Danger Man

A low key, but absorbing, TV series of half-hour episodes, it is the first of three putatively related series, the latter two being (a) Secret Agent Man (hour long episodes), and (c) The Prisoner.

In the series, our protagonist John Drake (played by Patrick McGoohan) is an English spy - elegant, skilled, sophisticated, and never at a loss. He breezes through his weekly problem, and we enjoy every second of the short ride!

In my opinion, the series was the undisputed master of its era, and I loved its whimsy, its thoughtfulness, and good plot lines, simply and starkly delivered. The later Harry Palmer movies (with Michael Caine - for example, The Ipcress File) was reminiscent of this same style - austere story line, strongly built around its main character, employing few cinematic effects, yet full of impact.

It has been years since I have seen this series, but it it is still one I remember very fondly.

I think the "Danger Man" series I remember, with its distinctive racy theme tune, was the later hour-long remake series from 1964 onwards, which would fit in with my own youthful time-line I suppose. Hunting down the show on the web I came across the first episode from 1960 entitled "The View From The Villa", which I was interested to see was co-written by the great Brian Clemens of future "The Avengers" fame.

This episode contained a neat little mystery taking in a murder, the city of Rome, and an enigmatic femme fatale which Patrick McGoohan's John Drake solves with his eye for a painting, all in a brisk 25 minute time-frame. The show, unlike its successor, is pre-Bond so there are no gadgets and there's also an icy detachment from the glamorous and flirtatious ladies he encounters which 007 would never countenance.

No, Drake is there simply to get the job done, which he does with steely aplomb, dispensing what might have been an early catchphrase "Obliged" as he does so. He's handy with his dukes too, but again not in a flashy or contrived way.

McGoohan strolls through the part with laconic ease and as well as elements of the early Bond, you can also see the genesis of Roger Moore's Simon Templar character here, the latter of course with added humour, suavity and raised eyebrow.

I'll certainly make an effort to try to watch more of this entertaining series, confident it will retain the standard of this opening programme.

In the "View from the Villa" agent John Drake pulls up in what looks like an Aston Martin DB4 or DB5, thus beating Sean Connery to the punch by several years. At least on the screen. I think it also appears in a few other episodes, but I am not certain.

I have spent the last few years slowly catching up on this superb series via net flicks. As other reviewers have noted already the plots were nearly always excellent. The understatement and laconic delivery of Mr. McGoohan a foretelling of others who would try the same style and mostly fail, except for the wonderful Le Carre adaptions, and Mr. Caine's superb Ipcress File. The satire of Establishment figures was often very droll.

In the current editions I am getting from Netflicks the music track is provided by a powerful jazz orchestra. What happened to the superb Harpsichord jazz music that I remember from the original UK broadcasts? So much more subtle and intriguing than the blaring band arrangement, although it does have a period flavor I cant deny.

Mr. McGoohan passed away recently. I will remember him and Danger Man as one of the very influential forces in my teenage years.

Often unfairly overshadowed by it's sequel series' (Secret Agent and "The Prisoner"). Dangerman is a kick-ass (Often literally) spy show, which follows N.A.T.O. agent John Drake around the world.

The great thing about this show is it's length at just 25 minutes per episode it's the perfect thing to have on video when you want to kill a quick half-hour,

the only problem is it'll soon become a quick 4 or so hours as you watch every episode on the disc backwards searching for demonic messages from Patrick McGoohan. (?rettoP ysuB) (aet fo puc a evol dluow i eladgniD .srM, sey yhW)

It'll then develop into a quick 4 days as you roam the country abducting people and then bludgeoning them with to death with ring-binders when they refuse to participate in your home-produced screenplays.

During your 72 hour manhunt you can amuse yourself by giving your REAL name as your alias (John Drake, must have single-handedly brought about the collapse of communism by operating under such crafty Codenames as "Johnny").

