Co-created by Rex Firkin and Vincent Tilsley, The Guardians was one of the first drama series to get its hands dirty with the soiled laundry of the political and social fall-out of the late 1960s. The UK emerged, somewhat dazed, from the hedonism of that period to face mass unemployment, industrial unrest and galloping inflation. Tilsley and Firkin clearly wanted to produce a drama that examined these issues, morally and philosophically, suggesting a very radical and dystopian alternative to the national crisis the public and their politicians were dealing with.

At the heart of the drama is the notion that the UK is actually run by a private police force, headed by the mysterious General. Whilst the idea of private police being the arbiters of law and order might seem a bit fanciful, the intertwining of private and public policing has a long history in the UK and even as recent as November 2009 concerns have been raised again about how many private security firms are actually being paid to patrol the inner cities. The titular Guardians here represent the instrument of power, appearing as a morally dubious fascist force. The Independent Television Authority was so concerned about the political content of the series and a potential misunderstanding between the depiction of the series' sinister uniformed paramilitary force called"The Guardians of the Realm" (known for short as "The Guardians" or simply "The G's") in relation to the name of the police force of the Republic of Ireland Garda Síochána (which translates into English as Guardians of the Peace) that the series was refused transmission in Northern Ireland.


One can safely say that nothing is presented in purely black and white terms in The Guardians and the concerns it raises are patiently examined from a multiplicity of view points. The series is, in effect, an attempt to fictionalise the lengthy discussions of the day. Each episode becomes a moral debate over various issues such as the constitution, European federalism, capital punishment, political assassination, democracy and criminality. It's an extremely brave call and would probably be virtually impossible to stage now. The problem is that, fascinating as the various political and social debates are, there is a tendency to sacrifice drama and plot to service them. You end up with a stream of episodes that do move extremely slowly because many of the characters tend to sit down and spend a good chunk of their time batting philosophical arguments back and forth over a scotch and soda.


It's astonishing to think that this was broadcast to a mainstream audience by London Weekend on a Saturday night. But then unrest was in the air and the series was reflecting back some of the concerns in the backs of viewers minds. Wilson had just been ousted by Heath and in 1967 Wilson himself was seen as pro-Communist to such a degree that Peter Wright of MI5 became involved with Cecil King, the publisher of the Daily Mirror in a plot to bring down Wilson's government and replace it by a coalition led by Lord Mountbatten. Tilsley and Firkin have swept away the monarchy in The Guardians but those in power are wrestling with opposition from Communists and a fragmented collection of resistance groups collectively known as Quarmby. The Quarmbies continue to force the state to become increasingly oppressive in the belief that it will be forced to reveal its true nature to the population. A major theme of the series is concerned with how far the resistance should adopt the tactics of their oppressors in order to replace them and whether their fragile alliance can withstand internal conflicts and disagreements.



Whilst it bristles with Orwellian overtones, the repressive regime of the future Britain is not portrayed as an army of totalitarian robots. They are seen to be pricked by their consciences, are racked with guilt and doubt. Their actions are not without appalling consequences. We see Prime Minister Timothy Hobson struggling to be more than just a figurehead in thrall to the General's military junta, jostling for power and influence in a head to head battle of wills with the General's quisling Cabinet Secretary Norman. It's an interesting journey that he makes to the status of benevolent dictator.


The opening episodes This Is England and Pursuit certainly don't make any concessions to the viewer with the series' overall plot - the cat and mouse game between Hobson's government, the General's state police force and the Quarmbies - often held up by fireside discussions on the morality of the politics depicted in the show. These scenes are very talky and are often very long so you could be forgiven for bailing out of this early. Those episodes are important because they not only introduce Hobson and Norman but also major characters such as Clare Weston (the rather excellent Gwyneth Powell), the wife of Captain Tom Weston in the Guardian force, and a state supported psychiatrist Benedict.

The drama is as much about their own morality and political affiliations as they get caught up in changing events.What does let these first episodes down is the lack of budget to satisfactorily depict the Guardians dealing with a group of protesters who aren't particularly well directed in some of the filmed sequences. It often veers between effective newsreel verisimilitude and The Two Ronnies satire The Worm That Turned.


Hobson's struggle to be more than a figurehead and to demonstrate he's perfectly capable of running a government is depicted in Head Of State. The first episode where Firkin and Tilsley seem to get to grips with their format, this sets up the battle of wills between Hobson and Norman whilst also examining the complexities of constitutional law and Hobson's attempt to dismantle the state police. This episode also introduces Christopher Hobson (Edward Petherbridge), the Prime Minister's son, who becomes involved with Clare Weston after her husband has gone missing, presumed killed. The Logical Approach depicts the state's use of capital punishment, using an allegedly 'humane' method where prisoners are sedated without their knowledge and executed with lethal injections whilst a dramatised hanging is presented to satisfy public bloodlust.


