TV Espionage & Spies


CALLAN “Breakout.” Thames TV, UK, 10 June 1970 (Season 3, Episode 8). Edward Woodward (Callan), William Squire, Patrick Mower. Guest stars: Russell Hunter. Garfield Morgan. Teleplay by James Mitchell based on his own characters. Directed by Reginald Collin. Currently available on DVD and YouTube (see below).

   When a KGB agent named Lupin turns himself in to the police, it means that the men in the super secretive “Section,” who have been keeping tabs on him, cannot use their usual means of interrogation on him, which was the whole idea. The solution to the problem? Break him out of jail, posing as Russians, so he will go along with them.

   Complicating matters, and adding to their urgency, is the fact that Lupin has a list of all of Britain’s agents and aliases, and David Callan’s name is on it.

   And of course, as with most heist capers, things do not go smoothly.

   I chose this fast-paced episode to watch more or less random, but if it’s representative of the entire series, I may have made a mistake. It’s excellent, and I probably should have started at the beginning and worked my way through. (It ran for four seasons, and most of the episodes appear to be available on YouTube.)

   And in fact, I may just do that. The action scenes were often filmed without dialogue, so that was fine, but watching a British program without captioning and an indifferent soundtrack meant missing important incidental things, such as who was who and why. Some of the humorous bits were also of some difficulty to pick up on. I do indeed need to watch more.

   Of special note, if you watch this on your own, note how young and spry Edward Woodward was when he made this. I almost didn’t recognize him.
   

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

BERLIN AFFAIR. NBC / Universal TV, 02 November 1970. Darren McGavin, Fritz Weaver, Brian Kelly, Claude Dauphin, Pascale Petit, Christian Roberts, Darren Nesbit, Kathie Browne. Teleplay by Peter Pendulik &  E. Jack Neuman, basef on a story by Eliot West. Directed by David Lowell Rich. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below),

   Surprisingly good international intrigue pilot for a series that never developed, Berlin Affair features Darren McGavin as Peter Killian, a manhunter for InfoCon Geneva, a sort of INTERPOL=like organization that hunts down people for their clients. Here he is summoned to InfoCon’s lavish headquarters in Geneva for his latest assignment by his boss Mallicent (Fritz Weaver in a sly performance — and incidentally a great name for his character) whose understanding of who and what Killian is makes their relationship testy (“…my very best manhunter, in spite of everything you really do like that don’t you?”).

   It seems a courier has been found washed ashore, murdered with nothing but an empty watch on his wrist. The courier was travelling with Paul Strand (Brian Kelly), and old friend of Killian’s, and now the police want to question Strand, and InfoCon has been hired by a mysterious plastics firm called StetinFlex to find Strand.

   Strand saved Killian’s life once, and fed up with Mallicent’s high handed ways, McGavin resigns, but he heads for Berlin to try and contact his old friend and incidentally check out StetinFlex. He succeeds in both, StetinFlex proves to be a front for some criminal outfit operated by one Languin (Claude Dauphin) and his two henchmen Christian Roberts and Darren Nesbit ,who drug Killian and are going to kill him until he evades them.

   Killian has found Strand too, and when he goes to meet him Strand too tries to kill him leaving him for dead.

   â€œYou don’t belong to anyone Peter. You get sick and you die — alone.”

   Now Killian wants revenge and to know what was in the empty watch the courier was wearing that so many men would kill for. Strand turns out to have a girl. Wendy Romer (Pascale Petit) so it is back to Berlin to see if she leads to Strand, but things get complicated when Killian discovers Wendy is the secretary to Languin at his art gallery. Even more complicated, Killian is falling for Wendy who is tied into Strand’s plans to sell Languin what he stole from the watch case.

   Attractive Berlin location shooting open this one up quite a bit and McGavin’s mix of charm and intensity are perfect for Killian, a complex man who fights against Mallicent’s all too perfect insight into his nature and motivation.

