannering from just outright refusing his entreaties at any time he likes. After all, Mannering doesn’t work for Diplomatic Intelligence, and he’s not even a British citizen! At any rate, Templeton-Green lets the volatile outburst roll off his starched sleeve. Apparently that’s just what Red Sox fans used to refer to as “Manny being Manny.”

Needless to say, the Baron continues to accept British Intelligence assignments. It is, after all, a very convenient plot device—and one far more conducive to thrilling adventures than mere antiquing. In “Farewell To Yesterday,” the writers are still clearly figuring out what works in this series, and it’s obvious that spy missions work. That’s what ITC viewers expect! So this time, Templeton-Green sends Mannering to Rome to use his expertise to get back some priceless artifacts that have been stolen from the Vatican. Conveniently, Mannering used to be involved with one of the ladies caught up in the scheme (the past relationship: another favorite ITC trope). He promises her love so she has to either die or betray him in the end, naturally. I’m not spoiling anything for you, am I? No, certainly not. You didn’t think the Baron was going to up and get married in the middle of his series.

When Mannering’s not taking orders from Templeton-Green, he’s usually taking them from some villain of the week who kidnaps one of his friends to force him to do their bidding. By the time that happens in “The Persuaders” (a fortuitously prescient episode title for Lew Grade’s company!), it’s about the fifth or sixth time already. But then that’s bound to happen, I suppose, when one of your friends’ specialty is getting conked on the head, and as I've mentioned, that’s David’s specialty. In this case, the man behind the conking is James Villiers. In my review of Man in a Suitcase, I posited that it was inevitable that at one time or another an ITC hero is bound to encounter either Villiers or Nigel Green, and for the Baron, that moment has come, elevating this episode considerably above its rote set-up. The always watchable Villiers brings his usual droll delivery and reliable condescension to the proceedings, playing yet another snooty, urbane bad guy.

David: You’ll never get away with this!

Villiers: Oh come, come, come, my dear David. If you must speak, does it have to be in cliché?

Villiers’ character is the nephew of the crass millionaire art collector who has a standing order for Mannering to buy him any Renoir that comes on the market, and Villiers wants Mannering to sell his uncle a fake one. His girlfriend further spices things up with a very cool mod haircut and matching mod watch.

David comes out of it all alright in the end, but the last we ever see of him in the series is as a grunting heap in the back of a van, making for a rather undignified exit.

By Episode 9 in this set, “Something For A Rainy Day,” David is clearly out of the picture as Mannering considers hiring Cordelia as his new full-time assistant, which Templeton-Green thinks would make a splendid cover for her. Lois Maxwell guest stars as an insurance executive, which is apparently quite funny to Mannering. “Charley, you’re the only insurance executive I know who wears lipstick,” smiles the Baron. (Get it? She's a woman!)

“And you’re the only client who gets away with calling me Charley,” Maxwell at least gets to come back with, adding, “I like Charlotte much better.” That’s the first hint of some no doubt custom-written Bond/Moneypenny-type flirtation between Charley and the Baron. Later on, while she’s being fitted for a dress, Charley proposes marriage, which the Baron says sounds like a business deal.

“You’ve got a computer for a heart,” he tells her. “I can buy a computer.”

“Not in a cabinet like this,” she offers, flashing a glimpse of her lingerie.

But it’s not all chauvinism and flirtation in “Something for a Rainy Day.” There’s an art thief, too, fresh out of prison. The thief, Seldon, wants Mannering to broker a deal between him and Charley’s insurance company. Charley’s not big on go-betweens, so she has her own investigator follow Mannering to try to recover the collection before him. It’s interesting that while she played the ultimate Good Girl in the movies, Maxwell’s TV roles were usually on the shady side. Charley’s not bad (like some memorable Maxwell roles on The Avengers and The Saint), but she certainly dwells in a nebulous grey area, which must have made her fun for Maxwell to play.

The premise is actually quite intriguing (as a private dealer, the Baron will receive a 15% commission on the insurance company’s sale of the collection), but quickly turns into the standard ITC kidnapped daughter plot when rival bad guys grab Seldon’s daughter. Rote or not, however, this is an episode that every ITC aficionado will want to view. Why? Well, because towards the end, the bad guys attempt to make their getaway in a white Jaguar. Anyone who’s seen a few ITC programs will no doubt know what’s coming next: the Jaguar goes over a cliff. They’ll know this because that shot of the white Jag plunging over the precipice and exploding on impact is used again and again in nearly every ITC show to come. But the reason fans will want to see “Something for a Rainy Day” is because, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we see that Jaguar! Yep, this is the place where it all begins! So legendary is the plunging white Jag that Network cheekily chose to feature the image of the teetering vehicle as the artwork behind the discs on their excellent Music of ITC CD release. Once you’ve seen it here, you can revisit that doomed car in The Champions, Department S, Jason King, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Adventurer (my favorite of its appearances—and one of the worst matching) and probably more. “Something for a Rainy Day” is also noteworthy for its weather, which is not merely rainy, but downright wintry. I can’t recall too many ITC shows filmed in outdoor locations with actual snow and ice on the frozen ground, so that gives this episode an extra edge.