In Quarmby, we discover that Benedict, the state psychiatrist (an early television role for David Burke), is one of the Quarmbies and his wife inadvertently threatens to blow his cover when she has him followed by rather useless private detective, looking for evidence for divorce proceedings, played quite brilliantly by David Cook. It's a bizarre episode and takes a rather chilling turn when Benedict is forced to strangle the detective, who is disguised as a woman, in front of his wife in order to keep his dissident identity safe.

Later, we learn that the government keeps its political prisoners passive by the use of cannabis in 'rehabilitation' centres and by End In Dust, the series conclusion, Clare finds out that her husband is not dead but has been kept in one of the centres. Norman is also closing in on Benedict and making his moves on Hobson too. There is a head to head discussion in the final episode that quite frighteningly echoes the current apathy with politics in the UK and in the week of Blair's appearance at the Iraq War Inquiry makes the series horribly prescient.


As Benedict argues, "The logic of resistance is to provoke the government into violent and tyrannical acts, to brutilise it. Because if that goes far enough the majority of the people will turn against it".

Norman thinks the logic is poor, faulty and replies "The majority of any population will always be apathetic if a government is prepared to use every modern means of manipulating opinion and repressing opposition it can continue to function without any popular backing at all." 

Benedict's hope is that Hobson can see the logic "I believe the time would come when you would see the brutalisation had begun and could only get worse. I believe that when that time came you'd say to yourself,  'what I'm doing is worse that what I came into power to cure' and that you'd then reverse your policies and return..."

'To democracy?" offers Hobson. It all leads to a pessimistically downbeat ending.

Tilsley's influence can clearly be seen, echoing his work and ideas seen, for example, in The Prisoner, and many of the themes here would also crop up in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange released in January 1972, about two months after the series had been transmitted. Both works seem to be picking up on the social complexities and cultural contradictions of the 1970s that can be traced to one preeminent reality – the postwar world of abundance and optimism had ended. … It was a new world, full of frightening uncertainties. Many of the series themes would also later be reworked in Wilfred Greatorex's under-rated 1990 series for BBC starring Edward Woodward.

If you have the willingness to listen to long but intelligent debates about various shades of totalitarian politics and the ethics of violent resistance you'll find much to think about but be prepared for the long haul because the series does not rely on action to tell the stories and character development is often quite slow.  Performances are pretty good, the best certainly coming from Cyril Luckham, an absolute tour de force as Hobson, and from Derek Smith, chillingly evil as Norman. Look out for cameos from the likes of Graham Crowden, Peter Barkworth, Michael Culver, Anthony Bate and Dinsdale Landen.

Interesting but definitely an acquired taste.

The Guardians - The Complete Series (Network DVD 7953185 - Region 2 - Released 1st February 2010 - Cert 12)

BBCHD - 24th January 2010 -  9.00pm

Three episodes in and still going strong. And various pieces of the overall plot arc - Professor Jaggat and Kemp versus the supernaturals - spectacularly spring into focus by the end of this episode.

Whilst Mitchell gets unwillingly dragged into the 'sturm und drang' of the power vacuum in the 'vampire community' by the coquettish Daisy, George and Annie decide to do a bit of matchmaking with Hugh and his former girlfriend Kirsty. How well these two sub-plots work and how comfortably they sit beside each other is down to personal taste I would think. Personally, after two episodes full of jet-black story development it was good to bring in a bit of a light touch. Splendidly, George and Annie as romantic matchmakers works well and, more importantly, forms one of the comic reversals of the episode.


There is the cod-Pythonesque flashback to Bristol of 1665, complete with a Catholic priest asking for a bit more light as he condemns a hidden coven of vampires ('that's much better') to eternal damnation or nonchalantly asking about which order they should be destroyed in ('Should we start with the infants?') and checking his paperwork as vampires get their teeth smashed in. This then is later reversed in what is one of the harshest scenes in the episode where Mitchell must prove he means business to the chaotic group of vampires adrift in the city by punishing the errant Cara by similarly bashing her canines from her mouth. Oh, Mitchell, what have you become!


Mitchell is, of course, under pressure to sort the vampires out now that the system put in place by Herrick begins to fail and vampire murders start to turn up on a regular basis in A&E. Not only does this peak the interest of Lucy, the doctor that Mitchell has formed an attachment to, but it also throws light on the 'system', revealing not only the pathologist Quinn in the employ of both the police and Herrick but also the deal Herrick had with DCI Wilson who sees the vampires as a neat way to keep the crime figures down. The results of his renewed pact with Mitchell are truly shocking as they move in and murder the surviving murder victim Marcus, cover their tracks by signing reports and burning statements.

