jimpayne1967 Reviews

Tokyo Story (1953)

SLOW BUT SUCKS YOU IN

[10/10 · 16 April 2024]

I had not seen this film until recently and had no great expectation that I would think it the masterpiece its supporters claim it to be- the reviews suggested dullness.

It is slow. An old married couple visit their grown up children who all live in Tokyo, the visit is not quite a success as the sons and daughters are all too concerned with their own lives to pay that much attention too notice their mother is a bit unwell and the dad, a laconic figure who appears to be a bit boring, only really enjoys himself when he meets up with some old mates and drinks a bit too much sake. The mum dies shortly after she goes home The film is slow, nobody speaks witty lines and there are no punch-ups. But it is never boring even if some of the characters are. The dialogue is, for me, a touch too clipped but that is a small cavil. It is an absorbing film which led this viewer to think about funerals, post-War Japan and how despite cultural differences the Japanese family presented here seems not unlike most families I have known - they love each other but can get bored with each other too and even in the superficial trauma of an unexpected death little differences are still there and new hierarchies forever forming.

Ozu had a very deliberate style of filmmaking - the only other one of his films I have seen, Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family, was made a dozen years previously and it too employs the same style of filming indoor scenes with a static camera with the actors seldom being quite in the centre of the frame. Rooms are seldom symmetrical and there are few, if any, close-ups. And yet there is an intimacy in most of the shots all the same. It should be stagey but it is not, instead Tokyo Story is a superb portrait of what a family is like.

I do not know that Tokyo Story is one of the greatest films of all time, better according to Sight and Sound polls superior than anything Scorsese, Bergman, Wilder, Kubrick et al ever made. Filmmaking is not the Premiership or the Masters' Golf- it should not be a competition to be better than some other work. Tokyo Story is not a bundle of laughs and it never grabbed me by the lapel trying to persuade me it's a great film. But it is a Great Film.

Z (1969)

Good but not Great

[8/10 · 7 April 2024]

I had never seen this film until 6th April 2024 and had almost forgotten it existed until it appeared on my Amazon feed as suggested watch/purchase. The DVD I bought was dubbed into Italian and with English subtitles. I also had toothache.

The film is the adaptation of a novel which was in based on the 1963 investigation into the murder of the Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis which was led by the magistrate Christos Sartezakis. The film's opening credits carry an unusual variation on the usual disclaimer in that any resemblance to actual events is intentional.

The film is shot, at times, as though it is a documentary and resembles the Battle of Algeria and the subsequent thriller the French Connection. I think Z is a good film but think it inferior to both of those films and also possibly to Missing which is the only other Costa-Gavras directed film I can remember seeing. Whatever your view of the politics underscoring the Pontecorvo film I'd deny anyone to say it was not an exciting film whereas Z meanders a bit especially in its first third.

The film does pick up the pace after the assassination and the interrogation of the military officials involved in the plot and cover up also manage to inject something like humour into a film which is resolutely po-faced in tone. The coda showing what actually happened after the magistrate's scrupulous and impartial investigation is sadly sobering.

Jean-Louis Trintingnant is very good as the magistrate and Marcel Bozzuffi (later in French Connection) is especially good as one of the assassins but I am not sure that much of the other performances are all that good. Irene Papas does not do much except look mournful which seems a waste of her talent and overall a lot of the characters seem a bit sketched in although in a film which eventually moves along at a fair old lick that is understandable.

Z is, I think, a less well known film than its makers thought it would be and it possibly deserves to be. Greek politics of the post-WW2 era have been, for almost anybody who is not Greek, forgotten in a way that popular/populist uprisings against Colonial powers in North Africa, East Asia, Central and South America have not and that is possibly why Z is now obscure although I think its better as a film than, to give two examples, Under Fire and Salvador ( good though both were ).

Perhaps if I had seen an undubbed version I would feel it was better than I do.

The Gold Robbers (1969)

Slow But Not Bad

[7/10 · 28 November 2023]

I had almost forgotten this programme existed having not seen it in 50 years until it turned up on Talking Pictures TV recently. All those years ago I did not see the last few episodes but did recall that Sally Thomsett was in it and that in one episode a woman revealed her bare chest. I had thought it was filmed in colour like many of the ITV serials of the late sixties. Miss Thomsett turned up in only two episodes and the show was in fact filmed in the black and white I had seen it in originally but the actress did take her top off.

Telling the story of the investigation of a daring , meticilously planned gold robbery most episodes begin with a reshowing of the robbery which means the viewer never forgets what the thing is about. In some of the early episodes the robbery is slightly re-edited to highlight which member of the gang the episode will highlight. This made me think of the 1956 heist film The Killing.

Some of the episodes are better than others - I especially liked the second episode the aforementioned Railway Child was in and also the one with George Cole as a character who comes across as a melancholy Flash Harry. None of the episodes is bad but as I watched it I felt the serial's biggest problem is that there are too many episodes- the show drags at times.