   Dauphin has little to do, and Kelly is, as usual, mostly adequate as the charming Strand, while Petit is attractive certainly, but no earth shaker. That leaves most of the work to McGavin playing off Weaver in their scenes together and some decent thuggery by the reliable Darren Nesbit. A solid script (similar to, but not a copy of the plot of Funeral in Berlin) that ties the various twists and mysteries up neatly, good direction, and better cinematography than usual, plus a downbeat ending opening up room for a series to develop round it all out.

   McGavin is the primary attraction here, with Weaver’s appearances a welcome bit of spice. There is decent action here and there, a good teleplay, and good direction, but it’s mostly McGavin’s film and you’ll enjoy it or not based on your tolerance or admiration for his performances. Here he gets to stretch a little, playing a more complex and fully developed hero than usual.

   McGavin’s real life wife Kathie Browne shows up in what would likely have been a recurring role as Mallicent’s personal Moneypenny. It’s little more than a walk on, but nice to see them together.

   Nicely done little film, which is McGavin’s to make or break, but for my money he makes it well worth catching.
   

DAVID McDANIEL – The Vampire Affair. The Man from UNCLE #6. Ace, paperback original, 1966.

   When an agent for UNCLE is found dead, his body drained of blood in the Transylvanian hills, Napoloeon Solo and Illya Kuryakin are sent to investigate. No one want to even suggest the obvious, but after a while even the obvious cannot be denied.

   That quick summary is about all there is to the story. David McDaniel is a good writer, but you can also hint at things supernatural only so long before the hints become hokey. You probably know what is really happening, if not why, as well and as soon as I did all the way through.

   One point of interest, quite unexpected, though, is a chapter-length cameo by Forrest J Ackerman, editor and primary writer for the then current magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and a self-proclaimed expert on both vampires ad werewolves. His presence doesn’t add anything to the plot, and in fact it may take you (jarringly) out of the story for a moment or two.

   I think McDaniel captures the camaraderie between the two stars rather well, without overdoing it. But if it’s UNCLE you want, you would be better picking up a set of DVDs for the show — an option, however, I know fully well was not available back in 1966.

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

DAVID McDANIEL – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #13: The Rainbow Affair. Ace G-670, paperback original, 1967.

   Some books are great. They are works of art, original, inventive, they speak to the reader as both entertainment and art. Some are tragic, some comic, some make you think, some make you shiver.

   And once in a while, maybe most of the time, a book is just a workhorse, a perfectly predictable escape from the world for an hour or so. Most movie and television tie-ins and novelizations fall into that perfectly respectable category.

   Created by Sam Rolfe and Ian Fleming over drinks in a New York hotel room, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series ran four seasons from 1964 to 1968. It starred Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo (name taken from a minor villain in Fleming’s Goldfinger) and David McCallum as Russian Ilya Kuryakin, both working under donnish Alexander Waverly (Leo G, Carroll post Topper) for an international crime fighting group with secret headquarters in New York entered through Del Floria’s tailor shop, the United Network Command for Law Enforcement.

   And if you happened to substitute the word Nations for Network in your head it wouldn’t terribly upset Fleming, Rolfe, or producer Norman Fell however much they might deny it.

   The two agents were most often pitted against THRUSH (which doesn’t seem to stand for anything) a conspiracy of spies, saboteurs, assassins, and monomaniacs all at each other’s throats and weekly scheming to behave horridly. Think Fleming’s S.P.E.C.T.R.E. without the founding genius of Ernst Stavro Blofied or a slightly more competent CHAOS.

   Most episodes followed the format of an ordinary citizen being recruited by Waverly to assist Solo and Kuryakin in foiling THRUSH, meaning at least two name guest stars in every episode, and when the series hit that meant some fairly recognizable faces and names passed through each week on NBC, including William Shatner (in an episode with Leonard Nimoy as a bad guy), Robert Culp, George Sanders, Victor Borge, Jack Palance, Joan Collins, and many others.