Mitchell must restore order and the episode charts his journey towards his reluctantly being crowned 'king' of the vampires, beginning with his imagining pulling the plug on victim Marcus and having his human-like relationships with George and Annie diminishing as a result and the potential of partnering up with Lucy no longer a possibility. This is both tragically and comically displayed - Mitchell's advice to George that he must take responsibility for himself now, a breaking of the bonds that hold them together, is contrasted nicely with the hilarious rant about The Real Hustle being bumped around the BBC3 schedules. A right pain if you've just come in having tried to get vampire society back on track, followed by nagging from your housemates about not doing the washing up. Marigolds ahoy!


The relationship with Lucy has a certain cynical philosophical edge to it. As Mitchell tries to cover up his intentions for Marcus with a bit of preying they engage in some witty banter about the nature of faith. Lucy remarks she's never seen the last minute appeal to God manifested in a porter before. "I suppose the bad working conditions have driven you to believe in a monotheist deity?" "That's what happens when you haven't got a strong trade union," retorts Mitchell. "I blame Thatcher," she replies. This is all put into perspective when Lucy's true identity is revealed at the end of the episode and we can pretty much surmise that all her work banter has been an act from day one.


Meanwhile George and Annie decide that the best way to help out Hugh, who has been looking for Annie and now can no longer see her after her near-death encounter with the death door, is to get him back with his former girlfriend Kirsty. Annie convinces George to become Kirsty's worst ever boyfriend in order to send her running back to Hugh. His plan to take her to a three hour German art house film followed by a kebab completely backfires and he realises that he will need to take the direct approach with Kirsty and remind her that there are always second chances. Even if his own chances with Nina look exhausted. It's a beautifully written and played sequence, reminding us of much of the humour of the first series. Russell Tovey and Lenora Crichlow have natural comic abilities and are delightful.

When this includes Mitchell and Hugh, it also explores how men tend to do practical things, such as getting drunk, to discuss their problems whilst women tend to want to explore issues emotionally, diplomatically. But humour, albeit of a darker variety, permeates the downward spiral of Mitchell. Cara's recital of Winehouse's 'Rehab' as he asks the vampires to get on the wagon is hilarious. Wilson's request for money in his conversation with Mitchell on the bridge is justified by the fact that he has "an extension to finish and not to mention the wife's bloody eBay habit".


Kirsty does get back together with Hugh but the reversal here is that Annie is once again alone and George receives a devastatingly final phone call from Nina. Tovey and Sinead Keenan absolutely break your heart as Nina and George say their final words. There's a beautiful section of incidental music that helps deliver the emotional punch of the scene too. Let's hope they aren't that final because as that scene reveals, Nina is in the clutches of Kemp and...Professor Lucy Jaggat. Eek! What a twist!

A brilliant episode. The series keeps getting better and better.

Official site

The first ever Dario Argento film I saw, at the tender age of 18, was Suspiria. It was one of those fortuitous visits to the video rental shop that brought us together and we've never been apart since. As an 18 year old, fully obsessed by the horror genre - from the silent classics of Caligari and Nosferatu, the Universal Frankenstein and Dracula cycle, the eroticism and colour of the Hammer studios output and through to the modernism of The Exorcist, Halloween et al - this was my first real taste of Italian.


Actually that's not entirely true. I had been exposed to Mario Bava's sublime Black Sunday in one of those legendary BBC2 horror double bills. Bava is an interesting place to start because he's as much an influence on Argento's vision in Suspiria as Disney, Hitchcock, The Wizard Of Oz and Jacques Tourneur. The lurid lighting scheme of Bava's seminal giallo Blood and Black Lace undoubtedly inspired the lighting scheme of Suspiria. The contrived set piece murders. the close ups of pendant lamps and red wine drained down a plug hole are all Hitchcockian visual tropes whilst the observation of Suzy and Sarah in the shadowy swimming pool is pure Cat People period Tourneur.


Suspiria tells the (fairy)tale, a sort of anti-Wizard Of Oz if you like, of Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper). An American dance student, she arrives in Freiburg to attend the Tanzakademie dance school. On her arrival she learns of the brutal murder of a fellow student, Pat Hingle, a woman she saw leaving the school the previous night shouting out a cryptic message. She realises all is not well at the school when she befriends Sarah (Stefania Casini) who warns her of the odd behaviour of the teachers and the mysterious Directress.


Sarah is chased and murdered one night and the school's blind piano player is killed by his own dog after it has previously mauled the nephew of the academy's assistant director Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett). Suzy consults with Sara's friend Dr. Frank Mandel (a rather young and gorgeous looking Udo Keir) who tells her of the occult history of the academy and of a coven of witches led by the sinister Helena Markos. Suzy returns to the school and follows a map of footsteps drawn by Sarah and, remembering the clue in the cryptic message of the murdered Pat, discovers the teachers at the academy attempting to cast a spell on Suzy in order to kill her.