The show suffers from comparison with newer shows in that it looks cheap and seems oddly short of extras. Peter Vaughan plays , I gathered, a very busy policeman. No wonder he is busy as aside from his sidekick, a Detective Sergeant played by Artro Morris, who bites the dust in the last episode he seems to be the only officer in the building he works in.

I had problems with the idea that the criminal mastermind would turn out to be such an unmenacing, almost camp, figure as played by Victor Bartman - a rival figure played by Peter Cellier comes across as being much more credible. The final twist as to who was really behind the robbery is hardly a surprise. The show could do with a few more shocks a long its way.

Most of the acting is though very good. Few of the featured actors has a face or name I have forgotten and the performances of Joss Ackland Alfred Lynch, Patrick Allen, Coral Atkins and Peter Bowles are especially excellent. I am less sure of Vaughan as Chief Superintendent Craddock - maybe I have just got too used to him playing menacing bad guys to see him as an incorruptible cop but I think that maybe he just improved as an actor. And he is not bad in the role.

I liked thia serial and few programmes have such a gloomy finale- nobody emerges as a winner. But it could have done with a wee bit more life in it. 7.4 in my book.

The Champions: The Interrogation (1968) Season 1, Episode 19

Pretty good if derivative

[8/10 · 27 November 2023]

I remember I did not like this episode when I first saw it when I was 9 or 10. No overseas action, no quirky villains, not much of Sharon or Richard and no jokes.

Seeing it again two or three times in the last dozen years it now seems like one of the best episodes. The obvious comparisons are with the Prisoner and Man in a Suitcase which were made by the same company but there are echoes too of The Ipcress File and The Manchurian Candidate ( and I suppose 1984 and even the Trial). But it is well done and Colin Blakely is superb as the interrogator whilst Stuart Damon - who can sometimes be a bit hammy- plays it pretty well too.

I don't mind that there is little of superpowers- this show , like Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), is often better when the daft, if enjoyable, premise is not too high in the mix. I think there are episodes I prefer such as the Fanatics and Nutcracker but this is definitely one of the better ones.

Play for Today: Home (1972) Season 2, Episode 10

My introduction to Gielgud and Richardson

[10/10 · 22 September 2023]

I saw Home on the night it was first shown- my dad allowed me to stay up as my mum and younger sister were out for the evening to see the film Nicholas and Alexander. I was 10 years old.

The only cast member I knew beforehand was Dandy Nicholls and it all seemed a bit dull at first just listening to Gielgud and Richardson exchange banal remarks. But after a few minutes it twigged that all was not quite what it seemed. It was by turns funny, surreal and sad - and the two stars were obviously actors of serious ability. They remain favourites of mine to this day.

I remember the play was repeated about a year later and it turned up on some BBC themed evening at some time in the 1990s and it still seemed remarkably good but I've not seen it since. There may have been better Plays for Today - although I doubt none that was better acted- but Home will always be one of those things which I would list with first seeing Monty Python or hearing Thelonious Monk ( both around the same time as I saw Home) as being one of those gateways to grown up things. Sorry if that all seems a bit pretentious but this play was something I saw at the right time of my life.

Made for Each Other (1939)

UNSATISFYING OVERALL BUT INTERESTING

[6/10 · 2 September 2023]

I must admit that I'd never heard of this one until I stumbled across it on one of the TV nostslgia channels the other day

I like both of the leads a lot although I did struggle with the idea that it was not a comedy given the presence of Carole Lombard who I have only seen in films that are very funny and whilst James Stewart is known for his dramatic roles he was a dab hand in comic roles too. Even when it gets heavy I still expected something funny to happen. Instead something very odd did.

The film makers too seemed to struggle a bit with the tone they were looking for and Charles Coburn plays it as if he too wonders if he is in a comedy or a melodrama although as with Lombard and Stewart he makes it to the end safely .

As others here have suggested the ending is a bit on the ridiculous end of the spectrum and regarding the baby I wonder why neither parent refers to him by his name.

The film is hard to dislike despite its being something of a hotch-potch and most of the scenes work individually- even the strange denouement is well done.

Stewart, Lombard and Coburn acted in better films, John Cromwell directed better ones and Selznick certainly produced better ones than Made for Each Other but I would not hold anything against them for this one.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Last Request (1957) Season 3, Episode 8

Kind Hearts and Cocktail Bars

[8/10 · 31 August 2023]

I really liked this episode - Harry Guardino as the slippery Lothario is particularly good and the sleazy atmosphere of the bars Guardino visits (in flashback) reminded me of the kind of place Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin would spend the evening at in The Big Heat. The scenes in the prison are bleak and although I am not in favour of Capital Punishment the film avoids the preachiness on the topic which is fine by me- although I am pretty sure that the condemned man would have had to get his head shaved. Budgetary issues rather than any vanity on Guardino's part I'd guess

The twist in the tale is not telegraphed but when it arrives it is very reminiscent of the finale of the British black comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets from a few years before although the tone throughout is far less cheerful

Not a classic but pretty good - and probably the best episode Paul Henreid did for the show.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

Very uneven but the good bits are good.