   For a while stars vied to appear on the series as they would on Batman a season or so later. A few episodes of the series were even fixed up and released as theatrical movies.

   The first season was in black and white, and by far the truest to the original idea, the next three seasons were in color and grew increasingly playful though the final season did try to reverse the trend.

   Designed to cash in on the James Bond craze and with a nod to Doc Savage (which started reprints that same year) from the pulps, the series created a craze of its own, with more merchandise than even the most devoted fan could collect without a warehouse, and a brief golden age of Television spy series that reached its high point with Sheldon Leonard’s I Spy (also on NBC) and Mission Impossible over on CBS, not to forget Get Smart.

   Magazines, coloring books, lunch boxes, toy guns, play sets, your own U.N.C.L.E. brief case,comic books, a spin off series The Girl From … with Stephanie Powers as April Dancer (her name another Fleming contribution) and Noel Harrison as Mark Slade, replete with its own magazine, books, comics etc.  There was also a two year run of a digest with a monthly novel written by Robert Hart Davis who was mostly Dennis Lynds, but sometimes John Jakes and Bill Pronzini, and twenty three original tie-in novels from Ace Books by the like of Michael Avallone, Harry Whittington, and others followed.

   Among those Ace books, with due deference to everyone who wrote them, there is little doubt that the best of the series (certainly the most, seven of the twenty three and an unpublished twenty fourth meant to close out the book and television series) were penned by David McDaniel, who came as close as any writer can to capturing the unique quality of a different media. As Carl Barks was the Good Duck Artist on Dell Comics Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge titles, McDaniel was the good U.N.C.L.E. writer, or at least the better one.

   Even for McDaniel though The Rainbow Affair, number thirteen in the series, is something special.

   After a brief nod to McDaniel’s original contribution to the series, charming THRUSH operative William Baldwin, the only continuing villain in the books, we get down to brass tacks with Solo and Kuryakin none to happy that rather than international intrigue they are being sent to England to deal with a crook called Johnnie Rainbow who operates a highly successful non-violent criminal organization and so successfully Scotland Yard claims he is just a myth.

   But he is a myth THRUSH is interested in, and they can ill afford to let THRUSH recruit such a competent criminal and his organization.

   So, grousing all the way (McDaniel caught the by play between Vaughn and McCallum better than any of the other series writers) the two agents are off to the jolly old UK, but not before a THRUSH agent in London visits a rival of Rainbow’s to do a little recruiting on their own, an elderly Chinese gentleman.

   Behind this desk sat a tall, thin Chinese, wearing robes of silk which shimmered in the candlelight. His face was unlined, but his eyes were old with ancient wisdom, and seemed oddly veiled, like those of a drowsing cat. Above an imposing brow, he wore a black skullcap with a single coral bead which indicated the rank of Mandarin. A marmoset perched on his shoulder, occasionally nuzzling his ear.

   Huh?

   Shades of August Derleth’s Solar Pons’ Mr. King, I presume? But in fairness this elderly Chinese has gotten around in other people’s books before.

   Then Solo and Kuryakin arrive in London for their appointment at Scotland Yard.

   â€œSolo and Kuryakin,” Napoleon said as they came in. “Here to see Inspector West.”

   â€œHe’s occupied at the moment,” she said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” She ticked a tab on a shiny intercom unit, and a voice answered faintly. “The men from U.N.C.L.E. are here, sir.”

   â€œExcellent,” said the other end. “Send them right in. Oh, see that Claude gets the latest additions to the Rollison file, will you?”

   â€œCertainly, sir.”

   The inner door opened and a stomach walked out, closely followed by a red-faced man carrying a bowler hat. He glanced at them sleepily as he paused by the desk, and as the secretary flipped through a drawer he unpackaged a stick of gum and engulfed it.

   Solo and his partner stepped through the still-open door into a crisply furnished office which still smelled slightly of paint. Behind the desk a remarkably handsome man rose to greet them.