There’s a welcome commentary track on “Something for a Rainy Day” with Sue Lloyd and director Cyril Frankel, in which Frankel discusses the series’ production order (different from the broadcast order, as previously noted), and how the American backers liked Lloyd, leading to her being invited back after what was initially intended as a guest role. Frankel reveals that he became involved with The Baron when Bob Baker (who was evidently active in the development, before the color Saint series was picked up and occupied his time) called and said he and Berman “had a problem, and the problem was Steve Forrest. He was so stiff and unrelaxed.” It was Frankel’s job to encourage him to relax. Perhaps he succeeded to some degree, but Forrest’s stiffness would return. The star has a funny way of walking, as if he’s made of blocks. It’s like he’s been studying Jack Webb, but the motion plays differently on a guy like Forrest, who’s built like a linebacker. I suppose it plays stiff and unrelaxed.

“Enemy of the State” begins with the on-screen slug “EASTERN EUROPE,” generally a good signpost that we’re in for an excellent espionage episode. In this case, it’s an accurate signpost.

As the action kicks off, Mannering is on an active assignment for Diplomatic Intelligence. He’s supposed to make a delivery of cash to a British agent in our anonymous Eastern European country to fund a network, but a captured agent has revealed this to the security police and they’re waiting to intercept our hero. (No lip service to his antiquing profession this time.) Instead of Mannering, though, they end up grabbing Cordelia! And they arrest her. Templeton-Green (“Temp,” as Mannering calls him) says there’s nothing he can do about it; they’ll just have to wait five years or so for the spy scandal to blow over, and then they can exchange her for an Eastern agent in their custody. Mannering’s not happy with that answer, so he decides to take matters into his own hands (something Templeton-Green was probably relying on him to do), and sets out to kidnap the security police honcho who had Cordelia arrested (Anton Diffring)! You have to admire the audacity of his action.

All this leads (via the Baron riding on the back of a Beetle) to a suitably cool exchange at the border followed by a perilous frontier crossing. Only that crossing is a tad underwhelming. Whereas I would have liked for Mannering to outsmart the bad guys and leverage them into letting him cross, instead he and Cordelia just make a run for it, dive in the Elbe (well, presumably) and swim, with border guards and security agents firing machine guns at them all the while. Of course our heroic pair manage to avoid any bullets, despite the sheer number being launched at them. That we see all the time, but a smart counter-maneuver from the Baron would have been a welcome alternative. Oh well. It’s still a good episode with some great spy elements.

“The Seven Eyes of Night” is notable to Sherlockians at least because a young Jeremy Brett appears as baddie–and quite a baddie, at that! His character is an utter psychopath happy to kill anyone, even women he’s been involved with, and he remains completely dispassionate about it. There’s also a good plot with lots of twists and betrayals, which kicks off when the Baron meets a woman at what he thinks is her house and purchases a priceless family heirloom for $300,000. Then he’s followed back to his hotel and it’s stolen. Then it turns out he didn’t buy it from the true owner to begin with, but an imposter... and the necklace has been put back! But who has his money? At its best, The Baron is capable of spinning a very intriguing mystery like this one. At its worst, it spins muddled yarns like the confusing intelligence caper “The Edge of Fear,” memorable only for its monocled, Caspar Guttman-like villain.

Often, Sixties spy series from both sides of the Atlantic churned out two-parters that could be conveniently edited together to form a “feature film” for overseas audiences. The Baron boasts two such two-parters. (I can't find any evidence that either one actually managed any theatrical bookings, though their trailers made it onto the Region 2 Network edition of The Baron.) One of these “movies” was known as Mystery Island, and the episodes that comprise it are “Storm Warning” and “The Island.” With that big-screen endgame firmly in mind, no expenses are spared on extras casting, and ITC viewers are treated to an extremely rare glimpse of  actual Asians to make the Macao setting seem more real—and actual Asians who aren’t Burt Kwouk for that matter! (Not that I’m ever let down by Kwouk, but how can one guy play all the Asian characters on all the shows all the time?)

Unfortunately, plenty of expenses are spared in other departments—like sets and location photography. In lieu of those, most of this two-part story takes place on a boat (a favorite cost-saving trick of ITC’s, also seen in the Man in a Suitcase “movie”), thus cutting down on the former, and grainy stock footage substitutes for the latter—as well as for rocket launches, fighter jets, an aircraft carrier, a tropical island and monkeys. Rear projection is used to simulate an ocean backdrop for Mannering and Cordelia when they find themselves adrift on a lifeboat, and the clumsy foreground bouncing that’s supposed to match that background doesn’t—but it did succeed in making this reviewer a little seasick, so I suppose some points are due for verisimilitude.

