Danger Man

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Danger Man
(US title: Secret Agent)
Format Spy drama
Created by Ralph Smart
Starring Patrick McGoohan
Country of origin Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
No. of episodes 86
Production
Running time 30 min. (1960-62; 39 episodes[1]);
60 min. (1964-68; 47 episodes[2])
Broadcast
Original channel ITV
Original run September 11, 1960 – January 12, 1968
This article is about 1960s TV series aka "Secret Agent"; also see 1990s TV series Secret Agent Man. For the New York band of the same name, see: Dangerman (band).

Danger Man was a British television series broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. This series featuring Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the programme and wrote many of the scripts. The show was broadcast under the titles Secret Agent and Destination Danger in non-UK markets.

Contents

[edit] Production history overview

There has never been a full explanation of the relationship between Smart and McGoohan. McGoohan has never spoken about Ralph Smart in any detail. They did have face-to-face meetings at the beginning of the project, at which they fleshed out the character of John Drake.

The degree to which McGoohan changed Smart's original ideas is unclear; that he did change them is accepted.[citation needed] However, it must be remembered that Smart evidently agreed to the changes and continued to be enthusiastic about his creation. Danger Man was financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment.

In the United States, CBS broadcast the series under the Danger Man title for the first season, and under the Secret Agent title for the second and third seasons. The two final episodes of the series often are presented as the television film Koroshi. "Secret Agent Man" is the title of the series' American-broadcast theme song, though often mistakenly applied to the series itself.

[edit] Program overview

The first season's episodes ran 30 minutes each (with commercials) and portrayed John Drake as an Irish-American[citation needed] operative for a secret arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That said he often went on missions well out of the jurisdiction implied by the organisation's name; assignments not infrequently took him to Africa, Latin America, the Far East.

He sometimes seemed at odds with his superiors about the ethics of the missions. Many of Drake's cases involved aiding democracy in foreign countries and he was also called upon to solve murders and crimes affecting the interests of either the U.S. or NATO or both.

Beginning with the second season (which aired several years after the first), episodes were increased to 60 minutes (again including commercials) and Drake underwent retconning and became a British agent (though he identifies himself as Irish in one episode) working for a secret British government agency called M9. It is unclear weather any changes in the script were made to imply that he was on loan to NATO, to aid in continuity. Other than the largely nominal change of employer and nationality, Drake's mandate remains the same: to undertake missions involving national and global security.

[edit] Pilot Episode

The pilot was written by Brian Clemens, who later wrote for the series The Avengers. In an interview Clemens said

The pilot I wrote was called View From the Villa and it was set in Italy, but the production manager set the shoot on location in Portmeirion, which looked like Italy but which was much closer. And obviously the location stuck in Patrick McGoohan's mind, because that's where he shot his television series The Prisoner much later.

The second unit director on the pilot, according to Clemens

shot some location and background stuff and sent the dailies back to the editing room at Elstree. Ralph Smart looked at them, hated them, and called up the second unit director and said 'Look, these are terrible, you'll never be a film director,' and then he fired him. The name of the second unit director? John Schlesinger.[3]

[edit] Early history

The series succeeded in Europe, making McGoohan famous. However, when American financing for a second season failed, the programme was cancelled. The U.S. broadcast of that first season in the early 1960's is not well remembered. Indeed, the A&E DVD first-season release wrongly suggests that the series was never broadcast in the U.S.

After a two-year hiatus, two things had changed; Danger Man had subsequently been resold all around the world, whilst repeat showings had created a public clamour for new shows. Also, by this time James Bond had become popular, as had ABC's The Avengers. (In the seventh episode of the first season, McGoohan's co-star was Lois Maxwell, who became famous in the Bond movies as Miss Moneypenny.) Danger Man's creator, Ralph Smart, re-thought the concept; the second season (1964) episodes were 60 minutes long and had a new musical theme, "High Wire". Drake re-gained his British accent and did not clash with his bosses at first. In the U.S., the revived Danger Man was re-titled Secret Agent, as a CBS summer replacement programme, given the theme song "Secret Agent Man", sung by Johnny Rivers, which became a success in itself. In other parts of the world, the series was titled "Destination Danger" or "John Drake".