   Wait just a minute here. Claude, the Rollison file, a handsome West? What is this, a meeting of the Thriller Magazine fan club?

   Scotland Yard isn’t much help, but it does give them a lead and they promptly get captured by the Chinese gentleman from earlier, but they are soon rescued by a dapper, handsome MI5 operative in a bowler hat, expensive clothes, and carrying a lethal umbrella who soon introduces them to his willowy beautiful amateur partner a certain lethal lady.

   He even reminds them Mr. Waverly was a colleague in the War working for a certain Department Zed, or as John Creasey would have it Department Z.

   At this point Solo quips he hopes the Double O guy is out of the country.

   It doesn’t end there either. Following leads the two split up, Ilya ending up stumbling on a heist and finding himself outnumbered four to one before a handsome chap appears out of nowhere, dispatches two bad guys with his twin throwing knives and offers Ilya a ride in his Hirondel.

   No halos are seen, but they are certainly implied.

   Meanwhile a local U.N.C.L.E. operative, the beautiful Joey, arrives on a motorcycle to help out Solo in the suburbs and introduces him to her maiden Aunt Jane of the steel trap mind and her paradoxical guest Father John. Seems Aunt Jane and Father John take a proprietary interest in crime and they can introduce Solo to the oldest member of their little group, a beekeeper in Sussex well over one hundred years old named William Escott…

   Somehow the plot does sort itself out. Solo and Kuryakin meet and are charmed by Johnnie Rainbow who ends up a reluctant ally when THRUSH decides if they can’t have him they don’t want him as a rival, not to mention the deadly explosive ulsenite he has created to aid in his heists, they want to get their grubby thrushy hands on.

   As might be expected things end explosively.

   The ancient Chinese turns THRUSH down for the moment (“an old Chinese with a brow like Shakespeare, a face like Satan, and eyes of the true tiger green, lay dreaming.”), Rainbow’s organization is in shambles and Rainbow presumably dead in his destroyed castle after saving Solo and Kuryakin, but at a dinner at Joey’s cottage with Aunt Jane they get a message…

   The message read simply,

“The Rainbow comes and goes,
“And lovely is the rose
“Waters on a starry night
“Are beautiful and fair.”

   Aunt Jane read it twice slowly, and nodded. Illya said, “I believe the quotation is from Intimations of Immortality. Johnnie seems to have escaped the destruction of his castle, at any rate.”

   â€œYes, I believe he has,” said the old lady. “But I was thinking there was a far, far truer line in the same stanza which he did not quote. Stanza two.” Her darting eyes looked up like those of a little girl who is called upon to recite, but she seemed to be looking at something else – something which no one could see and which none but she and a few others could remember. And she said, “‘But yet I know, where’er I go, that there hath passed away a glory from the earth.’”

   Sunlight poured into the silent dining room through a bank of lace-curtained windows facing the calm sea. A gull wheeled and screamed somewhere.

   â€œYou don’t mean Johnnie Rainbow,” said Illya softly.

   â€œNo, I don’t,” said Aunt Jane. “He is one of the last.”

   Napoleon looked from one to the other of them, and gradually the meal resumed. “He’ll start over,” said the American agent. “And next time I’ll bet he gets his elevator.”

   â€œNapoleon!” said Illya, scandalized. “Surely you aren’t wishing success to him. After all, he is a criminal.”

   Solo quickly and emphatically denied any partisanship, and good cheer was restored.

   You can almost hear the pulsing beat of Jerry Goldsmith’s theme music.

   As I said, literature it ain’t. It is pure pulp rot gut, but the distilled kind not the bathtub variety and intoxicating enough despite any guilty hangovers for enjoying it this much.

   But damn if it wasn’t fun and capturing much of the feel of the best of the television series, tongue in cheek without head up another body cavity. For a fairly late entry in a series of novels based on a television series The Rainbow Affair proves to have ambitions far above its station delving into what today we call Metafiction feet first and with surprising charm.

