Tag: entertainment

The Persuaders! – Classic Action/Adventure TV

In my earlier article, The Invaders – Classic Sci-fi TV, I made the comment that its opening title sequence was unarguably the most atmospheric for any TV show ever made. The way it ominously leads you into the premise of the show and the protagonist’s situation is, to my mind, quite simply perfect. The eerie music, the heavy, monotonous tones of the narrator bringing you up to speed with how the nightmare began for architect David Vincent is a touch of genius and has never been bettered. However, there is another show with an opening title sequence that works in much the same way and, in my opinion, is just as evocative. I’m talking, of course, about The Persuaders! which, with its blend of glamour, action and humour, really was and still is, a thoroughly watchable romp.

Again, the opening titles, this time accompanied by John Barry’s superb theme tune (Did this man write some great music or what?), are pure class and do a great job of informing us what the show is about. Using a split-screen layout they reveal the backgrounds of the two main characters of the show played by Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. Side-by-side, a pair of folders, one red and one blue, labelled Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair narrates their lives via photographs and old film of the two men from childhood through to their current status as international playboys. Live footage and torn newspaper clippings offer glimpses into their lifestyles and explain, in part, their various successes and then the sequence culminates in showing the two men enjoying a life of glitz and glamour in exotic locations surrounded by beautiful women, fast cars, diamonds and Champagne.

The premise of the show is straightforward and fairly typical of television at the time which for the best part of a decade had been churning out one action adventure series after another. Two men from very different backgrounds are brought together by a retired judge and persuaded to team up and solve cases which the courts cannot. Danny Wilde (Curtis) hails from the slums of New York City, a streetwise urchin made good. He escaped a tough neighbourhood and a probable life of crime by enlisting in the U.S Navy and later became a millionaire several times over via Wall Street and the oil business. Brett Sinclair (Moore) was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. An English aristocrat – the 15th Earl of Marnock to be precise – he attended Harrow and Oxford before serving as an officer in a Guards Brigade, then became a Grand Prix racer and race horse owner. The two characters could not have come from different backgrounds and much of the humour of the show plays on this fact as well as the general differences between British and American customs. The two actors’ playful banter and adolescent attempts at oneupmanship are what help make this show so great.

Laurence Naismith plays Judge Fulton, the man who brings this mismatched pair together. Despite being retired from the Bar, he is determined to continue his personal crusade for justice but needs someone to do his legwork for him. So, he arranges for the two men to meet on the French Riviera and coerces them into helping him. Having studied them and deeming them ideal for his purposes, he presents them with an offer they can’t refuse – to be of use to society and to do good for mankind rather than to waste away their lives in Martini hazes and all night parties. Naturally they elect to help him (particularly when they learn a beautiful woman is involved) and voila, a sparkling new crime fighting duo is born!

Each episode is an adventure in itself, sometimes set in a glamorous European locale but more often based out of Sinclair’s London home (just around the corner from St. James’s Park tube, if you’re interested). By today’s standards, the stories are rather simplistic but they always look terrific and are great fun to watch. The show also has certain signatures. There are always pretty women, there are always punch-ups and there is always humour even when the heroes are at gunpoint – fortunately both actors had wonderful comic timing. And then, there are the cars they drove – a handsome Aston Martin DBS for Sinclair and a gorgeous Ferrari Dino 246 GT for Wilde. A testament to the cachet the show was expected to carry was that both cars were given to the show’s producers courtesy of the manufacturers. I mean, come on, what’s not to like. This show had it all, it had to be a success. Right?

The series was released in the autumn of 1971 and was a big hit pretty much everywhere except the US, which was a vital market for the show’s producers. American audiences however, were not persuaded to switch over from Mission: Impossible, which aired on an opposing channel on Saturday nights and because of this, the ABC network pulled the plug even before all 24 episodes were shown. This resulted in the show not being commissioned for a second season.

Despite some speculation about the working relationship between Moore and Curtis, you cannot help but surmise that they had an absolute blast making this series. Both men appear to be in their element throughout and for me, their on-set chemistry was simply wonderful. Roger Moore was directly involved in the production of the series and already had a good relationship with Robert S. Baker and Lew Grade, having achieved great success in another ITC production, The Saint. Apparently, the three of them sealed the deal of this new series with a simple handshake and no contracts were signed. Curtis was actually Moore’s third choice for the role of Danny Wilde after Rock Hudson and Glenn Ford passed on the offer – luckily for us. At the time, The Persuaders! was the most expensive British TV show produced with each episode costing on average £100,000 (that’s almost £2,000,000 in today’s money) but with the locations and the general high quality of filming, it’s no surprise as few television shows offer quite the spectacle of The Persuaders!

Both stars were of similar age during filming although, where Curtis had enjoyed great success in Hollywood throughout the 1950s and ’60s his star was waning. His work would become less significant and he appeared often as a special guest star on series and movies made for TV but Moore’s stardom was about to go supernova with his donning of James Bond’s tuxedo in 1973. Moore has often said that prior to the filming of Live and Let Die, the Bond producers asked him to cut his hair and to lose some weight and seeing how trim he appears in his first Bond outing compared to his appearance in The Persuaders!, it’s obvious he succumbed to their request. He reportedly gained 20lbs over the course of filming The Persuaders! and he attributes this to the use of real Champagne during filming. And I for one, quite believe it.

So, if you’ve never caught this show, I recommend you give it a try. To witness these two great charismatic stars having an absolute hoot together is a wonderful thing to behold and one that we may never see again. Yes, I’m aware of the rumours of a movie remake, but in all honesty, will a Starsky and Hutch style remake ever live up to the twenty four classic hour-long episodes? I think not.