[edit] Theme

Unlike the later James Bond films, Danger Man strove for realism, dramatising credible Cold War tensions. In the second series, Drake was an undercover agent of the British external intelligence agency (called "M9" instead of the actual MI6). As in the earlier series, Drake found himself in danger with not always happy outcomes; sometimes duty forced him to decisions which led to good people suffering unfair consequences. Drake didn't always do what his masters told him to do.

[edit] Character development

Developing a rule established in the first season, Drake was rarely armed though he engaged in fist fights, and what gadgets he used were credible. In fact, most were off the shelf, and their appearance in the series spurred sales of such commercial items as the folding binoculars featured in the American title sequence and the sub-miniature Minox camera.

  • Unlike James Bond, Drake was often shown re-using gadgets from previous episodes
  • Among the more frequently seen were a miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder hidden inside the head of an electric shaver or a pack of cigarettes, and a microphone that could be embedded in a wall near the target via a shotgun-like apparatus, allowing Drake to eavesdrop on conversations from a safe distance

Agent Drake uses his intelligence, charm, and quick-thinking rather than force. He usually plays a role to infiltrate a situation, e.g., scout for a travel agency, naive soldier, embittered ex-convict, brainless playboy, imperious physician, opportunistic journalist, bumbling tourist, cold-blooded mercenary, bland diplomat, smarmy pop disk jockey, precise clerk, compulsive gambler, or impeccable butler.

As Drake gets involved in a case, things are rarely as they seem. He is not infallible--he gets arrested, he makes mistakes, equipment fails, careful plans don't work; Drake often has to improvise an alternative plan. Sometimes investigation fails, and he simply does something provocative to crack open the case. People he trusts can turn out to be untrustworthy or incompetent; he finds unexpected allies.

John Drake, also unlike Bond, never romanced on-screen with any of the women, as McGoohan was determined to create a family-friendly show.[citation needed] Drake uses his immense charm in his undercover work, and women are often very attracted to him — but the viewer is left to assume whatever they want about Drake's personal life. McGoohan denounced the sexual promiscuity of James Bond and The Saint, roles he had rejected, though he did play romantic roles before Danger Man.

The only exception to this rule was the two "linked episodes" of the series[clarify]; Drake was also shown falling for the female lead in the episode The Black Book though nothing came of it; this episode is also one of the only scripts to directly address Drake's loneliness in his chosen profession.

John Drake was not blind to the attraction of the opposite sex, often commenting on the prettiness of his latest associate. The implication was always that it was impractical for him ever to launch any liaison. It was also the fact that many times the women in the show turned out to be femmes-fatale, and heavily involved in the very plots Drake was fighting.

Although the villains often were killed, Drake, himself, rarely killed. In the entire series he only shot one person dead, and that was in one of the last half-hour episodes from the 1960 season. Yet The Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Television, by Ron Lackmann, claims Danger Man was one of the most violent series ever produced.

[edit] Co-stars and guest stars

In many episodes of the second series, Drake unwillingly answered to 'Hobbs' (Peter Madden), a sinister superior officer always seen fiddling with a knife-like letter opener. In the earlier half-hour series he had an equally edgy, but more good-humoured relationship with Richard Wattis, as his superior, 'Hardy'.

Each episode had major roles for guest stars, many of whom went on to star in their own shows

[edit] Later history and transition to The Prisoner

The fourth season consisted of only two episodes, "Koroshi" and "Shinda Shima", the only two in any of the series photographed in colour. Whilst "Koroshi" retains a strong plot-line and sharp characterisations, "Shinda Shima" was a pastiche of contemporary Bond movies. When the episodes were completed, McGoohan announced he was resigning from the series to create, produce, and star in a project titled The Prisoner, with David Tomblin as co-producer and George Markstein as script editor. Markstein was then the Danger Man script consultant. A number of behind-the-scenes personnel on Danger Man were subsequently hired for The Prisoner.