   Writers like Richard Jaccoma, Philip Jose Farmer, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, and Kim Newman may be more literary and inventive, but McDaniel pulls it off almost effortlessly and was there pretty early in the game.

MR. PALFREY OF WESTMINSTER “Once Your Card Is Marked.” Thames TV (UK), 18 April 1984 (series one, episode one). Alec McCowen (Mr Palfrey), Briony McRoberts, Clive Wood, Caroline Blakiston. Written by George Markstein. Directed by Christopher Hodson.  Currently streaming on Acorn TV.

   Mr. Palfrey is a mild-mannered civil servant whose specialty is catching spies, and he’s very good at it, even though over two seasons of televised adventures, I don’t think he ever carried a gun. He may be even more tenacious at his job, however, than even the more famous James Bond was. Different folks have different strokes, and to my mind, Mr. Palfrey’s way of uncovering the truth of matters is a lot more interesting.

   It’s not clear when he’s called back to service at the beginning of this episode how long it’s been that he was gone. A vacation? A sabbatical? Long enough, though, for the department he works for to be completely reorganized. This means a new office for him – a tiny little cubbyhole of one – a new secretary — part-time only — and a new boss – and a female one to boot.

   His first assignment is to finalize the case against a schlub of a man accused a sending secrets to the Russians while working in a British embassy in another country. The messages to Moscow started when he started there, and the stopped when he left.

   Mr. Palfrey does not think this is evidence enough, which from his boss’s point of view is a serious mistake, even more so when the man turns up dead. There are wheels within wheels in this case, and while Mr. Palfrey is right, it is still a blow for him to learn there is such a think as being too right. I won’t say more, but it was nice epiphany of a moment for me to realize I was a half a second ahead of him.

   The British do spy fiction right, and they always have. Here’s another obscure example of that, and one well worth your tracking down.

NOTE: Although this was the first episode of the two seasons of Mr. Palfrey stories, it wasn’t the pilot. That came as an episode of another series called Storyboard entitled “The Traitor” (23 August 1983).

   

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

VIRGIN OF THE SECRET SERVICE. “Entente Cordiale. ITV, UK, 11 April 1968 (Season One, Episode Three). Clinton Greyn, Alexander Dore, John Carter, Veronica Strong, Noel Coleman, Katherine Shofield, Frederick Preisly. Devised by Ted Willis. Teleplay by Betty Paul (as Betty Lambda). Directed by Paul Bernard. Currently streaming on YouTube.

   Captain Robert Virgin (Clinton Greyn) of the British Secret Service finds himself in Paris to attend the funeral of the son of a peer of the realm, an artist who was murdered, a John Bull figure with a knife through his chest found,  his body signaling that a Chinese Secret Society wanting revenge for the humiliation of the Boxer Rebellion is about to strike.

   The mostly likely target, according to Virgin’s chief Colonel Shaw-Camberley (Noel Coleman), is the Duke of Albany (Frederick Preisly) in Paris to negotiate the Entente Cordiale between the British and French against Germany, but more interested in the Can Can at the Moulin Rouge and its star, Cigarette (Katherine Shofield), the dead artist’s lover/model.

   Virgin and his batman Doublette (John Carter) pose as an artist and his servant to get close to Cigarette, is she part of the scheme or does she know something? She’s not particularly fond of the British despite her tastes in men, and her casual nudity modeling when she meets Virgin disconcerts him and Doublette both.

   Cigarette: And what do you paint?

   Virgin: I specialize in horses.

   Cigarette: And are the horses nude?

   Of course as feared there is a plot afoot, the Yellow Peril raising its ugly head, but in full irony more in the mood of Thoroughly Modern Millie than Dr. Fu Manchu.

   German secret agent Karl Von Blauner (Alexander Dore) has allied with Chinese assassins to assassinate Albany and they want to know what Cigarette knows too, leading to a white slavery ring, Virgin and Doublette trapped in a flooding chamber beneath enemy headquarters, an assassination attempt at a concert, and a final blowout at the Moulin Rouge with Albany surrounded by would be assassins.