[8/10 · 4 August 2023]

As I watched the film I found that there were spells where I found myself wondering why I ever liked Quentin Tarantino films especially in the first half.

Much of that first half seemed to me to be to pad out the film rather than add anything to the narrative or to simply be a good scene that would stand on its own. The scene involving the Bruce Lee character was especially irritating - there to annoy fans of Lee (and Muhammad Ali) as much as anything- whilst the representation of Sam Wanamaker as some sort of camp luvvie made me uneasy and I was never even a fan of Sam Wanamaker.

The characterisation of Sharon Tate as played by Margot Robbie as something akin to a simpleton -albeit a charming one - did not ring true either.

But I found myself drawn in all the same - the two leads are very good and indeed I would say I had not realised that Brad Pitt was as good as he is in this film whilst DiCaprio is at times a real hoot.

Once Pitt/Booth go to Spahn's farm things really begin to pick up- a really uneasy feeling of something deeply disturbing being present is conveyed really well in these scenes and Bruce Dern does a terrific turn as Spahn too.

The rewriting of history in the closing fifth of the film are as 'over-the-top' as anything Tarantino has done in a while but they manage to be scary, exciting and funny too- as a fairy story the denouement is as violent as anything the Brothers Grimm came up with and made me forget that some of the film is actually quite dull in parts.

Not a classic by any means but worth sticking with all the same.

Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956)

Not very good but...

[4/10 · 16 July 2023]

This film is not a good one. It turns up in some of those 'worst of all time' lists and is often mentioned in the same paragraph as Ed Wood's Plan from Outer Space. It was very cheaply made and looks it, is scientifically nonsensical and has a hint of the kind of seediness English films of the 50s and early 60s often had.

Much of the criticism of it centres on the look of the film and the shoddy special effects used in it but I think these are facile ways to criticise anything- classic science-fiction shows of the 60s such as Star Trek and Doctor Who were obviously not lavishly made and had monsters that even kids with ages in single figures knew were just a man dressed up inside, but those shows successfully suspended their viewers' senses of belief and disbelief- and often terrified younger viewers- by being well written and thus tapping into less conscious fears within. They also had characters who the viewer could empathise with and love or hate. Fire Maidens of Outer Space actually has some merits but it is a very poorly written film and seems to intentionally avoid pursuing ideas that might make it a more interesting film. This film could have the budget and effects worthy of a George Lucas film but with this script it would still have been a complete dud.

It is irritating that he relationship between the apparently benign Prasus and the Fire Maidens especially Hestia (played by Susan Shaw) is rather sloughed over unlike in Forbidden Planet-made around the same time- where the father-daughter relationship between Walter Pidgeon and Anne Francis makes the film something rather more than just a.n. Other 50s sci- fi. The Creature in Fire Maidens is never explored as anything more than a slightly gimpish looking man who is no more terrifying than one of the maidens themselves. A space opera Beauty and the Beast is not on show here alas.

Unlike Plan 9 where the performances are often jaw-droppingly bad, this film is at times surprisingly well acted-Paul Carpenter, Sidney Tafler, Harry Fowler and the aforementioned Susan Shaw were all competent actors and they are fine here and whilst I don't care much for Anthony Dexter as the male lead most of the other performances are okay too- although one cutaway showing Jan Holden trying to look terrified is not one of that otherwise fine actress' better moments. And unlike Plan 9 the story -limp, predictable and unadventurous though it is- is coherent and makes sense. Had the writer and director, Cy Roth, had more ability as both a writer and director this might have been one of those films which you wish had had a bigger budget.

As for the Fire Maidens themselves- a dozen or so young women wafting about in what look like almost-but-not-quite diaphanous nighties - well they might have raised the temperature a bit in 1956 - and been more revealing had the film been made a dozen years later - but now, like much of the film itself, for all its lame plot and poor direction, they have an innocent likeability.

It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958)

Very disappointing

[3/10 · 14 July 2023]

I had high hopes of this one which I had been trying to track down for a wee while. I had expected a tense thriller with a classic and creepy villain with a nail-biting climax- something altogether superior to the late and largely uncelebrated 50s British film Never Take Sweets from a Stranger which has some similarities in subject matter.

What I watched was a not very good thriller about a retired cop trying to catch a child killer, a villain -albeit a well played one by Gert Frobe- who is less creepy than a protagonist whose scenes with children were the creepiest thigs I've seen in a while. The supposedly nail-biting finale turned out to be as convincing as the finale of one of those old Scotland Yard shorts introduced by Edgar Lustgarten. Never Take Sweets From A Stranger is a far superior movie- better acted, better plotted and far better photographed.

