Friday, June 13, 2025

Watch the Legendary Patrick McGoohan, as Agent John Drake, in the First of His Espionage TV Series, Danger Man (Later: Secret Agent, and then, The Prisoner), All Following the Adventures of the Same Spy!: Free, Complete, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at WEJB/NSU Classic TV! (Only 26 Minutes!)


[“The Saga of John Drake: The TV Theme Music, and Classic Song to a British Patrick McGoohan TV Series, and the Inspiration for a Second Series (music videos and background essay)”]

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Watch the Legendary Patrick McGoohan, as Agent John Drake, in the First of His Espionage TV Series, Danger Man (Later: Secret Agent, and then, The Prisoner), All Following the Adventures of the Same Spy!: Free, Complete, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at WEJB/NSU Classic TV! (Only 26 Minutes!)

I disagree with the original youtube poster. If anything, this episode shows that early TV writers were able to write excellent, and sometimes brilliant episodes in a mere 25 minutes (e.g., Have Gun, Will Travel, The Twilight Zone, Naked City, The Westerner). When shows expanded to 60 minutes, in order to sell more commercials, they padded out episodes.

The only shortcoming of this episode, is that it’s blurry. It needs to be restored, but that ain’t gonna happen.

In addition to McGoohan, as Agent John Drake, the actresses were wonderful: Barbara Shelley, as the Italian clothing designer, and Delphi Lawrence as the estranged, British wife of the initial suspect.


Danger Man 1x01 “View from the Villa” - Full Episode
@newjeffersonian6456 (comment from the second episode)
4 years ago

“There were a total of 39 half-hour episodes of Danger Man broadcast between September, 1960 and January, 1962. A second series of 22 episodes in hour-long broadcast format (49 minutes) were aired from October, 1964 through March, 1965 and a third series of 23 hour-long episodes from September, 1965 through April, 1966. Some episodes of the second series and all of the third series were re-titled Secret Agent and broadcast in the United States beginning during the summer of 1965. Going to an hour-long format greatly improved the quality of an already superb show. Many of the early half-hour programs suffered from having the sophisticated dialogue and well-crafted plots squeezed into a brief 25 minutes. This early episode is a prime example.”






3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing about one of my favorite series. Some thoughts:

If the video is blurry, that's the Youtube uploader's fault. The series was released on DVD over 20 years ago in perfect quality, and has been upgraded to blu-ray since then. There's a box set which I don't own but which has commentaries by some of the participants, so it's worth having if you're a devotee.

Like all actors, one can't take McGoohan's remarks totally seriously; he seems like a bit of a pretentious "griper," from interviews I've read. He was excellent as a villain in some of his early films like HELL DRIVERS (1957) and THE GYPSY AND THE GENTLEMAN (1958), both of which were superior to the bland Disney titles. (And of course, he was terrific as the evil warden in the Eastwood-Siegel classic ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ.)
I have an old newspaper clipping about him being nabbed for DUI, so he's not exactly pure as the driven snow! But what a great actor, he seemingly was snubbed by his own country (no knighthood for him, though by now that honor has become a farce like everything else), possibly because his success was mostly in TV, which was looked down on here and abroad.

DANGER MAN bears the unique credit "devised and edited by" Ralph Smart, and with that name he had to be a success in life! I just watched an episode that was so tightly assembled and paced, the "edited by" really struck a chord with me. Pure genius! He also wrote (or co-wrote) and directed a number of the shows, in addition to working on many other British series.
The other unsung hero of DANGER MAN was composer Edwin Astley, whose main theme for the hour series (titled "High Wire"- the Johnny Rivers intro was strictly created for the American version) and incidental music really carried the shows. Astley composed more themes for UK shows than anyone else- including ROBIN HOOD, THE SAINT, THE BARON, et al.

The genesis of THE PRISONER (close to the greatest TV series ever in my view) seems to be a DANGER MAN episode titled COLONY THREE, wherein Drake investigates a mysterious "Village" where defecting agents are held and groomed! The writer is a chap named Donald Jonson, who has a few other episodes to his credit and has never been acknowledged for his contribution to THE PRISONER as far as I know.

The series is available at archive.org; here's a link to some of the episodes, including COLONY THREE and a favorite, THE MIRROR'S NEW.

https://archive.org/details/dangerman_2_dvd3

Now, what about my post regarding THE SCARFACE MOB? That should be added to your channel!

-RM

Anonymous said...

I'll try to check it out.

--GRA

Anonymous said...

Review:A lot jammed into 25 minutes. Brit shows all had that certain style didn't they? This,a combo of 007 and the(early) Avengers. Fast paced and pretty enjoyable until the crooks stupidly walked in the "gold room" ahead of McGoohan's character.

Three stars out of 4.

--GRA