   Along the way the mysterious Mrs. Virginia Cortez (Veronica Strong) appears across the hall from the Albany to lend a hand foiling the assassination while Virgin rescues Cigarette and others sold into White Slavery from a Chinese laundry. Mrs. Strong’s unexpected appearances no matter where Virgin’s adventures take him are a running joke in the series, likely an unsuccessful attempt to do a Victorian Mrs. Peel.

   It’s all played tongue in cheek and completely straight-faced despite the absurdity of the plot and dialogue. It’s no easy thing to pull this kind of thing off, but the British do it splendidly and this plays many of the notes of The Avengers (not as stylish and closer to the Honor Blackman than the Diana Rigg episodes) and Adam Adamant Lives, with Greyn appropriately dashing, rather thick headed but good at his job, brave, and veddy British. It’s a played broader than say The Wild Wild West, but the same general feeling of laughing up the sleeve while still attending to the action and adventure elements applies here.

   Everyone plays it straight but with more than enough humor with Dore particularly good as the villain, Carter as Doublette, and tall, blonde, handsome Greyn well cast as the hero. Unlike many attempts at this kind of thing the jokes mostly land and do so without the characters having to wink at the audience or step out of character.

   Virgin of the Secret Service was devised by Ted Willis (Lord Willis) creator of the legendary long running police procedural television series P.C. 49 and author of Man-Eater, The Buckingham Palace Connection, and The Churchill Commando. It ran thirteen episodes in 1968 from ITC, and while it only ran the one season it is worth catching the episodes available on YouTube

   

REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:

   

RUNNING BLIND. BBC Scotland, 1979. Stuart Wilson, Ragenheidur Stendor, George Sewell, Vladek Sheybal. Teleplay by Jack Gerson, based on the novel by Desmond Bagley. Directed by William Brayne.

   This co-produced British and Icelandic television adaptation of Desmond Bagley’s thriller Running Blind, was originally released as a mini-series and re-released as a feature that appeared on PBS, and that is just about the last time anyone saw it until recently. To say it has been elusive is an understatement.

   It’s now available on YouTube.

   Alan Stewart (Stuart Wilson) a retired British (or as he insists, Scottish, he even carries a skean dubh, a Scottish dagger) agent for an unnamed department is approached by his old boss Slade (George Sewell) who once had Stewart execute a old friend turned suspected traitor. Stewart naturally wants nothing to do with Slade and the Department, but the job in question is in Iceland where Stewart’s girlfriend Elin (Ragenheidur Stendor) lives and is as simple as delivering a small package for a lot of money.

   Slade also dangles that he might be more inclined to protect Stewart and Elin from the Russian masterspy Kennikin (Vladek Sheybal) who was emasculated by a missed shot Stewart made in attempting to kill him.

   A little added incentive.

   As you might imagine, nothing is that simple. Almost from the moment he sets foot on Icelandic soil, it becomes clear that the Russians are onto Stewart and that his own side is less than forthcoming.

   Contacting Elin, who doesn’t suspect who or what Stewart is, he uses her to misdirect the men following him and finds he is on the run from both the Russians, the British, and soon the CIA.

   Just what is he carrying, and who is on whose side?

   Running Blind was one of Bagley’s best novels, and that’s quite a compliment for the South African actor turned thriller writer whose work includes High Citadel, The Vivero Letter, Freedom Trap (filmed as John Huston’s The MacIntosh Man), Tightrope Man, The Spoilers, Snow Tiger, and more.

   Bagley would become a bestselling thriller writer whose work bridged the gap between the earlier generation of British thriller writers like Geoffrey Household, Hammond Innes, and Victor Canning, and the newer breed represented by Alistair MacLean, Gavin Lyall, and Duncan Kyle. He had Innes’ eye for detail, Household’s grasp of rough country, Lyall’s uncanny research skills, Canning’s cynical view of the Security Services and MacLean’s gift for twisting plot and hard action.