Argento takes his cue from Thomas De Quincey's sequel to Confessions Of An Opium Eater. In the essay Suspiria de Profundis, spawned from De Quincey's own nightmares as an opium addict, he tells a tale of a Roman goddess who communes with the dark powers of the Three Sorrows (the Mothers of Tears, Sighs and Darkness), a strange story that resembles the hallucinatory and dream-like atmosphere of Argento's film. The highly Romantic and gothic elements of the film, with dark forests, haunted schools and murderous supernatural forces crash up against the real world images of airport arrival lounges, taxi cabs, telephones and convention centres.


The film's production design blends in several European art forms, from German Expressionism and Art Nouveau to the illustrations of M C Esher whilst its searing primary colour schemes of red, blue, green and yellow offer a lush Technicolour splendour to underline the claustrophobic hyper-reality of the Tanzakademie's castle like interior. Illogical space and the sense that we, Suzy and Sarah are entering an endless labyrinth with no clear escape both mirror the Escher like designs in Madame Blanc's office, in Olga's apartment, in the secret tunnel leading to the coven's hideout and the bizarre geometric designs of the apartment block lobby. The school itself is a warren of luridly coloured tunnels and corridors, a metaphorical haunted house in which the strong and pure are pursued by the projected will of the evil Helena Markos and through which Argento's camera silently prowls.


The intertextualities don't stop there. Suspiria locates itself within a dance school, primarily attended by young women (the young men in the film seem codified as beautiful, sylph-like effetes with Mark, played by the Nureyev like Miguel Bose, directly subjugated by Miss Tanner) and the school setting suggests this location of female solidarity and power as a force to counter patriarchal dominance. Ironically, Alida Valli, playing the stoic and brusque dance instructor Miss Tanner, who also turns out to be a witch, was the star of many Hollywood schoolgirl comedies of the 1940s,


The patriarchal dominance of reality is symbolised by Suzy's conversation with Frank, and through extension with his colleague Professor Milius, which takes place in a concrete concourse outside a convention centre beneath some rather phallic looking skyscrapers. The two men put all the female magic and sorcery down to some form of mental illness ("bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors but broken minds"). The film opens out further as a direct challenge to masculine anxieties about female power in one sequence, as Suzy witnesses the witches Sabbath, where Miss Tanner and Madame Blanc subvert the Christian rituals of the Eucharist. As an anti-fairy tale it also positions Suzy and the ancient witch Helena Markos as the maiden/hag duality, the Snow White to the Evil Queen. The film's sets also seem to dwarf the actors suggesting children lost in a nightmarish adult sized world and images of flowers and blossoms litter the decor, from Olga's apartment with its explosion of black and white blooms to the highly important irises at the centre of the mystery. There's a febrile, sickly quality to them and the colour schemes they inhabit.


On top of this layer of European hyper-Gothic is a wild carousel of violence, bizarrely staged murder sequences and a nerve shredding acid rock soundtrack complete with music box like melodies, thudding drums, screeches, whispers and screams. It's a highly stylised and baroque film with performances that are certainly variable. Jessica Harper manages to keep the film from tipping over into outright camp, giving a very naturalistic performance that's the personification of innocence amidst all the hyperbole around her and acting as a counter to the Teutonic knowingness of Alida Valli's stormtrooping dance teacher and the powder blue glittering jewel of Joan Bennett's performance as Madame Blanc. It is somewhat hampered by that bug-bear of international horror films - bad dubbing, but it's an eyepopping, gory, often disturbing experience, suffused with a tangible unease generated by the culmination of the visual and aural elements, that once seen and heard is never forgotten.


Nouveaux Pictures bring us a newly restored transfer that's probably the best version of Suspiria we're likely to see on the Blu Ray format. Plenty of detail, especially in the set designs, becomes more evident here and the colour palette seems to be spot on, removing the greenish quality of the Anchor Bay release of some years hence. But it's not quite right. The whites have been boosted to a level which leads to a bleached out look in some frames and the picture often looks soft and overly grainy too. Despite these quibbles the film looks ravishing and benefits from the HD transfer. Better still is the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack which propels the insane music from Italian group Goblin, the thunderstorms and the rattling breath of Helena Markos around your living room at high velocity. A shame there's no original Italian dub available here, though.


Special Features:

• Commentary - The fabulous pairing of Argento expert Alan Jones and cult film expert Kim Newman is perfect for this film and they make for an entertaining, fact filled and informative listen. 
• Fear at 400 Degrees: The Cine-Excess of Suspiria - A well made documentary that features contributions from Goblin musician Claudio Simonetti, Norman J Warren, Kim Newman and film scholar and theorist Dr. Patricia McCormack. 
• Suspiria Perspectives - All the interview footage of Simonetti, Warren and McCormack in its entirety, including some sections already featured from Fear at 400 Degrees.
• Welcome to Cine-Excess - Chief executive Xavier Mendik takes us through what the company will release next. The major gripe is that they label Suspiria as 'trash' along with all the other rather B grade films they have lined up. 