 

Book Review: Ghostwriter – Lissa Bryan

*Author Lissa Bryan will be answering questions on October 11, and there will be a giveaway of Ghostwriter for a random commenter. Click the sidebar link on the 11th to take part.*

A good book is about getting caught up in a story and forsaking reality for a few precious moments. With its combination of intrigue, romance and a truly idyllic setting Ghostwriter ticks all the boxes. My first piece of advice would be to avoid reading the blurb and delve right in, without expectations or knowledge of the plot. From the outset Bryan captures the imagination and you’ll quickly find that all awareness of the real world has gone.

Ghostwriter is the story of a work-weary English Graduate, keen to make her mark in the world of journalism. Lumbered with the dull task of ghostwriting a biography for an idiotic politician with minimal information or inspiration, Sara is running out of ideas and funds. Luck, or fate, offers her the chance to live on a quiet island in the cottage of her literary hero. Snapping up the chance she quickly becomes consumed with the history of the cottage and the traumatic circumstances of its owner’s death. She finds herself transported to events in WWI with a troubled ambulance driver as her companion and a deep desire to help heal both of them of their romantic scarring.

Sara is like any graduate and the problems she faces at the start are universal. Perhaps it is this harsh reality that really grounds the reader and helps them follow Sara unquestioningly through her journey of discovery. Any strong sceptics out there might not enjoy this novel for what it is: an escape into the world of writing and romance. It is not realistic, but it doesn’t have to be and wouldn’t work if it was. However, that doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to relate to it. Anyone who came across an unknown novel at a young age and swiftly fell in love with that author and everything they wrote will be able to appreciate Ghostwriter and get lost amongst its pages, just like Sara did.

Film Review: The Night That Panicked America

The recent spectacle of a meteor shower tracing fiery trails across many parts of the UK’s night skies brought to my mind another group of meteors crashing into Earth in that wonderful H.G.Wells story, ‘The War of The Worlds’. This in turn induced me to seek out and listen to the original radio broadcast from 1938 (isn’t the Internet an amazing resource?), when Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air created history with their dramatisation of the story.

Now, I’m sure the majority of us have seen either the 2005 Spielberg blockbuster starring Tom Cruise or the much cooler (in my opinion) 1953 movie featuring Gene Barry. Of course, it goes without saying that neither film compares to Herbert George’s 1898 novel – for me, one of the most significant science fiction stories ever written – however, the earlier film benefits from being simpler and less overblown but no less impressive visually. It also tapped into that whole ‘red (communist) scare’ thing that was gripping America at the time of its release.

To really allow the genius of Wells’ writing to stir up your imagination though, turn off the TV, switch off your phone and lay back in a darkened room and listen to the radio broadcast that went out on CBS on the eve of Halloween almost seventy five years ago. It was such a spellbinding play that of the approximate six million who tuned in to the broadcast, over a million believed it to be a true Martian invasion and many of them actually fled from their homes in hysterical abandonment. And this brings me rather neatly to the film I’m recommending this time round – The Night That Panicked America.

Made in 1975 for the ABC Television Network this TV movie, starring Vic Morrow, Tom Bosley and Paul Shenar, recounts in docudrama style the broadcast from the point of view of Orson Welles (Shenar) and his Mercury Theatre associates as well as from several fictional groups of listeners from varying locations and social classes who all believed the broadcast to be a real Martian invasion.

The depiction of the broadcast itself makes this film worth watching just to see how radio professionals put together a show – actors in front of mics reading lines from pages of script while foley artists use the tools of their trade (and often some clever improvisation) to create the sounds to bring the story alive. To witness each and every one of them coming in right on cue is a pure joy. And once the broadcast is under way, then we get to see the poor, misguided listeners, the believers, those who had missed the broadcast’s opening line announcing the evening’s dramatisation of a novel. If they had heard this, they would have realised it was not real news bulletins they were listening to. There’s no doubt that the ‘on-the-spot’ reporting style of the radio play helped convince many that an invasion was actually happening and together with fact that in 1938, Americans were living in an atmosphere of tension and anxiety as Adolf Hitler steered the world towards its second global conflict, the play’s frightening premise simply fuelled the paranoia that was already running high in the country’s stream of consciousness. Indeed, some listeners thought the invaders were the Germans on a vanguard attack.

While this TV movie may exaggerate some of the panic (for entertainment’s sake, you understand), it’s not difficult to imagine just how wildly people might have reacted on that night. Remember, this was a time when news wasn’t as instant as it is today and with the radio being the only source of finding out what was going on in the wider world, hearing (never mind seeing) was believing. So, when we see a pair of farmers arm themselves with shotguns and head out into the surrounding countryside in search of the invaders and a wealthy household flee their dinner party with the family silver we can pretty much understand their actions even though we know they’re mistaken.

Another note of consequence – the Mercury Theatre on the Air was an unsponsored show at the time, and therefore there were no advertisement breaks during the play. The audience would have heard an uninterrupted report of a Martian invasion in real time with no clue that they were listening to a work of fiction. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the CBS studio started receiving calls from concerned listeners but the switchboard operators simply couldn’t believe that people thought that what they were hearing was real.

In the days following the broadcast, CBS was on the receiving end of a fair amount of flack over the incident with several newspapers and public figures describing the play’s ‘news-bulletin format’ as cruelly deceptive. The network was sued by many listeners claiming ‘mental anguish’ and ‘personal injury’ but all suits were dismissed save for one – a man from Massachusetts claimed for a pair of shoes he had bought to escape the Martians. Orson Welles apparently insisted the man be paid.

All in all then, this is an interesting little film made all the more remarkable for being a true story. The fact that the story revolves around one of the greatest sci-fi tales ever written, makes it, while not quite a classic, most definitely worth watching.