   Unlike most writers of his era he almost never repeats himself, and his protagonists are distinct and easy to identify,

   Action is the by-word of the print version of Running Blind, and it is perhaps only natural that the mini-series format is a poor one to convey that. Though the structure of the film is close to the book, the first third seems mostly Stewart looking over his shoulder against the rather bleak Icelandic volcanic landscape, and the lack of directorial style and a good score means everything depends on the actors and the scenery, and both are almost good enough to carry it, particularly Wilson.

   About a third of the way through things pick up considerably, and if you will keep tuned in until the point when Stewart and Elin are stalked by an assassin with a high powered rifle while camped out, you will probably stay for the entire story which falls in the category of films that seem much better in retrospect than while you are trying to get into them.

   That change is notable. The scenery becomes more dramatic, the action comes faster, the suspense is greater, and the twists come more frequently.

   Running Blind is not a completely successful translation of Bagley’s fast paced hard pounding novel, but it is entertaining if you stick through a slow first third. Valdek Sheybal (From Russia With Love, Billion Dollar Brain, The Wind and the Lion, and on television in mini series like QB VII and Shogun) picks things up considerably playing the KGB spy master Kenniken with a mix of suave professionalism and barely disguised fury at Stewart. That tension between the complete professional and the angry man gives the quiet scenes between him and Stewart real (and much needed) power.

   Most of the cast is unfamiliar, or at best faces you have seen but don’t really connect a name with. Lead Stuart Wilson is much more familiar now than his younger face in films like The Mask of Zorro, Hot Fuzz, Lethal Weapon 3, and Enemy of the State and on television in Dinotopia, MI-5, and Prime Suspect. More often than not today he plays a bearded villain not unlike Sheybal in this.

   Running Blind is mostly a curiosity. If you have read or enjoyed Bagley’s fine novels this is a bit more, but I admit it isn’t fully successful and it’s a book that deserves a big action movie done right and not a small half-hearted mini-series.

   I can see where they saw the minimal sets and Icelandic setting and thought they could get away with it, they just don’t quite pull it off, though I like it more than it probably deserves. The chance you might too makes it worth investigating.

   

QUILLER. “The Price of Violence.” BBC, 60 minutes. 29 August 1975. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Michael Jayston (Quiller), Moray Watson (Angus Kinloch). Guest Cast: Sinéad Cusack, Ed Bishop. Screenplay: Michael J. Bird, based on the character created by Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor). Director: Peter Graham Scott. Currently available on YouTube.

   It’s been over five years since the greatly missed Michael Shonk reviewed Adam Hall’s Tango Briefing, the fifth adventure of the master spy known only as Quiller. Along with that review he discussed the BBC TV series based on the books. At that time, only three of the episodes were known to have survived. Lo and behold, the whole season has recently turned up, easily found by doing a search for them on YouTube. I only wish that Michael were still with us to see them.

   There is much to like in “The Price of Violence,” the very first episode, but something I found as awfully rough going was that there is no dialogue at all in the first nine minutes, only scenes of some of the usual Mideast violence in Israel and Lebanon. Without knowing who any of the characters are, or — truthfully — no idea of what is happening, it all goes by too vaguely and with no particular context or meaning, then only to be forgotten once the story itself begins.

   Which has Quiller home in disgrace, his mission in the war zone a failure. As a penance, he’s not cashiered outright, nor put in a desk job, but put into a state of semi-limbo instead, a situation to which he does not take kindly. But his immediate superior (played impeccably well by Moray Watson), as well as the director of the totally secret “Bureau,” have other plans for him, and he’s ever so subtly nudged into becoming the bodyguard of the head of the World Food Commission, a totally innocuous man who otherwise has no play in the proceedings.