While the prosecution is wondering why corpses with nametags reading "Hobbs","Keller","Hardy" and "Potter" were found in your apartment you can tell them (under oath) that although not quite as eccentric as "Secret Agent" or as downright mad as "The Prisoner" the general undercurrent of weirdness is palpable , (In Fact it comes to the fore in some of the later episodes,"The Contessa" for example features Drake being Drugged by a beutiful angel-like woman.

While your Defence lawyer rattles on about your upbringing in a racoon hive and your "Obsessive" collecting of electronic cow prodders. You can pass the time by humming "yellow submarine"AND commenting on the often sublime balance of storyline and style, of narrative and direction, of Nachos and chillypeppers.

You can inform the Large bearded man in your cell that "Dangerman" is to "the Prisoner" as the Old Testament is to Christianity. You can also tell him that you are flattered by his gift of a scented candle but you don't think of him that way.

So if you don't mind your children growing up in a Drakist temple in Southern Cambodia, or you feel your family can deal with you writing "redrum sbboH" in your finest red crayon all over their walls then Dangerman is the relig......, then Dangerman is the TELEVISION SERIES for you.

However if you harbour notions of ever Having a Career/Living over 30/feeling the wish to go outside again. Then perhaps it would be better not to watch this show.

There are so many things Ralph Smart got right in the earliest Danger Man, it's almost a pity he couldn't stick to the commercially problematic 30-minute format. The stories are taut, clever Cold War mystery-thrillers. Within the hurried time constraints it isn't all plot as Smart finds room for characterization and texture, even to interject some interesting ideas and questions. A lot of this is done by way of the mercurial Patrick McGoohan but Smart had no shortage of talented collaborators in directors and actors.

McGoohan's early performances are fluid yet quirky. While he projects a kind of reserved elan, he also draws on a trove of itchy, improvisational mannerisms that allow us into more than a few nooks--not all of them pleasant--of John Drake's anxious cynicism. (McGoohan is to the TV spook what the late Jeremy Brett was to Sherlock Holmes: a perturbable, high-strung exotic, haunted but smirking.) I prefer him here to the more celebrated Prisoner, in fact, where he's customarily arch and lacks the variety of situation and emotional register. His narration is another treat, delivered in one of the most delectably ironic voices in dramatic TV history.

The writing bests most on TV, then or now. The tone in the better scripts is wry, veering toward acid, with more than a hint of melancholy. This is not the Cold War as a stage for Kennedyesque moxie, and certainly not the idiotic glamorization found in Bond, but rather as in Le Carré, a stage for the peeling away of deceptions that are as likely to originate at home as in dens abroad. This is not to say it isn't above the occasional stereotype; see, for instance, the leering North Koreans in the episode The Honeymooners. But a mark of this generally very humane work is that it more typically treats nationalistic conceptions of the enemy with skepticism, and even pits Drake in frustration against his own morally ambiguous NATO bosses. Nor is the day always won, and some seeming victories prove Pyhrric. How refreshing this is to watch in 2007, for obvious reasons.

The production design, fairly cheapo and simplistic, never detracts (charmingly, old file inserts make do for exterior locations) and in fact the studio sets somehow hold surprise delights: here a gloomy early 60s facsimile of a Munich street recalling Carol Reed's chiaroscuro in The Third Man, there the lobby of an International Style hotel with its sexy mid-century modernism. That it's all in gorgeous high-contrast black and white only deepens the interest: shadow play for shadowy deeds.

A word too about the memorable score by Albert Elms, particularly his incidental music. The understated jazz is part and parcel of the sensibility here--aloof and insinuating. There is so much intelligence pulsing through Elms' music and the series as a whole that it seems vaguely unlikely; watching this work, I can't help but admire its virtues while ruing what's become of the medium.

Danger Man in this early incarnation is grown-up art on TV, the likes of which in the U.S., anyway, we rarely hope to find today outside of HBO, practically its last refuge. A treasure.