Suspiria (Nouveaux Pictures  - Region B locked - Cert 18 - NPB1056 - Released 18th January 2010)

We haven't had a bit of classic Who for some time and now the hoo-ha has started to die down from the conclusion of the RTD era I think it's time we got back to the original series whilst we wait for Matt Smith to grace our screens. The last review was Castrovalva so here we go with Four To Doomsday.

January 1982

"I wouldn't dream of interfering with your monopticons!"

After the sophisticated understatement of Castrovalva, Four To Doomsday comes as a bit of shock, really. It's a very confused and confusing production and is rather shown up by its predecessor in the season. Overall, its a frustrating 'throw enough ideas at the wall and see what works' kind of story that one minute you're left feeling utterly underwhelmed by it and the next excited when something interesting actually happens.


Most of all, it feels like a throwback to the Hartnell days and with Terence Dudley scripting it suddenly dawns on you that perhaps he still thinks that this series is the same one he knew from the 1960s and that taking this approach will do. Arguably, this is the first serious mis-step by Nathan-Turner since Meglos and that was directed by...Terence Dudley. JNT: Note to self, avoid using Mr. Dudley.

It resembles The Ark in its peculiarly anachronistic feel despite the talk of microchips and research labs. The plot is bonkers: a big alien frog is heading for Earth aboard a huge ship. On board he has a population of native Australians, South Americans, Chinese and a Greek philosopher and they're androids. The frog plans to shrink the population of Earth and use the planet to make a load of silicon chips. His ultimate plan is to go back in time and meet God. And it's about the relative merits of freedom under tyranny or something...the surveillance society...and stuff and has lots of traditional dancing bits too.


And talking of dancing, most of the story seems to be padded out with various displays of traditional ethnic performance. It's almost like a variety show has turned up in the wrong studio and the performers have wandered into the set. I kept expecting to see Bruce Forsyth appear, muttering 'Good game, good game!'

You do kind of wonder who that blonde haired, young chap is that's wandered into the story. He seems to have been offered the part of the Doctor and spends quite a bit of time actually thinking someone's made a terrible mistake. It's plain that Davison really hadn't figured out what he was going to do with this. Unlike the previous incumbents in the role, who all more or less arrived and turned up the 'eccentric' oscillator switch to 100% and then spent the next three to seven years reducing and refining its effects to achieve their desired performance, Davison does the opposite. He switches off the eccentricity and the effect is an occasionally spiky blandness and an insecurity about how to deliver certain lines. Yet, by the end of Castrovalva he seemed to have figured it out. Pity then that Doomsday was actually recorded before that story and let loose on an audience before he really understood what he was doing.


Not only is Davison not quite hitting his mark but there's a bit of a struggle going on between the three actors playing the companions as to just who the heck they are. Tegan begins her two and half seasons worth of moaning here and slaps the TARDIS console around quite a bit, Adric does a complete volte face and becomes a naive little fascist and doesn't even notice how ridiculous he is and Nyssa goes ga-ga for androids. All sterotypical, broad brush strokes that tend to get repeated throughout this and other seasons when the script-writing gets a bit woolly and they're stuck trying to come up for stuff for three companions. To keep one companion, Mr Producer, may be regarded as fortunate; to keep three seems like over-indulgence.

Despite its mediocrity, there are some things to enjoy. Stratford Johns is rather delicious as the evil frog-god Monarch and the bobbly green make up looks good even today and Paul Shelley as henchman Persuasion displays some sinister comic timing. The set design by Tony Burrough is actually the main attraction here and is a visual treat but it seems so wasted on a rather standard story like this. The biggest disappointment is John Black's direction. He triumphed with The Keeper Of Traken but here he makes little effort to make a dull script better, engage the audience and to curb some of the pointless shouting matches between the regular characters. The effects are so-so, with the monopticons a minor triumph whilst the space-walk sequence involving Davison and a cricket ball, setting off those 'bad science in Doctor Who' alarms at full blast, is a little bit of a CSO nightmare as well.

But in the end this is full of unrealised ideas, trendy for the day science and has a final trouncing of Monarch that's such an underwhelming non-event you wondered just why they bothered. No wonder Nyssa passes out at the end...it must be exhausting to be so bland for nearly 90 minutes.

DVD Special Features

• Commentary - With Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, John Black and Matthew Waterhouse. As per usual with Fielding, she is none too complimentary about the story or the show and Waterhouse can very often come across as irritating. Davision demonstrates what a good 'company' man he must have been having to deal with these two whilst making the show.
• Studio Recording - Enjoyable look behind the scenes with raw studio footage from Davison's first day in the studio and showing how pressurised it was making the show. You can find out how they moved their monopticons too.
  