   Involved, however, is the man’s legal advisor, played to perfection by Sinéad Cusack, and sparks between Quiller and herself fly immediately. (She was to turn up again in two later episodes.) Quiller is a loner and a cynic, but as a man deeply involved in the spy business, never carries a gun. The sad but steely-eyed Michael Jayston was made for the part. George Segal, who played Quiller in the movies, was not.

   The series lasted for only one season of thirteen episodes, all now available, at least for the time being.

   

REVIEWED BY JONATHAN LEWIS:

   

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE “The Frame,” CBS, 21 January 1967 (Season 1, Episode 17). Steven Hill, Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, Martin Landau. Guest Cast: Simon Oakland, Arthur Batanides, Joe Maross, Joe De Santis. Currently streaming on Paramount Plus.

   After seemingly endless episodes in which the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) rescued Eastern Bloc scientists from behind the Iron Curtain or stopped communist insurgencies in Latin America, it was refreshing to watch an episode of Mission: Impossible‘s season one that didn’t involve international intrigue whatsoever.

   In “The Frame,” Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) and his team aim to stop Jack Wellman, a syndicate boss who has moved beyond racketeering and into the business of assassinating American politicians. And who might that boss be portrayed by, you ask? None other than veteran tough guy character actor Simon Oakland. Many people will remember him primarily as irascible newspaper editor Tony Vincenzo in Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75). But he also appeared in television shows such as Bonanza, Rawhide, and Hawaii Five-O as well as in numerous crime films and westerns.

   I’ve always been a fan of his work. Oakland, with a loud voice and commiserate imposing physicality, often ends up overshadowing other actors in his midst. Such is the case in this episode of Mission: Impossible. What’s notable is how unobtrusive both Hill and Martin Landau – who I like immensely – are in comparison to the scenery chewing Oakland.

   All told, it is a fun episode, one that benefits from a primarily single-location setting. One in which the IMF team takes on the role of a catering team to serve Wellman and his associates a fancy dinner. What Wellman doesn’t realize is that while he is being treated to a multi-course meal, Barney Collier (Greg Morris) is working diligently to break into his basement vault. And if you’ve ever wanted to see how silly Steven Hill looks in a chef’s hat, this is a golden opportunity.

   

THE BARON “Diplomatic Immunity.” ITC, UK, 28 September 1966 (Season 1, Episode 1). Steve Forrest as John Mannering (alias “The Baron”), Sue Lloyd as Cordelia Winfield, Colin Gordon as John Alexander Templeton-Green, Paul Ferris as David Marlowe. Based on the character created by John Creasey. Director: Leslie Norman. Currently streaming on Britbox.

   The Baron was one of the lesser known series characters created by John Creasey (writing as Anthony Morton), but when the folks at ITC decided they wanted a TV show to compete with the James Bond movies and the U.N.C.L.E. TV shows, they decided that The Baron would do very well.

   The series, which lasted only one season and 30 episodes, was filmed in color, somewhat unusual in those early days of British TV. In the TV version, fairly closely to the books but with some differences, John Mannering is a wealthy antiques dealer with connections all over the world, which makes him a highly regarded person of interest to be co-opted by a secret British secret service agency to work for them undercover for them.

   In “Diplomatic Immunity” Mannering is asked to go to a fictional European country to retrieve some valuable pieces of jewelry stolen by a female employee of the head of one of that country’s top governmental agencies, using her diplomatic immunity to get them back into her country.

In all-out imitation of the James Bond films, Mannering goes fully equipped with all kinds of secret gadgetry, and it is best you pay close attention, since – wouldn’t you know – he gets to use all of them whenever he needs them. The story is slight – the basic story line doesn’t need the full hour’s running time – but it’s entertaining, and Steve Forrest is hunky enough and the girls he meets all seem willing enough for viewers of either sex to have something to look at.

On the other hand, the series was picked up by ABC in this country for only part of its run,  then could only be seen in syndication. It may be that “hunky” is not good enough: you need the charisma of a Roger Moore as well, and that Steve Forrest unfortunately didn’t have.

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