The two colour episodes were aired in the UK as filler during a hiatus of The Prisoner in 1968, the same year they were edited together and released as the television film titled Koroshi. Another, unused, fourth season script was reworked as an episode of The Champions while, according to The Prisoner: The Official Companion by Robert Fairclough, the Prisoner episode "The Girl Who Was Death" was based upon a two-part Danger Man script that had been planned for the fourth season.

[edit] Secret agent John Drake and Prisoner Number Six

It is debated by Prisoner fans whether or not John Drake of Danger Man and Number Six in The Prisoner are the same person. Like John Drake, Number Six is evidently a secret agent, but one who has resigned from his job. Moreover, in the surreal Prisoner episode "The Girl Who Was Death", Number Six meets "Potter", John Drake's Danger Man contact. Christopher Benjamin portrayed Potter in both series. As has been previously stated, "The Girl Who Was Death" was an adaptation of an unused Danger Man script.

The first Danger Man season includes four episodes which use footage filmed in the Welsh village of Portmeirion, which later became the primary shooting location of The Prisoner series. This dramatic overlapping is complicated by reference books, such as Vincent Terrace's The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs 1947-1979 referring to The Prisoner as a Danger Man continuation. Terrace postulates that John Drake's resignation reason is revealed in the "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling" episode, which is a follow-up to a mission assigned to Number Six before he was sent to The Village. Richard Meyers made the same claim in his 1981 book, TV Detectives. He further stated that this connected directly to "an episode of Secret Agent never shown in this country [i.e., the United States] with John Drake investigating the story of a brain transferral device in Europe." (A. S. Barnes and Company, p. 113).

It is claimed that Patrick McGoohan's insistence that prisoner Number Six is not John Drake is because actors do not own the characters they portray — producers and writers own them.[citation needed] Danger Man creator and producer Ralph Smart owned the "John Drake" character. Thus McGoohan would be obliged to deny any resemblance between prisoner Number Six and secret agent John Drake. In truth, Patrick McGoohan visualised himself playing two different characters, which is why he made the denials.[citation needed]

[edit] Pop culture references

Danger Man has remained part of pop culture consciousness. Author Stephen King is said to have alluded to John Drake's "cool" in one novel.[citation needed] The band Tears for Fears referred to the character in their song "Swords and Knives," and goth musicians Dead Can Dance titled one of their songs "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" after a Danger Man episode. There also is a quick reference to the show in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date". On UK screens, it was parodied by the DangerMouse cartoon series.[citation needed] The American theme song has appeared in countless movies and TV shows, including during the climax of the first Austin Powers movie.

In 2000, the UPN network aired a short-lived spy series entitled Secret Agent Man. Due to the similarities in titles between this series and the American edition of Danger Man, Secret Agent Man, a series with no relationship to the McGoohan program, is often erroneously referred to as a spin-off or remake of Danger Man.

[edit] DVD and streaming video availability

All four seasons of the series are now available on DVD in Europe, Australasia and North America. The three seasons of hour-long episodes were released by A&E Home Video under the title Secret Agent a.k.a. Danger Man in order to acknowledge the American broadcast and syndication title.

However the episodes retain their original Danger Man opening credits, the first time these have been seen in the U.S. (The US "Secret Agent" credits were included as an extra feature.) The first season of half-hour episodes was issued by A&E sometime later as Danger Man. A&E subsequently released a single-set "megabox" containing all of the one-hour episodes; a revised megabox, released in 2007, added the half-hour episodes.

In Britain, Network DVD released a 13-disc "Special Edition" boxed set of the one-hour shows in June 2007. Extra features include the edited-together movie version of Koroshi and Shinda Shima, the US Secret Agent opening and closing titles, image galleries for each episode, and a specially-written 170-page book on the making of the one-hour series. Umbrella Entertainment has released DVD sets in Australia.

With the coming of HDTV disc delivery formats, and online streaming video from sites like Hulu higher definition versions of the existing film prints could be released. It is unclear if a unified set of film prints exists for this TV series, an important factor in HDTV re-releases.

[edit] Episodes

Episodes were usually not aired in production order. Broadcast order varied widely between UK and US.