• Saturday Night At The Mill - Early bit of PR from Peter Davison on the weekend variant of Pebble Mill chat show. Also involves making milk shakes. Yes, you read that.
• Theme Music Remix - It's 5.1 remix time again. 
• Photo Gallery - Maintains the high standard of previous DVDs if you're into collections of publicity stills, design reference material and Stratford Johns looking like a frog. 
• Info text, Radio Times Listings, Coming Soon trailer for The War Machines.

Four To Doomsday (BBCDVD2431 - Region 2 DVD - Cert PG - Released 15th September 2008)

This week The Guardian TV Club review of Troy Kennedy Martin's seminal drama Edge Of Darkness (the television version not the Mel 'sugartits' Gibson film about to be unleashed upon on us) added further insult to the injury of their previous 'Top 50 Dramas Of All Time' article in which the series had already been dismissed as 'the hobby horse of fanatics'.

Naturally, this made a lot of ordinarily fluffy and mild mannered people rather cross. Including me. After venting my spleen on Twitter, the bat signal went up from the lovely Iain Hepburn, award winning digital journalist, and one of the purveyors of The Thumbcast blog. Give us a quote, he said.

Well, 1,630 words later, I did. And The Thumbcast posted the whole lot. A pleasure working with you, gentlemen. So, if you enjoy a decent bit of telly and felt the poncy TV crits got it absurdly wrong or The Guardian's reviewer John Crace didn't have a clue, then pop over and have a read. You might just return to your fluffy and mild mannered state but I couldn't guarantee it. I'm feeling better already...now where's Mark Lawson? I've got a bone to pick with him.

The origins of Danger Man lie in a series of fortuitous connections between Australian producer Ralph Smart, legendary ATV executive Lew Grade, writers Ian Stuart Black and Brian Clemens, Bond novelist Ian Fleming and the actor they cast in the lead role of John Drake, Patrick McGoohan. Regarded as one of the best pre-Bond spy series made for British television, it eventually made a star out of McGoohan and paved the way for the glossy secret agent and fantasy thrillers that would be ITC's (and ATV's) bread and butter during the decade that followed Danger Man's original transmission in 1960/61.


Grade had already had much success on the fledgling ITV network with costumed adventures series such as The Adventures Of Robin Hood and was determined to crack the lucrative American market with a drama that better reflected the contemporary mores of the 1960s. With Danger Man, Grade once again emphasised the high quality of productions coming out of ITC's studios based at MGM Borehamwood with all 39 half-hour episodes of the first series shot on 35mm and featuring some extensive second-unit filming undertaken in Europe.

In 1960, to make the move from the imagined past of Robin Hood, Sir Lancelot, Ivanhoe et al, Grade commissioned Ralph Smart, who had produced, directed and written on Robin Hood and The Invisible Man for ITC, to come up with a new series. Smart had already had a number of meetings with Bond creator Ian Fleming (seven of the Bond books had been published by 1959) with a view to bringing Bond to television but Fleming had already sold the rights to Eon.


Instead they came up with a pitch for a series called Lone Wolf, an espionage thriller with a cool, no nonsense central character sorting out the dirty jobs other intelligence agencies wouldn't touch. With writer Ian Stuart Black's input the original pitch made the character of John Drake an American (probably with a view to selling the series to the US market) working for NATO. Grade gave the nod to a pilot co-written with Brian Clemens and Smart cast McGoohan in the role of Drake after seeing him in a Play Of The Week television production, The Big Knife (1958). McGoohan's star was in the ascendancy after being nominated as best actor of the year for his performance in Ibsen's Brand (BBC 1959) and, as he started filming on Danger Man, he picked up an award for his role in The Greatest Man in the World a 1959 segment of ITV's Armchair Theatre. 

McGoohan himself demanded changes to the character of Drake before he would commit to the series. He was not happy with the original pilot's depiction of the spy as a man of violence and a womaniser. Gradually, as the series progressed McGoohan molded Drake into a man who treated women with reasonable respect and only resorted to fisticuffs where necessary.


The first series of 30 minute episodes tend to stick to a standard formula: a pre-credit sequence depicting the threat or problem and then, after the iconic title sequence, Drake on a mission to resolve that situation. He might have to assassinate someone, smuggle out defectors, aid democracy in foreign countries or solve murders that have some bearing on both NATO or US foreign policy. Politically the series reflects the Cold War threat as well as both the dismantling of Empire and the antagonisms between the States and Latin American nations. The global stage is brought to life in the now highly recognisable ITC house style of well designed studio sets, second unit footage, stock footage, travelling mattes and back projections. The desire to depict these foreign locations in the series reflects the aspirations of the 'jet set' generation of late 1950s as well as an attempt, commercially, to market the series with global appeal.


