Danger Man (1960 +)
IMDB meta-data is 39 episodes of 24 minutes each, rated 7.9 by 984 cinematizens and then another fifty of 50 minutes each.
Genre: Adventure
Verdict: Go!
Before he became Prisoner Number Six, he was Danger Man or was that Dangerman, or even Secret Agent, roaming the world as either American, British, NATOist, or Irish. That is all part of the mystic. The initial opening credits show the US capitol dome and that has led most reviewers to conclude he was supposed to be American, but the earliest episodes occur in the ebbing British Empire and in the opening voice over the phrasing of the reference to NATO sounds like that is the one, while in later episodes he says he works for his country (whichever that might be), but then he also names NATO as his employer in another. He also says he is Irish-American. The man always has a cover story. By the way, NATO headquarters at the time was in Paris, not DC. Later he becomes British if not English.
The half-hour episodes zip along. The opening is a crime of some sort, and then our hero, Drake, John Drake, is dispatched to some obscure, exotic, distant locale to sort it out. The characters are set in motion without tedious backstories and get on with it. The narratives are models of construction, as opposed to the padded and wandering story lines that dominate bloated, wallowing films these days.
Some of the scripts are very clever. I particularly liked the seeing blind woman. In another, Drake’s contact on site is a woman who is in effect his boss during the mission. No fuss is made over that, it just is that way. Ditto when a woman is the CEO of an African Airline. Best might be Drake in a wheel chair. Never seen that done before or since. Although there are clangers, even in the earliest episodes, say when a banker absconds with a ton of gold and stores it in a really big and really heavy box, which no one notices for some time, or the Swedish school teacher stereotype who trips over everything.
Everyone smokes more or less constantly, even when lying in wait to ambush Drake, and no one is without a drink of alcohol in hand for more than two minutes. There are many tuxedos as Drake moves among the elite where there is the most opportunity for corruption. But then there is that leather pork pie hat he sports in some later episodes that takes the couture down to leagues club level. In early episodes he gets by on his wits and fists and audacity but as the series goes on more gadgets (cameras, microphones, drones, and other gizmos) and guns are added to the mix.
Patrick McGoohan was more Roman Catholic than the Pope and made it part of his contract that the character would not bed women nor do anything immoral, like assassinate a target. While Drake is often compared to James Bond, the similarities end there.
The first two seasons were not a great success, but then Dr No created a demand for spy entertainment, and Danger Man was rejuvenated, re-newed, re-titled to Secret Agent, and extended to an hour. To lure McGoohan back the episodes were expanded to one hour and he was given considerable creative input, often under pseudonyms. In these longer episodes he is clearly British right down to the Austin Cooper.
The hour long scripts are repetitive and preachy all too often as Drake has become a more or less self-appointed, self-righteous, and cosmopolitan do-gooder. He spares no one his sermons, not even his superiors whom he takes to task regularly even as they sign the pay cheques. He is altogether insufferable. It is easy to see why he went to the Village.
In the wake of Dr No there are also even more guns, girls, and gadgets.
The hour long episodes are hard to watch and I find myself tuning out in a way that I did not do with the shorter ones, where to blink was to miss the action where Drake outsmarted is opponents rather than berated his superiors.
It is chance to see a host of performers in earlier days from Derren Nesbitt, Lois Maxwell, Donald Pleasance, Hazel Court, John Le Mesurier, Charles Gray, Mai Zetterling, Honor Blackman, Nigel Green, Ron Fraser, Burt Kwok, Sylvia Sims, and the list goes on and on. Most, but not all episodes can be found on You Tube or Daily Motion and the DVDs are available from Amazon.