[edit] Season 1 (1960–1962)

Broadcast as Danger Man both in the UK and US

Episode # Original Air Date (UK) Episode Title Episode Summary
1-01 11 September 1960 View from the Villa Frank Delroy, an American banker directly responsible for a large reserve of gold held in Rome as part of the United States' NATO contributions, is murdered. Five million dollars is missing.
1-02 18 September 1960 Time to Kill John Drake's instructions are to fly to Paris, sit down at a cafe on the Champs Elysee and wait to meet a mysterious stranger who will introduce himself with a password.
1-03 25 September 1960 Josetta John Drake helps a blind woman trap her brother's killer.
1-04 2 October 1960 The Blue Veil John Drake is involved in one of his most colourful adventures when he flies to the Arabian desert to investigate stories of slavery and finds himself in the role of a knight errant helping a stranded showgirl.
1-05 9 October 1960 The Lovers John Drake has a surprise when he receives a telephone call from an old enemy named Miguel Torres -- spy, undercover agent, provocateur, freelance saboteur. But this time, Torres is on the side of authority, employed by the president of Boravia.
1-06 16 October 1960 The Girl in Pink Pajamas A strikingly lovely blonde is found wandering in a dazed condition along a lonely road in a Balkan state and provides John Drake with a clue to the mystery surrounding the attempted assassination of the country’s president.
1-07 23 October 1960 Position of Trust John Drake is shown a photograph of a girl. She is alive, but might as well be dead. Haggard looks, staring eyes, sunken cheeks. It could have been a photograph of a worn-out, middle-aged woman. But the girl is only 21.
1-08 30 October 1960 The Lonely Chair John Drake impersonates a wealthy industrialist whose daughter has been kidnapped.
1-09 6 November 1960 The Sanctuary John Drake impersonates a prisoner who has just been released after serving a sentence for a violent bomb outrage and finds that his deception lands him into a web of drama and danger.
1-10 13 November 1960 An Affair of State John Drake flies to a small Caribbean state when an American economics expert, sent there to check on the country’s finances and gold reserves before America agrees to a large loan, is reported to have committed suicide.
1-11 20 November 1960 The Key Drake loses no time in getting to know Logan and his attractive Continental wife, Maria. He tells Logan that he has been ordered to contact him with instructions to encode a message for cabling to Washington.
1-12 27 November 1960 The Sisters Which girl is telling the truth? This is the problem that faces John Drake when a beautiful refugee from a mid-European country flees to England and pleads for political asylum.
1-13 4 December 1960 The Prisoner A U.S. Diplomat has been forced to live within the walls of his embassy for five years, denied egress by the host country. John Drake convinces a concert pianist to impersonate the diplomat, in an attempt to win his freedom.
1-14 11 December 1960 The Traitor What makes a man a traitor? John Drake finds out when his latest assignment takes him to Kashmir, in Northern India, and to drama high up a mountain in a lonely bungalow with a renegade Englishman and his beautiful wife.
1-15 18 December 1960 Col. Rodriguez The treacherous Colonel Rodriguez has arrested an innocent American journalist on charges of spying. John Drake must find a means of freeing him.
1-16 1 January 1961 The Island
1-17 8 January 1961 Find and Return John Drake sets out to find a beautiful girl who is wanted for espionage, possibly high treason. It means a trip to the Middle East and into a web of mystery in which death and danger stalk together.
1-18 15 January 1961 The Girl who Liked G.I.s
1-19 22 January 1961 Name, Date and Place
1-20 29 January 1961 Vacation
1-21 5 February 1961 The Conspirators
1-22 2 April 1961 The Honeymooners
1-23 9 April 1961 The Gallows Tree
1-24 16 April 1961 The Relaxed Informer
1-25 23 April 1961 The Brothers A plane crashes off the coast of Sicily. The two airmen get safely to shore, with their mail bags and a diplomatic satchel -- only to be shot and robbed by bandits.
1-26 30 April 1961 The Journey Ends Halfway John Drake finds himself involved in Oriental intrigue and adventure when, in the guise of a Czech engineer, he unravels the mystery of the disappearance of a distinguished doctor who has been trying to escape from Communist China.
1-27 7 May 1961 Bury the Dead A ticket for the opera in Palermo, Sicily, whirls John Drake into the centre of a gun-running intrigue with a beautiful girl as his companion.
1-28 14 May 1961 Sabotage A transport plane is on its way from Singapore to flew Guinea, in full radio contact with its base. Then silence. An explosion sends the plane to its doom and its pilot, Paul Jason, to his death.
1-29 21 May 1961 The Contessa
1-30 28 May 1961 The Leak
1-31 4 June 1961 The Trap
1-32 11 June 1961 The Actor
1-33 18 June 1961 Hired Assassin
1-34 16 December 1961 The Deputy Coyannis Story Love and politics make an unholy alliance, as John Drake finds out when sent to a Balkan country to discover what has happened to rehabilitation money which does not seem to have been put to its intended uses.
1-35 23 December 1961 Find and Destroy
1-36 30 December 1961 Under the Lake John Drake has the pleasant task of getting to know a very attractive girl in the course of tracking down the mystery of one of the most fantastic counterfeit plots of all time.
1-37 6 January 1962 The Nurse A dramatic meeting with a pretty Scots nurse in the heart of the Arabian Desert plunges John Drake into one of most perilous adventures of his career and enables him to help the girl save a dynasty.
1-38 13 January 1962 Dead Man Walks
1-39 20 January 1962 Deadline John Drake plunges into the African jungle to find an attractive native woman who can tell him the truth about a murder that has sparked off a wave of terrorism which is likely to lead to a mass uprising.