I do wonder if something was lost in translation as the version I saw was the dubbed one and the print on my DVD was poor with breaks in sound at key moments but I suspect I am being more generous than this very disappointing film deserved.

The Zoo Gang (1974)

Not quite forgotten but...

[6/10 · 6 June 2023]

I had not seen this show for a second time until recently- the first since its original run.

I like the old ITC shows from the sixties and seventies and although some stand up better than others most still retain their watchability at the very least. The Zoo Gang was almost the last throw of Lew Grade's dice. After the failure of the Persuaders in the US budgets were cut for Jason King (better than you remember). The Protectors ( as bad as you remember) and the Adventurer (few even remember him or it) Grade tried a slightly different tack with a show that money was spent on. Mostly filmed on location, a theme tune composed by Paul and Linda McCartney, weel kent faces in starring and guest roles and adapted from a recently published novel written by a bestselling author. It should have been a smash.

The Zoo Gang only ran to 6 episodes unlike most of the ITC series which ran to 24 to 30 episodes. Quite a few of these longer lasting series have too many episodes - the 16 episodes of Strange Report seems about right to avoid repeating the same basic story in the same series but enough to build up some character development - and arguably 6 was not enough for The Zoo Gang as 2 of the four main characters as played by Brian Keith and Barry Morse (both more than capable performers) hardly make it to a second dimension.

The premise is though a good one. 4 former comrades in the French Resistance reunite after the man who killed one of their gang in the war turns up on the French Riviera 30 years later. The opening episode is pretty good but what follows is pretty average although I liked the last episode too. The lack of character development does not help- other than John Mills whose code name had been the Elephant ( he never forgets) I cannot tell you the animal each of the other three main characters was given although Lilli Palmer as the bar owning mother of a senior policeman is good as the best written of the characters. Mills is pretty good too and is very much the star. The two younger regulars as played by Michael Petrovich ( the policeman son of Palmer but an actor I had forgotten) and Seretta Wilson fare even less well than Keith and Morse. Miss Wilson in particular seems a pointless addition unless you think looking good (which she does) is enough.

The stories stroll along at a leisurely pace with plenty of shots demonstrating that the series was filmed in a foreign country - the third episode, The African Misfire, in particular feels like a half hour story stretched out to fill a longer slot- and the only two episodes which really grip are the first and last both of which hark back to the gang's wartime activities. Admittedly the second episode, Mindless Murder, does feature a bravura guest star appearance from the great Ingrid Pitt but otherwise the episode just feels like a rehash of an episode of the Roger Moore era The Saint called a Better Mousetrap. The only other guest stars of note are Peter Cushing and Roger Delgado who died in a car accident not long after filming with even normally reliable stalwarts like Philip Madoc, Bernard Kay and Ann Lynn don't make too much of an impression.

The McCartney's theme tune is not one of Sir Paul's ( or ITC's) more memorable efforts either. Like the show itself, it's nothing more than okay.

The Zoo Gang is less well remembered than some of its ITC predecessors and unlike , for examples, Department S and The Baron it does not really deserve to be remembered more- all these shows have a certain 'of their time' feel but I have a feeling that even in 1974 the Zoo Gang felt dated.

It should have been better.

Doctor Who: The Timeless Children (2020) Season 12, Episode 10

Flawed but not a disaster

[7/10 · 4 March 2020]

I had high hopes of this episode as after a very poor opening 4 episodes the series has picked up a bit. I always found the cybermen scarier than the daleks and there was that small matter of the other doc from episode 5. Episode 9 had some intriguing scenes set in rural Ireland which further whetted my appetite.

As it was the cybermen were a bit underused and whilst the revelation of what had been going on in Ireland was not what I expected the exposition was so brief that the scenes there from episode 9 seem like so much padding.

As it was the episode contained a terrible performance by the Master which increasingly resembled that of Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. The explanation of who the Timeless Children seemed at its heart to be little more than an explanation as to why there have been more than 12 incarnations of the doctor. But it moved along at a good clip and there were some scary bits in the show's grandest traditions

The ending was clever, a proper cliffhanger, but the show needs fewer companions and a far more consistent standard of script to survive.

Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (2018) Season 11, Episode 6

Well I liked it.

[9/10 · 11 November 2018]

The series has been a mixed bag to put it midly. But the two episodes that could have been catastrophically bad have been by far the best- the best for many years in fact.

Superb.

Detective Montalbano: Un covo di vipere (2017) Season 11, Episode 1

A sordid return to form

[8/10 · 3 September 2017]

Montalbano returned to British screens a couple of weeks ago and the episodes shown before last evening's were disappointing, reinforcing the belief that the Sicilian based show is nothing more than a Mediterranean Taggart. The Nest of Vipers promised more of the same when Catarella phoned Salvo Montalbano early in the show the oafish policeman really did say 'There's been a murder!' causing me to fear that this was going to be another bland, ludicrously over-tortuous episode but instead this edition turned out pretty well.

