Sun 18 Mar 2012
A TV Movie Review by Michael Shonk: PROBE (1972).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[27] Comments
PROBE. NBC / Warner Brothers, TV Movie, 21 February 1972. Cast: Hugh O’Brian, Elke Sommer, Burgess Meredith, Lilia Skala, Angel Tompkins and Sir John Gielgud. Created, written and produced by Leslie Stevens. Directed by Russell Mayberry.
To view the opening credits on YouTube, click here.
Probe remains one of my favorite TV Movie pilots. It would lead to the TV series Search (a series I will review once I track down all the episodes). While the series is not available in studio approved DVD, this TV Movie is available as a Warner Archive DVD on demand.
Probe is a fine example of 70s TV, charming and entertaining, but when examined more closely, seriously flawed.
Hugh O’Brian played field agent Hugh Lockwood, aka Probe One. He worked for World Securities Corporation, Probe Division (Programmed Retrieval Operations). The agency’s purpose was to search and recover any object or person that was missing. His boss was Director of Probe Control, V.C.R. Cameron, played by Burgess Meredith.
Each field agent was equipped with new futuristic (for the 70s) gadgets. There was the mini-scanner that worked like a camera and allowed Probe Control to monitor the life signs of the agent and others.
The scanner was magnetized so it could be attached to jewelry such as a ring or a pendant. Dental implants allowed the agent to communicate with Probe Control when talking aloud was not possible. Agents had a surgically implanted earpiece that allowed them to stay in contact with Probe Control (the earpiece could be temporarily disabled by a head cold).
Probe Control was located in the basement of the World Securities Corporation building. There, several trained technicians, with the aide of huge computers, assisted the field agent and monitored for any problems.
Probe Control could serve as translator for any foreign language, give directions, and help open safes. Senior technician Gloria Harding (Angel Tompkins) monitored medical telemetry. By measuring vital signs and the number of vital signs, Gloria could tell if a suspect was lying, how the agent was feeling, and if there was anyone hiding nearby to spring a trap on the agent.
The TV Movie began with an action scene with Lockwood rushing through gunfire to save a kidnapped political official. That solved, his next case involved the missing Entourage Diamond Collection last seen in Nazi hands.
Lockwood heads to Europe to talk to the woman who was the last person known to see the diamonds. At the client’s request, Chief Diamond Appraiser Harold Streeter (Sir John Gielgud) accompanied Lockwood to confirm the diamonds when found was genuine. There, Lockwood met the woman’s daughter Uli (Elke Sommer) for the required love interest.
The search for the diamonds had plenty of twists, action, and even humor; Mom disappears, suspicious fellows lurk in the background, Nazis, fights, traps, and Lockwood trying to seduce willing Uli with Probe Control objecting in his ear. (My favorite line came from Gloria reacting to Lockwood verbally seducing Uli, “Do we have to listen to this?â€)
What made this movie fun and special were the gadgets and banter between hero Lockwood, overprotective Cameron, and catty Gloria. The actual story and field scenes were bland and forgettable. O’Brian seemed bored, and the chemistry between O’Brian and Sommer was nonexistent. Sadly, Sir John Gielgud was wasted in this his first TV Movie (TV Guide, February 12, 1972).
In the Los Angeles Herald Examiner’s “TV Weekly†(October 15,1972), Hugh O’Brian discussed what he thought was wrong with the pilot.
“Probe Control is a wonderful gimmick,†he said, “Yes, it’s a great tool. But the FBI doesn’t use a gun until it must. The pilot made me too much the puppet. Now, I’m in command. But there’s to be still less emphasis on Probe Control. We’ve all agreed on that – the network and Warner’s – everybody.â€
That quote is a valuable lesson to anyone interested in television, nothing is ever allowed to upstage the star.
The answer to how wise such change was must wait for our look at the series, but without Probe Control this would have been just another TV PI movie, and a boring one at that.
March 19th, 2012 at 8:59 am
Some random thoughts:
I wonder if Sir John Gielgud and Elke Summer ever made another film (or even a TV episode) together.
IMDB says there were 23 episodes of SEARCH that were aired. I have half a memory of watching it a few times when it was on, but nothing more solid than that. How many of them do you have access to, Michael? I’m sure I’ve seen collector-to-collector copies offered for sale, but a quick “search” just now turned up empty. Have they all gone into hiding?