Although aired over the course of 18 months, these 39 episodes are considered one season.

[edit] Season 2 (1964–1965)

Seasons 2 and 3 were broadcast as Danger Man in the UK and Secret Agent in the US.

Episode # Original Air Date (UK) Episode Title
2-01 13 October 1964 Yesterday's Enemies
2-02 20 October 1964 The Professionals
2-03 27 October 1964 Colony Three
2-04 3 November 1964 The Galloping Major
2-05 10 November 1964 Fair Exchange
2-06 17 November 1964 Fish on the Hook
2-07 24 November 1964 The Colonel's Daughter
2-08 1 December 1964 Battle of the Cameras
2-09 8 December 1964 No Marks for Servility
2-10 15 December 1964 A Man to Be Trusted
2-11 22 December 1964 Don't Nail Him Yet
2-12 29 December 1964 A Date with Doris
2-13 5 January 1965 That's Two of Us Sorry
2-14 12 January 1965 Such Men are Dangerous
2-15 19 January 1965 Whatever Happened to George Foster?
2-16 2 February 1965 Room in the Basement
2-17 9 February 1965 The Affair at Castelevara
2-18 19 February 1965 The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
2-19 23 February 1965 It's Up to the Lady
2-20 2 March 1965 Have a Glass of Wine
2-21 9 March 1965 The Mirror's New
2-22 16 March 1965 Parallel Lines Sometimes Meet

[edit] Season 3 (1965–1966)

Episode # Original Air Date (UK) Episode Title
3-01 23 September 1965 You're Not in Any Trouble, Are You?
3-02 30 September 1965 The Black Book
3-03 7 October 1965 A Very Dangerous Game
3-04 14 October 1965 Sting in the Tail
3-05 21 October 1965 English Lady Takes Lodgers
3-06 28 October 1965 Loyalty Always Pays
3-07 4 November 1965 The Mercenaries
3-08 11 November 1965 Judgement Day
3-09 18 November 1965 The Outcast
3-10 2 December 1965 Are You Going to be More Permanent?
3-11 9 December 1965 To Our Best Friend
3-12 16 December 1965 The Man on the Beach
3-13 23 December 1965 Say it with Flowers
3-14 30 December 1965 The Man Who Wouldn't Talk
3-15 6 January 1966 Someone is Liable to Get Hurt
3-16 13 January 1966 Dangerous Secret
3-17 20 January 1966 I Can Only Offer You Sherry
3-18 27 January 1966 The Hunting Party
3-19 10 March 1966 Two Birds with One Bullet
3-20 17 March 1966 I'm Afraid You Have the Wrong Number
3-21 24 March 1966 The Man with the Foot
3-22 31 March 1966 The Paper Chase
3-23 7 April 1966 The Not-So-Jolly Roger