The plot itself is borrowed from Dr. No and involves toppling U.S. rockets. The captain of the cargo ship that serves as the episodes’ primary setting is working for the Red Chinese, attempting to send a space capsule off course so that he can retrieve it before the Navy. There’s a CIA man on the case, but he gets quickly killed leaving the fate of America’s space program in the capable hands of an antiques dealer. Luckily those hands are surprisingly dexterous. When Cordelia asks Mannering if the capsule plan is really possible, he answers—very authoritatively—“In theory.” Because, of course, antiques dealers know everything about space capsules! By this point Berman's production team seems to have basically abandoned the antiques dealer angle altogether and just made Mannering another run-of-the-mill secret agent. Furthermore, Cordelia has undergone the opposite transformation. While she started out as a very capable British agent who eventually took the cover of working as Mannering’s assistant, she’s now become her cover and behaves just like an antiques assistant caught up in schemes beyond her grasp. In other words, she’s become completely useless! Instead of a professional spy tasked with handling the talented amateur, all she does in this two-parter is stand around screaming and needing to be rescued while the antiques dealer mows down enemy sailors like fish in a barrel with a machine gun he found in the hold.

If “Storm Warning” and “The Island” demonstrate one direction in which the show could have gone, “Countdown”—the final episode as presented on DVD—ably demonstrates another. In this, The Baron’s finest episode, writer Terry Nation flips the status quo back to normal and plays up Mannering’s antiquing profession rather than ignoring it. And, amazingly, he manages to make it work! “Countdown” is the perfect template for how to make an exciting weekly series about an adventurous antiques dealer. Unfortunately, it came too late.

A potential client wants Mannering to handle the sale of a priceless antique. Unfortunately, the Baron is hijacked on his way to meet with him and a bad guy takes his place and murders the client before the real Mannering can show up. Fortunately, the would-have-been client takes a long time to actually die, and just has enough breath left when Mannering does arrive to whisper the location of his treasure—but not what it is. (Mannering really failed this guy, which is too bad, because he seemed like a nice chap from what we got to see of him.) While Mannering knows where it is but not what it is, the bad guy knows what it is but not where; it’s the fabled “Sword of Kalari” they’re looking for! (As good a MacGuffin as any, I suppose.) This set-up leads to a spirited race between rival parties to retrieve the sword. Along the way, we encounter Valerie Leon as an actress creeping around a film (or television?) set in a skintight red leotard. Besides getting to see the two-time Bond Girl in a skintight outfit, which is always a treat, spy fans will likely get a kick out of what appears to be a not-so-subtle jab at The Avengers and its heroine’s famous Emmapeeler!

But it’s not Ms. Leon’s brief appearance that makes “Countdown” a great episode. It’s Mannering’s rival, the unscrupulous evil antiques dealer Arkin Morley—who’s played by Callan himself, the great Edward Woodward, making a rare ITC appearance. When he’s not dealing antiques or being evil, the impeccably dressed Morley does part-time work on film sets advising directors, thus affording us that glimpse of Val in her fictional spy show. Largely thanks to Woodward, Morley is a truly great character. (In fact, as TV antiques dealers go, he’s a lot more interesting than Mr. Straight-Edge Baron.) It’s too bad the character is only introduced in The Baron’s final episode, because he would have made a terrific Belloq to Mannering’s Indiana Jones, and their ongoing rivalry would have raised the overall quality of the series considerably.

As things stand, The Baron is as mixed a bag as you’re likely to find among Sixties spy/adventure series. It’s a wildly uneven show, with some very tall peaks and some very low valleys, all the way to the end. Diehard ITC aficionados and Saint fans who’ve seen every series of that show and are still craving more of (basically) the same (albeit in a slightly lower caliber) will still be rewarded by The Baron. More casual viewers just dipping their feet in the rich waters of ITC, however, can do a lot better for starters by instead opting for the more reliable likes of Secret Agent (Danger Man), The Saint, Department S, and Man in a Suitcase. The Baron certainly isn’t a bad show (although it has some genuinely bad episodes), but ultimately Steve Forrest isn’t a charismatic enough lead to make it a genuinely good one, and Monty Berman’s production team never seemed to get a bead on what, exactly, they were making, and specifically what made it different from The Saint.

Koch Vision's Region 1 DVD set is also wildly uneven. On the one hand, most of the episodes look decent enough and, most impressively, the company has gone to the trouble of not only releasing such an obscure series in America, but also porting over a number of good special features from Umbrella's excellent Region 4 set. These features include several commentaries, like the one mentioned above—most of which are actually more entertaining than the episodes on their own—and select audio introductions from various guest stars and writers. On the downside, there are some serious issues with quality control. The most egregious example occurs on the episode "So Dark the Night," in which the audio is distractingly out of sync with the picture. Viewers of A&E's Persuaders! DVDs will be familiar with this problem, and know that it can sometimes make episodes practically unwatchable. Luckily, it's only the one episode that suffers that fault on this set. Personally, extras mean more to me than a pristine presentation on every episode, so overall I'd recommend the Koch set to fans in the United States. If you do have an all-region player, however, you might wish to import the Umbrella version, as it doesn't suffer from those audio problems. I can't speak to the quality of the Region 2 Network version, but that set has fewer (if different) special features.

*According to Moore in his autobiography, My Word is My Bond
**According to the Network documentary The Saint Steps In... To Television.