The scripts are crisp, snappy, often somewhat economic, and the series is filmed in a black and white noirish style that's polished and slick. Scripts came from a mix of writers, with Smart writing a great deal of the series himself but also including Jack Whittingham (later embroiled in Kevin McClory's ongoing Thunderball production saga), the aforementioned Clemens and Stuart Black and American scripter Jo Eisinger.

Stylistically the first series embraces both the post-war 1950s cultural milieu, evoking comparisons with The Third Man (both the film and the television series), Carve Her Name With Pride and the spy fiction of Desmond Cory, Eric Ambler and Ian Fleming and looks ahead to the explosion of 'pop' culture in the 1960s. The series was also being transmitted at the tail end of an intelligence scandal in Britain, involving the ‘Cambridge Spy Ring’ of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. The public's appetite for spies and espionage was certainly heightened by their sensational exposure as Soviet spies. The first series also, as James Chapman wrote in Saints And Avengers, "belongs to the lineage of the professional secret agent thriller" as opposed to the amateur investigations of say Richard Hannay or Bulldog Drummond, even though morally the character is closer in tone to them than he is compared to James Bond.


The series features a consistently good performance from McGoohan as Drake who comes across as somewhat aloof, cynical and often morally at odds with his masters in NATO and the US but has a principled and moral work ethic regarding his cases. This complexity was the major appeal of the character to the audiences of the 1960s and it still fascinates today. It's also chock full of many of the highly recognisable British character actors of that generation and was directed by well respected names in the industry, including Peter Graham Scott, Clive Donner and Seth Holt. McGoohan also directed an episode, The Vacation. You'll also have fun spotting all the location filming done in Portmeirion (mostly for View From The Villa but with some footage featured in at least another three episodes) years before The Prisoner was a twinkle in McGoohan's eye.


Standout episodes include Position Of Trust, with wonderful performances from pre-Bond Lois Maxwell and Donald Pleasance; An Affair Of State featuring Patrick Wymark and John Le Mesurier; look out for the likes of Patrick Troughton and Robert Shaw in Bury The Dead and in other episodes the likes of Roger Delgado, Warren Mitchell, Honor Blackman and Barbara Shelley too. Throw in Edwin Astley's blistering jazz-tinged score for good measure and you can understand why Danger Man is held in such esteem as a good example of ITC's output before the the later series itself became part of the production cycle of slightly campier spy fodder such as The Saint and The Champions with only Man In A Suitcase latterly reflecting the more serious tone of this first series. McGoohan went on to make The Prisoner, perhaps the most atypical fantasy espionage series of them all.

Special features:
• Commemorative booklet on the making of the series by Archive Television historian Andrew Pixley
• Extensive image galleries, including many unseen stills
• Mute trailers

Danger Man - The Complete First Series (Network DVD 7953139 - Region 2 - Released 25th January 2010 - Cert 12)

BBCHD - 17th January 2010 -  9.00pm

"Good news for religion, mind. Especially Christianity. As soon as they know about vampires, then they'd know about werewolves, they'd know about ghosts. They'd be next. And once humanity had finished with us, it would turn on itself. First the other religions, massively in a minority now. Then the homosexuals, the disabled..."

Toby Whithouse has had the survey done (last week's episode) and has now got the builders in and is making huge alterations to the fabric of the series. Walls are being knocked through. Those who tune into Being Human for the black comedy must have thought they'd wandered into the wrong show this week. No one was laughing. Well, apart from Wogan.


Whithouse really packs in the developing subplots this week and you could be forgiven if you needed to watch it at least a dozen times on iPlayer to digest it all. Firstly, there's the pre-titles flashback to Vienna in 1999, on the eve of the millennium, where Carl (Steve Shepherd - very nice to see him back on telly) has strapped Mitchell to a chair and is helping him get on the wagon as a vampire. It's a brief scene but it establishes the honour amongst those vampires who do want to quit feeding, the honour (or not) amongst all supernaturals and the Carl/Dan relationship that taps into LGBT subtexts in horror fiction currently being hijacked by the female teen market for the Twilight saga where girls just simply want to get close to their gay brethren. Here, it's more a case of This 'Transylvanian' Life and is far more affecting as an analogy to destructive patterns in same sex relationships, the spectre of European immigration and casual homophobia (Lucy's 'mince of Darkness' and the police officer's 'full moon' jokes are exactly the kind of things I know health professionals would say).


The Carl and Dan story neatly reflects the continuing post-Herrick state of vampire affairs. Last week Ivan warned the residents of Windsor Terrace that they were about to slide into chaos. And here it is. Dan is killed by Carl's blood lust and now there is no one to cover up the 'murder', fix the paper work and disappear the evidence. The systems Herrick set up are breaking down and pathologists and coroners friendly to the cause are no longer willing to do the dirty work. Mitchell and a reluctant George have to shelter Carl and then get Ivan's help to get him out of the country. Naturally this cloak and dagger stuff reminds the two men that their desire to be as 'normal' as possible within their suburban enclave is constantly thwarted by the very nature of their beastliness.