The case Salvo, Fazio and Mimi were asked to investigate was tortuous- well it would be kind of pointless if it were not- and concerned the murder of a successful local businessman who turns out to have been a ghastly and depraved man. The clues as to the killer were honestly left and cleverly the screenplay allowed the viewer to learn 'whodunnit' before the detectives did. I am slightly disturbed on a personal level that I had been able to think what Salvo and co were not as this was a really sordid revelation.

There were one or two flaws in the episode- the conversation between the police commissioner and Montalbano had some of the awkward attempts at comedy which can blight the show but there was not too much of Catarella- instead he was restricted to his early call and his inability to open a door (which is funny anyway.) Better still Mimi Augello was shown to be more than the professionally inept clown with an overworked libido he has been in the two previous episodes. The latest incarnation of Montalbano's girlfriend, Livia, may not be as physically striking as the previous version- or the equivalent in the The Young Montalbano-but she was much better in this episode too and not the blonde, bland space filler the character has sometimes been.

This programme has often overly relied on the grumpy good nature of its hero and the sensual delights on display - the beautiful scenery and architecture, the lovely food that Salvo eats and the apparently never ending supply of glorious women on show. The Nest of Vipers had plenty of all the above but had an edge that is often missing from the adaptations of pretty good novels. This was at times uncomfortable viewing - never more so than when various men look at the pictures of his lovers secretly taken by the victim -and the better for being so.

Twin Peaks: Part 8 (2017) Season 1, Episode 8

As bewildering as anything you'll ever see

[10/10 · 29 June 2017]

I think my heading sums up how I feel about this episode and it is hard to add much to it. But I'll try and articulate just something of how I feel about this episode - which I have now watched twice.

The opening scenario where Bad Cooper gets shot before being restored to life by some spectral woodsmen is weird enough but pretty much fits in with the previous seven, brilliant, episodes. But then things gets weirder by far with amongst other things a re-creation of the detonation of the first A-bomb, odd people in some sort of theatre 'creating' Laura Palmer, more spectral woodsmen - including one who is looking for someone to provide him with a match - and a disgusting half insect/half amphibian that crawls inside a sweet teenage girl as she sleeps. It all apparently makes no sense but I think it probably is telling us more about the origins of 'Bob' and showing us the start of the journey that leads to Washington State and Laura's murder than the rest of the two series have managed combined. Add to that the apparent, occasionally revolting action also says something about the evils of what went on in the 1940s and 50s in America whilst simultaneously retaining great affection for the America of those decades. But I could be wrong. Lynch does not go in for spoon feeding his audience.

I genuinely don't think I am clever enough to understand all that Lynch is saying here but I am glad he is trying to say whatever it is he's saying. This is rare in television at any time and probably the only other television show of any merit in which the creator has been given such carte Blanche to present a non-simplistic, deeply uncosy vision was Patrick McGoohan's final episode of the Prisoner - a finale that alienated millions when it was first broadcast. I guess many will tune out of Twin Peaks after episode 8. I suspect and hope that is their loss but also hope that the next ten episodes aren't too like this one either. But whatever this was a damn fine episode.

The Persuaders! (1971–1972)

A very enjoyable show

[10/10 · 20 March 2017]

The Persuaders starred Tony Curtis -an authentic Hollywood star - and Roger Moore who was just about Britain's biggest TV star after The Saint. It first showed during the late summer of 1971 and finished its first run in the February of the following year. It was broadcast on a Friday evening and was unmissable. It was repeated a couple of times in the seventies then disappeared for years. It was one of those programmes that had a nostalgia surrounding it almost as soon as it disappeared and I can remember in the late eighties having conversations with friends about the opening credit sequence, the John Barry theme tune, the cars, the gorgeous female guests and the episode where Tony Curtis turns up in drag at the end.

I can remember it cropped up in the Channel 4 season TV Heaven - introduced by the great Frank Muir- with the series opener- Overture- being broadcast. The BBC ran it in the mid90s and in a time of Cracker,Between the Lines, NYPD Blue and Trainspotting it seemed a bit lightweight and a bit jokey. But I saw the whole thing again recently and was pleasantly surprised at how good it still is.

The opening credits are as good as I remember them - a genuine masterpiece of editing- and Barry's theme tune though more serious in tone than many of the episodes which follow is a classic too. I had remembered from its last run 20 odd years ago that too many of the episodes veered too close to comedy but now in episodes like The Man in the Middle - with Terry-Thomas guesting- and A Death in the Family the humour seems right. Of course some of the episodes are a bit naff- the Gold Napoleons may have the considerable benefit of having Susan George in it but it is really not that great and Nuisance Value and Anyone Can play are pretty weak too. Mostly though the stories are less comedic and contrived than the show's camp reputation has it - it was once memorably spoofed by Harry Enfield as the Playboys- with Someone Like Me, The Morning After and the final episode Someone Waiting being especially good.