And, since the pilot has been released by Warner Archives, will they go ahead with the rest of the series? Or they just teasing us, as they did by making the second pilot movie for HARRY O available, and (so far) nothing else?
March 19th, 2012 at 10:25 am
Steve, they are just teasing us. PROBE and HARRY O were tests to see if there is a demand for the series. The on demand DVD is great for the studio as it reduces risks of losing money, but you wonder why not release series the same way. My guess is Warner’s does not want to spend the money to restore the episodes. The studios have gotten flak from fans about some of the quality of picture for some of their releases. So they know they can’t get away with what the collector to collector does.
I have recently seen two episodes of SEARCH, both with Tony Franciosa and both on YouTube.
O’Brian said in his interview that the reduction of Probe Control’s role would start with episode 9.
The episodes on YouTube shows one episode with Probe active and one with Probe less involved.
Search – Live Men Tell Tales is with Probe Control and fun, even without Angel Tompkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciSPnGGS1EE
Search – Let Us Prey – Episode 12 is with very little of Probe Control and awful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq27pcxeInM
Finally, dear Warner Brothers, if you make the series available we will pay you money and not have to depend on fan copies on YouTube.
March 19th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Thanks for links. I watched several minutes of Episode 12, and I confess that nothing of the opening or general setting came back to me.
While I’m sure I was aware of it at the time, I may have been one of the causes of the series’ demise. Right now I don’t believe I ever watched it. This is not surprising. I was three years into my permanent teaching job, and doing well there was more important. My daughter Sarah (firstborn) was also three. I had other things on my mind.
I also did not know it was going to come up like this 40 years later! Who knew?
March 19th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
This brings back memories. I remember liking it, but the fine details are gone. My recollection is that the gimmick was played up a lot, so perhaps the other stars of the show were a little less precious than O’Brian about being upstaged. There was another series (THE NAME OF THE GAME) where they had 3 different stars who took turns as the main character, but like SEARCH it’s never been repeated on British TV or released on DVD.
March 19th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
By Hollywood standards the series was considered a failure. The problem I have seen most often mentioned is Leslie Stevens never had the time he needed to get it produced the way he wanted.
Watching the pilot you have to keep reminding yourself that this was considered science fiction. Something the TV masses were not ready for in 1970s. Today our phones can do what Probe Control did, so it is hard to remember how unbelievable the show was to many in the audience.
PROBE was ahead of its time in other ways. Most TV series featured one star, a popular second co-star, and supporting cast. This TV Movie flipped that, the group was the star, not the lead. After the success of LOST, I wonder if the idea of PROBE would work today.
The gadgets would have to be updated, and the field agent would have to have more dramatic cases than hunting down diamonds stolen by the Nazis, but the idea of Probe Control offers such potential for great drama and humor between the characters.
March 19th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Bradstreet, the 1956 ABC series WIRE SERVICE was another series with three male leads. As for NAME OF THE GAME, one of its stars, Tony Franciosa, was one of the three leads of SEARCH (along with Doug McClure).
March 19th, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Wire Service had three leads, two men, one woman. George Brent, Dane Clark, Mercedes McCambridge.
March 19th, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Michael: The ‘wheel show’ idea seemed to be quite popular at one time (MYSTERY MOVIE had a different detective every week) but appears to have gone out of fashion. I wonder if it would work these days?
SEARCH hardly seems like sci-fi at all nowadays, which suggests that it might work very well these days. What gimmicks they could add to the original’s, if they were remaking it ?
March 19th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
The idea of bringing back the 70’s Wheel Series was tried in 1989 by ABC with limited success. Today the big 4 networks are not interested in doing TV-Movies or the ninety minute or two hour episodic series.
Here in the States, Tom Sellack has been doing two hour movie series featuring Robert Parker’s Jesse Stone. He has had a hard time getting CBS to show the things and believes this will be the last one on CBS. He does hope to move the TV Movie series to cable. It would be a nice fit for TNT which last year brought back TV Movie originals.
The hardest part of remaking PROBE would be the gimmicks. I’d shop at SYFY’s WAREHOUSE 13.
