ITC was responsible for producing most of the hour-long adventure/spy series which ran on British television throughout the sixties and early seventies: programmes like "Danger Man" "The Saint" and "The Prisoner" are still fondly remembered as being first class, easy to digest entertainment. They sold all over the world making ITC and Lew Grade lots of bucks.
Most of the shows were filmed in colour, even though they were screen- ed in this country in b/w, but with a view to eventually earning colour repeat fees on the independent channels.
Monty Berman produced many of these later series, such as "The Champions" "Department S" and "Randell and Hopkirk, deceased", but before all of these. and close on the heels of "Danger Man" came John Creasey's "The Baron".
The scripts for the shows came from the usual ITC stable of writers at that time: Terry Nation, Dennis Spooner and Philip Broadley.
The series ran for 30 episodes, but did not go to a second season, perhaps being eclipsed by "Man in a suitcase" and "The Prisoner".
Steve Forrest John Mannering 'The Baron' Sue Lloyd Cordelia Winfield Colin Gordon John Alexander Templeton-Green Paul Ferris (II) David Marlowe Directed by Robert Tronson Writing credits Terry Nation Dennis Spooner
First shown on ITV, December 17th 1966 Cast: John Mannering - Steve Forrest: Cordelia - Sue Lloyd' Joyce Grant - Gillian Lewis; Innkeeper - Freddie Jones.
Mannering and Cordelia visit a seaside village to the value the antiques of a certain Carl Grant. On arriving they discover that Grant has died, and his daughter is being terrorized by an unseen prowler.
Mannering pieces together the elements of the rather unspectacular mystery which ends in a spectacular fight in a blazing mansion.
This print has paler colour than the U.FO. episodes reviewed, with rather a lot of neg sparkle and some particularly bad neg-scratching over a few feet in one scene. Excellent sound.
Recommended for connoisseurs of British TV. series of the sixties.
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Distributed by: Tecnofilm |
The above review was printed in Super
Eight Film Review issue 12
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This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002