Legend has it that the two stars did not get on well - though neither ever said so- but they looked to be having a whale of a time. Curtis is a star of at least two cinema classics and although his hair colour seems to change between episodes he is fine as he usually was. Moore though is the real revelation. He is now looked on as something of a joke - largely because he overstayed his time as Bond and his increasingly lazy performances in the Saint - but here he is terrific as the privileged, titled Brett Sinclair.

The Persuaders is not perfect but if you are in need of cheering up and some glamour it comes close to perfection

The Baron (1966–1967)

Largely forgotten ITCer

[7/10 · 26 November 2016]

I like the old ITC action series of the 60s and very early 70s.

I am old enough to remember the later shows such as the Persuaders and Jason King from when they were first broadcast and can remember when I was 6 or 7 being allowed to stay up to watch Danger Man, The Prisoner and The Champions. By the mid to late 70s when colour TV became commonplace these old shows were re-broadcast and I became familiar with all of them. They were quick moving, had great punch ups and were suffused with then contemporary anxieties about the Cold War, hard drugs and the length of women's skirts. Most of the shows re-ran again - I think on the BBC- in the mid 90s and then in the middle of the noughties some turned up on ITV 4. There was one which did not ever seem to turn up again and that show was the Baron.

I only caught up with the show in recent times when I caught a few episodes on You Tube. Most of the episodes I saw were enjoyable enough - even the Rome set one with Peter Arne as a Mafia Capo which gets a low rating here was a perfectly decent way to spend 50 minutes.

The problem with The Baron is though that it is just a bit, well, unremarkable. The stories are fine but are less crisp than Danger Man or Man in a Suitcase or even Department S. It is nowhere near as ludicrous as Randall & Hopkirk or the Champions or as downright awful as Jason King but the lack of gimmicks or bad moustaches works against it's reputation. The theme music written by Edwin Astley is clever but not as memorable as the same composer's themes for the Saint or Department S. The title character is played by Dana Andrews' brother Steve Forrest and he's fine but he lacks the panache of Roger Moore's Templar even if he is a better actor.

The premise is not a bad one - a Texan exiled called John Mannering lives in London where he runs a high class antique business and his business takes him round the world (and even to Scotland!) and in the early episodes he does work for British Intelligence with whom he enjoys an ambivalent relationship. These early episodes are pretty good as they usually feature Colin Gordon as the Baron's Intelligence handler. But from episode 9 onward almost until the end the connection with espionage is ignored and many of the episodes are pretty much interchangeable with the then contemporaneous The Saint.

The early episodes feature an actor called Paul Ferris who plays Mannering's PA David Marlowe. The shows backers in the States apparently did not like Ferris/Marlowe and he is pretty much dropped from episode 8 onward to be replaced by Sue Lloyd's character Cordelia who is transformed from being a cog in the British intelligence machine (as presented in a couple of early episodes) to being Mannering's female PA. Lloyd was fairly hot property at that time after her performance in the classic The Ipcress File and she was a decent actress. She also looks great but that is pretty much all she does as there is not one episode where she could not have been replaced by any one of the numerous other talented, beautiful English actresses of the era. There seems no great chemistry between Mannering and his female PA - certainly less than there is between the Baron and David Marlowe- nor does she seem to be a romantic interest as Mannering seems to be still playing the field. In short in most of her appearances Lloyd is wasted.

Forrest is fine though. Although he is, unlike Templar, always on the side of the Angels the character is street smart and convincingly tough with an almost noirish edge to him - unlike all the ITC heroes except Drake and McGill I get the impression Mannering is a man who exists away from his adventures - it's a pity we do not see more of his hinterland. And he drives a great car- the glorious Jensen CV8 that was one of my own favourites as wee boy.

6 out of 10 is maybe a wee bit low - 6 2/3s seems about right. Not a classic show but better than its obscurity suggests it is

Smashie and Nicey, the End of an Era (1994 TV Movie)

When Harry and Paul ruled the world

[9/10 · 14 August 2016]

I had not seen this show for twenty years until the BBC rebroadcast it in 2015 and it brought back memories of the era when this show was made in early 1994.

The two stars of this programme were riding high at that time. Enfield had broken nearly a decade earlier, first at the kebab selling philosopher Stavros, then as the signature character of 1980s greed 'Loadsamoney' and in the exquisite South Bank Show pastiche 'Norbert Smith,a Life' before his sketch show was aired on the BBC from 1990 onward. Whitehouse had been a writer for Enfield and wrote for that BBC show but in it he also appeared in front of the camera in a variety of the show's characters. One of these characters was as the blonde, relentlessly cheery but essentially humourless, ludicrously self important DJ Mike Smash (Smashie) in a series of skits with fellow DJ Dave 'Davenport' Nice (Nicey) - a ludicrous, pompous, oaf played by Enfield.