March 20th, 2012 at 8:39 am
Not that great a show – but the cast was very agreeable and the theme music by Dominic Frontiere is sheer perfection!
March 20th, 2012 at 11:13 am
Sergio, PROBE (and the series SEARCH) does show the value of a great theme song.
Sadly, the increase in commercials has cost most of today’s television the advantage of a great original theme song.
March 20th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
I don’t know if “wheel show” is the right terminology for it, but Warners was big on the rotating star going back to the days of Maverick, which was really for financial reasons more than anything else — you could film more quickly and you were also protected against an actor’s holdout. Warners did the same thing with their cookie-cutter P.I. shows, like 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside Six. Sometimes these actors would appear in episodes together, and sometimes they would get their own episodes. There are really so many examples of this; CBS’ Checkmate (1960-62) would be another.
March 20th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
My definition of a Wheel series is a series with rotating series or characters sharing the same network time period.
I am waiting to research the series when I am ready to review it, but I believe O’Brian was the main star with the most episodes. The episodes were difficult and time consuming to shoot, so that may be the reason adding two more agents.
O’Brian was the detective looking for missing stuff and people.
Franciosa was the expert about the mob and organized crime.
McClure was the fill in guy (I have no memory of McClure in it, so I could be wrong with his role).
March 20th, 2012 at 6:52 pm
#7. I forgot to thank Barry for correcting me about WIRE SERVICE leads.
March 20th, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Michael, @Comment 13, re Doug McClure.
He’s referred to in many sources as the “back up Probe” but here’s one source that says he was the solo(?) star of seven episodes.
http://thevirginiantv.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/search-starring-doug-mcclure/
“Following the cancellation of The Virginian Doug McClure and James Drury both failed to find another hit show. Doug McClure starred as C.R. Grover in Search aka Probe. The rotating star format favored by Universal at the time was frustrating for Doug McClure fans as he only starred in seven episodes. The show failed to find an audience and was cancelled in 1973 after one season.”
March 20th, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I should have kept searching. The Television Obscurities website has considerable information about both the pilot and the series:
http://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/search/
In particular:
“Hugh O’Brian and Tony Franciosa each appeared in eight episodes while Doug McClure starred in seven.”
I also found this interesting:
“After all three networks had revealed their fall schedules, Clarence Petersen analyzed a variety of extremely competitive time slots where two or more programs would fight it out for a share of the Nielsen ratings. One such battleground was the Wednesday 10-11PM time slot between Cannon on CBS, Probe on NBC and The Julie Andrews Hour on ABC (also new). Petersen suggested that the three shows would force viewers to make “some difficult choicesâ€.”
I might have been watching Julie Andrews in that time slot, but the odds are a lot higher that it was CANNON that was on.
March 20th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
I have no clue what Petersen meant about the hard choices in that time slot. You had a typical (and popular) TV PI vs a science fiction series vs a music variety hour. I don’t see the same viewer for those three series.
Notice the number of critics who sited the series lack of believability. The TV critics and the public, with few exceptions, don’t like science fiction. It is a small genre with hardcore devoted fans. The problem was in the seventies the mass audience ruled, get a 25 share of the audience and you were in trouble (today an 8 share can be a success).
A nice comparison of SEARCH today would be FRINGE.
The concept of the group hero is very foreign to American fiction. The central hero riding in on his white horse to save the town was expected. Watch Japanese films and try to find the central hero.
This idea was as ahead of its time in the 70’s as it is now behind the time as far as science fiction in the 21st century.
Today, I can look back and see how Probe Control was what made the show fun and different, but then people were wanting CANNON and SEARCH certainly was not that.
March 20th, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Michael, you said: “I have no clue what Petersen meant about the hard choices in that time slot. You had a typical (and popular) TV PI vs a science fiction series vs a music variety hour. I don’t see the same viewer for those three series.”
I see what you’re saying, and I almost agree with you. But while maybe I wasn’t back in 1972, I have so many interests now that I’d enjoy watching any of the three. I might be the only one, but I could easily be the viewer you’re talking about…
March 20th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Steve, you could be right or perhaps he referred to the family viewing one TV.
But to me a harder choice would be two or three shows of the same genre opposite of each other. I’d have a harder time picking between two or three PI shows on at the same time.