[edit] Season 4 (1968)

Episode # Original Air Date (UK) Episode Title
4-01 5 January 1968 Koroshi
4-02 12 January 1968 Shinda Shima

These two episodes were broadcast in the US as a single TV-movie, Koroshi (enabled by the second being a sequel to the first). Originally scheduled to be broadcast in autumn 1966 as part of a longer season, the show's abrupt cancellation, coupled with production and broadcast of The Prisoner, resulted in these final two shows not airing in the UK until early 1968, when they were broadcast concurrently with later episodes of The Prisoner. Some parts of the UK, as well as the US, never saw the episodes in their original form until their DVD release.

[edit] Original novels and comic books

First issue of the Gold Key Comics series.
First issue of the Gold Key Comics series.

Several original novels based upon Danger Man were published in the UK and US, the majority during 1965-66.

  • Target for Tonight - Richard Telfair, 1962 (published in US only)
  • Departure Deferred - W. Howard Baker, 1965
  • Storm Over Rockall - Baker, 1965
  • Hell for Tomorrow - Peter Leslie, 1965
  • The Exterminator - W.A. Balinger, 1966
  • No Way Out - Wilfred McNeily, 1966

Several of the above novels were translated into French and published in France, where the series was known as Destination Danger. An additional Destination Danger novel by John Long was published in French and not printed in the US or UK.

The adventures of John Drake have also been depicted in comic book form from time to time. In 1961, Dell Comics in the US published a one-shot Danger Man comic as part of its long-running Four Color series, based upon the first season format. this is particularly notable for showing Drake as having ginger hair, a trait shared with Patrick McGoohan, but which was unseen as Danger Man had been made only in monochrome at that time. In 1966, Gold Key Comics published two issues of a Secret Agent comic book based upon the series (this series should not be confused with Secret Agent, an unrelated comic book series published by Charlton Comics in 1967, formerly titled Sarge Steel). In Britain, a single Danger Man comic book subtitled "Trouble in Turkey" appeared in the mid-1960s and a number of comic strip adventures appeared in hardcover annuals. French publishers also produced several issues of a Destination Danger comic book in the 1960s, although their Drake was blond. Spanish publishers produced a series titled 'Agent Secreto'. The Germans were particularly prolific, using 'John Drake' and a picture of McGoohan, as the cover for hundreds of 'krimi' magazines.

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Two episodes of Danger Man's third season are linked in an unusual way. The episodes, "You're Not in Any Trouble, Are You?" and "Are You Going to Be More Permanent?" both feature Susan Hampshire as guest star, however playing different characters in each episode. Nevertheless, both episodes seem to echo one another, with similar lines of dialogue and identical props that are emphasized in both episodes (in particular, a doll). Additionally, the characters played by Hampshire are the only ones with whom actual romantic involvement with Drake is implied (one of the episodes ends with Drake and the girl going on holiday together -- something virtually unheard of in this series). These two episodes also feature the song "Mio Amore Sta Lontano," which was used in other episodes as well.
  • Dawn Addams appears in two different rôles — as Martine in "The Battle of the Cameras", and as Gerdi in "Fish on the Hook".
  • Jane Merrow appears in three different roles — as Juana in "A Date with Doris", as Susan in "A Room in the Basement", and as Lydia in "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk".

[edit] References

  1. ^ Castleman, Harry and Walter J. Podrazik, Harry and Wally's Favorite TV Shows, Prentice Hall Press, 1989, p. 452.
  2. ^ ibid.
  3. ^ Interview with Brian Clemens, Classic Images website, May 1999.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Peter Yates
1960s
Summer Holiday • One Way Pendulum • Robbery • Bullitt • John and Mary
1970s
1980s
Eyewitness • Krull • The Dresser • Eleni • Suspect • The House on Carroll Street • An Innocent Man
1990s
Year of the Comet • Roommates • The Run of the Country • Curtain Call
2000s
The Girl in Melanie Klein
Television
"The Saint" (1962 - 1969) • "Danger Man" (1964 - 1966) • Don Quixote (2000) • A Separate Peace (2000)
Languages