That Enfield show was the best thing either man ever did- it was certainly better than the slightly later 'Harry Enfield and Chums'or the much later 'Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul' and it starred characters like the Old Gits and the irritating man who would announce 'Only Me!' but it was those two prattling, inane disc jockeys who provided the shows funniest moments - and for the first time since Monty Python provided sketches which young men in pubs could recite verbatim.

Smash and Nice worked at the fictional Fab FM which was a very thinly disguised take on the BBC's flagship pop music station Radio 1 which had been on the air since 1967. Radio 1 was very popular - it was the only truly nationwide show broadcasting pop music in what was a glorious epoch for British pop music and the station's DJs were very well known and, for a time, very popular. But the station was never 'hip' and many of its biggest names were by bywords for all that was naff and patronising about a broadcasting organisation that had a very ambivalent attitude to pop and rock music and those who listened to it. Millions listened to Edmunds, Bates, Read, Travis and the rest but only because there was precious little alternative on the airwaves.

Enfield and Whitehouse were very much part of that generation who had listened to but also slightly despised Radio 1 and Smashie and Nicey were their 'tribute' to the station. Smash is superficially based on Tony Blackburn - the man who was the very first voice heard on the station- and Nice on Alan Freeman but in truth the characters are an amalgam of the most long serving DJs on the station like Steve Wright, Noel Edmunds ( both Smash) and Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates, Mike Read and to a lesser degree Tommy Vance (Nice)- interestingly Blackburn and Freeman appear in 'The End of an Era'but the others did not. I recall the wretched Travis - an endlessly wacky but utterly humourless buffoon sounding off about Enfield and Whitehouse's creations in Q Magazine.

Radio 1 overhauled itself in 1993 with many of the above named being ditched as if in reaction to Smashie and Nicey. Enfield and Whitehouse had already tried to drop their two alter egos but the demise of so much of what they plainly despised seemed to good an opportunity to miss as well as allow the pair to draw a line under their own most famous characters.

Some of the jokes and the skits in 'The End of an Era' work better than others. The 'Top of The Pops' send ups are bang on the money and Nicey's spoof ad for 'Deptford Draylons' although an obscure reference for anybody born after 1967 or so is very funny. The intermingling of the two characters with archive film mostly works too but really Bill Grundy interviewing the Sex Pistols is funny enough in its original version and whilst taking the mick out of Kenny Everett at the time the man was dying is on the boundaries of taste it would surely have been Smashie who would thought he was a great comedian and not Nicey . The 'Peeping Tom' style footage from Smash's childhood are excellent and although the 'Tessa!'reference caused Enfield to apologise to Tony Blackburn it is nevertheless very, very funny. Overall far more comes off than not and unexpected depths are found for both men.

Enfield and Whitehouse were at their zenith here and never worked together quite as well again and in this show there are suggestions that their partnership was only slightly less fraught than the two characters they mock here. In one scene the DJs -supposedly 'great mates'- score points of each other by claiming to be slightly more popular than the other. In the early nineties there were suggestions in the media that Enfield was less than happy that his underling was thought to be funnier and more talented than the headline star. This may or not have been true but it is worth remembering that Whitehouse' next project was 'The Fast Show' which did not feature Enfield and was considered to be superior to Enfield's own show (which still had Whitehouse in it) that was broadcast in the weeks before Whitehouse's project. Near the end of 'The End of an Era' a sozzled, whisky sipping Nice tells us he hates 'Smashey' and it was easy for some to think that this was Enfield speaking and not Dave Nice.

'Smashie and Nicey - the End of an Era' is very much of its time I suppose - many of the jokes and characters spoofed will mean nothing to anybody under the age of 40. But if you were there at the time it was one of the climax of a gloriously funny, sarcastic send up of an institution that was so deserving of ridicule.

Department S (1969–1970)

Better than you think

[7/10 · 30 July 2016]

Department S has a rather poor reputation these days and probably has the worst reputation of the ITC action shows of the mid to late 60s and very early 70s. It has not to the best of my knowledge been shown on British television- terrestrial or digital channels- since the late 1990s whereas almost all of the others are shown regularly on ITV4 even now. There are reasons that have precious little to do with the quality of the actual show that see it being regarded almost as the runt of the litter it was part of and aside perhaps from The Persuaders the programme - or at least its most famous character- is the most parodied of the ITC action shows

It certainly isn't the best of those programmes - the Prisoner and probably Man in a Suitcase are better - but on a recent viewing of several episodes I would suggest that it is far from the worst. Unlike the roughly contemporaneous Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and the Champions the show is not based on a ludicrous premise and although the stories are hardly gritty realism a la Line of Duty they do just about possess some credibility. Some episodes such as the opener Six Days, series 1's The Man in the Elegant Room and Series 2's The Shift That Never Was are pretty solid thrillers and whilst series 1's The Pied Piper of Hambledown feels like a Steed/Peel era episode of the Avengers it is still very good.