March 20th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Do you know, I’d quite forgotten the problems families in the 60s and 70s had in choosing what they were going to watch every evening after suppertime. Even with only three networks to pick from, most homes had only one TV. I can imagine how many fights broke out!
My wife and I now have three working sets now, two of them wired for cable. The third has only a VCR player hooked up to it, but we could easily add a DVD player. More than enough!
March 21st, 2012 at 7:58 am
Steve, you left out the best line from that TV Obscurities piece: “In a minor role was A Martinez, one of the winners of the Hugh O’Brian Acting Awards in 1969 (held annually at UCLA).” The Hugh O’Brian Acting Awards!
Michael, I completely agree with your point about the networks functioning very literally as “broad”-casters in the pre-cable age, which made it difficult for niche shows — even Star Trek had trouble staying on the air, after all.
This is around the time that demographics, as opposed to overall ratings, began to play a key role in determining a show’s fate — CBS threw out its whole lineup of “hillbilly comedies” in ’71, the year before Search aired, not because of overall ratings (which were strong), but because ratings were weak in key demos.
Michael, I would say that in today’s today and age, critics are, in many cases, exactly the people who embrace sci fi and fantasy programming (Lost, X-Files, Fringe, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) Yet even today, with narrowcasting the rule of the land, it can be very hard for even a quality sci fi program to catch on.
There’s no better example than Caprica, the BSG prequel, which was an exceptionally cerebral show, though it alienated many viewers because of the complete absence of action and other battle scenes. Even Syfy — a channel specifically devoted to this kind of programming — was, in the end, unable to make the model work economically, due to low viewership and hence low ad rates.
March 21st, 2012 at 10:30 am
Fox would have loved SEARCH and focused on the science fiction instead of trying to turn it into another typical TV PI series. But then it was still many years away from there being a Fox network.
I am really looking forward to watching all the episodes in order. Not only because I enjoyed the series at the time (I was eighteen), but to watch how the series changed over its short life.
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:15 pm
At one time, a fellow who used to live in Palos Verdes Peninsula was making the probe scanners on a chain from his home. I used to have one. I wish Warner’s would release this show on dvd too.
In the SF Bay Area, the show suffered because it was the time that OPEC decided to jack up petroleum prices and they kept pre-empting the show for national and local programs on the energy crisis.
grump
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:18 pm
did anyone see this ?
http://www.shopping-guides-web.com/cult-movie-tv-series-probe-search-original-hero-scanner-only-one.html
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:29 pm
#23. Hi, George. The show had production problems cause by a lack of time, certain members of the cast, etc. From the beginning the ratings were below average to a disaster.
It was opposite of CANNON on CBS and JULIE ANDREWS SHOW on ABC, and by October CANNON was a Top 20 rated series while SEARCH and JULIE ANDREWS finished in the bottom ten. When ratings are that bad the network would pick that spot for any news specials. And during that time local stations would also pick on that series to show their own specials. Of course, that would end all hope for better ratings.
February 16th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
IMHO, Search didn’t survive because it didn’t take itself seriously enough in an era where almost anything not Quinn Martin was half-camp like McClure was (geeze!). “The Chairman” showed this concept could be played straight and dramatic; NBC just dropped the ball. Ironically, the TV show that often came closest to Probe in concept and execution predated it by several years; the venerable Mission Impossible, which often wielded anachronistically “future” technology in their missions but the serious audience accepted it because they were clever credible tools in great down-to-earth storylines. Such didn’t need yet hooked a sci-fi audience too. Had MI’s (or QM’s for that matter) producers done Probe, we would’ve had a pretty remarkable and respectable show. And I do believe Probe is still doable today; Those “scanners” still did tricks our hottest cell phones wished.
J. Greenidge
February 17th, 2013 at 1:45 pm
#26. J. Greenidge, I will be reviewing SEARCH the series in the near future (I have a couple of posts ahead of it).
Did you know Anthony Spinner, who wrote and produced QM series DAN AUGUST and CANNON, produced many of SEARCH episodes?
The problems were deeper and many behind the scenes. Basically, Leslie Stevens vision of Probe didn’t survive long due to complaining actors and clueless writers who didn’t understand the premise.