And yet, that desperate escape for Carl, feigning his own suicide and ending up on a mortuary slab next to the body of his lover Dan is as much a painful reminder of the humanity they were both clutching onto. Carl, naked, sobs over his lover's corpse. A very powerful image indeed, firing off all sorts of associations in my mind of the AIDS correlation that's been unhelpfully heaped upon most fictional cocksucker bloodsuckers since Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire was turned into a film by Neil Jordan. Steve Shepherd is beautifully restrained in his role as Carl, drifting through the episode with supreme dignity and Carl's loss is palpable and his ostracising from the rest of polite vampire society redolent of all kinds of cultural apartheids.


Talking of the human factor, our other 'housemates' - housemates being the analogy of choice here because the pastel pink Corner House is now being listened in on by religious zealot Kemp and his technical lackey just as avidly as many in the nation are now eavesdropping on Stephanie Beacham and Ivana Trump in CBB -  are also undergoing something of a spiritual breakdown. Mitchell offering to shelter Carl is the last straw for Nina. When she realises that he is, in effect, helping a murderer to flee the country she snaps. She leaves George and offers Mitchell her thoughts on her way out of the door, "Your humanity...this thing you're? Are you protecting it, are you looking for it? Do you even know? Take it me from me, it's long gone". Sinead Keenan is utterly heartbreaking in that brief moment and I just love her definition of her love for George as "practicising my signature with his second name kind of love". Brilliant writing and performing and a great opportunity to question the supernaturals sense of morality.

Mitchell and Lucy's relationship begins to grow. First a coffee on a bench in the hospital gardens (a very poignant moment is when Mitchell's hand strokes the brass dedication plaque on it. Lauren Drake's name momentarily signifies in the middle of a conversation about vampires and West Wing box sets) and then Lucy's bold invitation for 'a drink drink' perhaps suggests that Mitchell thinks he's found someone he might be able to confide in out there in the human world, someone to help him cover up those vampire tracks because he also has the problem of the coroner on his hands and it looks as if he's going to have to take some control over his vampire kin.

Elsewhere, the set up with Annie in the pub has likewise gone on a surreal, mind bending journey. Saul and Annie are literally aggravating the hell out of Hugh and George with their cutesy flirting. But Saul's story is an even stranger one than we thought. The forces of darkness, those oft mentioned men with sticks and rope, have a direct line to Saul. And its name is Sir Terry Wogan. Wogan entreats Saul via his game show Perfect Recall (meta-textual in-jokes ahoy as Saul later recalls to Annie about his car accident) to woo Annie. After the local papers reinforce his delusion, this then later becomes a spectator sport as Saul gets Annie into his flat and is then egged on by a filthy minded newsreader. Annie is, forgive the pun, spooked and promptly retreats to her house. But darker forces are at work. The ghost in the machine encourages Saul to drink and drive, he repeats his RTA with unfortunate consequences and we learn that this is in fact all being engineered by the forces behind death's door who are rather annoyed at Annie's refusal to cross over.


This results in one of the most nerve shredding scenes that the show has ever done as Saul attempts to drag Annie through death's door and down the corridor to the men with sticks and rope. Again, Annie's attempt to get out into the world has backfired and she has ended up a victim of her own humanity and desire for love. But Saul surprises us as he still holds onto Sir Terry's idea that he is 'spiritual and vulnerable' and he lets Annie go and crosses over without her. He does the honourable thing. Let's face it, everyone thinks they're doing that in this episode. And Annie's brush with death is both a positive and a negative. Hugh the landlord has been holding a torch for her and in his concern for her after Saul attempts to rape her she realises that the right man has been standing next to her all along. But as he becomes visible to her "the girl who can't eat or drink", as she finally sees him for what he is, the effect of almost crossing over renders her invisible to him. As she gets the handle on 'being human' those supernatural forces take it all away again.


This is a breathtakingly good episode because it packs so many emotional punches and advances multiple subplots with dexterity in scripting and directing. Colin Teague continues to give the show a much more confident visual style with his wide angle shots and exquisite framing. The cast are firing on all cylinders - not one duff performance - and the characters at Windsor Terrace and the New Found Out all call out for your compassion and understanding. Even an off-screen Daisy is reported to have found some feelings again, according to Ivan. And the seeds are sown for what seems to be the unthinkable. Kemp and his henchman look as if they have Nina in their clutches to further their experiments...and don't forget Ivan's warning too,  'Today it's Carl, tomorrow it's someone else. It's like I said, you're sliding into chaos and there's no safety net."

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