There are faults in the show obviously. The team's boss, Sir Curtis Seretse (played by Denis Alaba Peters) is a far more interesting leader than Anthony Nicholls' Tremayne in the Champions ever was but he is underused and the female member of the team Annabelle Hurst (Rosemary Nicols) often seems marginalised. She is not there as eye candy in the way that Alexandra Bastedo and Annette Andre often seemed to be in R & H (D) and the Champs respectively - but whilst it's a decent enough idea to have a hardworking, female computer expert as something like the brains of the operation her character is pretty under-developed.

Joel Fabiani as the straight man - but not quite- of the team, Stewart Sullivan is actually okay most of the time precisely because although Fabiani plays him straight there is obviously a humorous fellow in there. There are hints of some feelings between Annabelle and Stewart but mostly Sullivan is a professional and the show is the better for that.

The show is best remembered though because of the character Jason King played by Peter Wyngarde. When those smart-aleck comedians make allusions to the show what they refer to is King/Wyngarde. With his crushed velvet Zapata moustache the character is very much of his time visually but actually that was how men who though they had style looked those days- even big rough, tough footballers like Derek Dougan tried to look like our Jason (though not perhaps on the pitch).

A very unfortunate incident in Wyngarde's private life inevitably makes King's predilection for glamorous females seem a bit unlikely but trust me until the follow up series 'Jason King' ( which really was terrible) and the aforementioned incident women really did fancy Wyngarde and men thought he was way cooler than, say, staid old Roger Moore. And the thing is Wyngarde is mostly great as King. Few actors have ever been as convincing as Wyngarde at playing an almost permanently sozzled character and he delivers some sharp lines as though they were his own. He might now be seen as being a ludicrously camp figure but most of the time he plays it as straight as he can- a vain, flawed, erudite man living on his wits and who knows, not even very deep down, he is no super-hero.

Department S is not a great programme and having had the courage to give the team a black leader and a female lead who is not just there because she looks nice it didn't do enough with what were for the time bold ideas. Fabiani and especially Wyngarde get the best lines and the best scenarios and look to be having a whale of a time making it and they make it watchable. The best thing about the show should not be the most scorned thing about it- quite the reverse

Here Come the Double Deckers! (1970– )

Occasionally inspired, often irritating

[7/10 · 11 July 2016]

I know that they show debuted in 1970 but I think that in Scotland we did not get Here Come The Double Deckers until early 1971 when it aired on Friday afternoons- possibly in the classic 5 to 5 Crackerjack slot- though on its reruns it was very much a staple of Saturday mornings. It disappeared for year after the late seventies before it turned up again, on Saturdays and on ITV in the early 1990s.

The premise of the show was an appealing one - a gang of children who meet up in a junkyard that is filled with all sorts of , well, junk as well as what remains of a red London bus. The gang of seven has a natural leader, Scooper, ( with Spring as his second -in-command), a mother hen, Billie, a nerdy clever-clogs, Brains, a butt of the jokes called Doughnut, and a mascot figure, the much younger Tiger. There was one other Double Decker, Sticks, whose role was less defined - he was American and that was it for him. The one adult who appeared in almost every episode was Albert who was a street sweeper who seemed to be the kids main contact with the outside world.

The children existed in a world that was their own- they seemed to have no parents, siblings or school and many of the episodes are confined to the yard and the street outside. Two of the best episodes were when the gang venture into the wider world - once when they visit a country house that seems to be haunted and another when they enter a go-cart designed by Brains in a race against some young bikers. I was surprised to learn that there were only 17 episodes made although reading the synopsis of each I realise I can remember bits of almost all of them. The two worst episodes were the one when they encounter a protest singer and reinvent him as 'The Cool Cavalier' and another where Tiger befriends a One Man Band who eventually plays the Royal Variety Performance. The good episodes were funny and spirited but the bad ones were cloyingly sentimental.

The show was set in London and aside from Sticks - Bruce Clark- the cast and guest actors were all British but at times the show has a distinctly American feel. Confectionery is referred to as 'candy' and not 'sweets' as it would have been in early 70s Britain whilst in one episode Scooper returns to the the lair from a game of football in the park carrying a helmet used in the American version of the game- in 1970 American Football was hardly known in Britain with the round ball game if anything even more popular than it is now. The music and the relentless cheeriness of the actors never quite sat right with me in grey, cynical Britain and the tone was more Southern California than Sarf London.

And yet despite the misgivings I had then (and now) it is hard not to think fondly of the show. The cast was often better than the material- Peter Firth (Scooper) became a fine actor in adulthood and Gillian Bailey ( Billie) as the feisty, tomboyish Billie was a decent actress too- and the casting of a black actor- Brinsley Forde as Spring- was a bold move for its time.

Here Come the Double Deckers was very much of its time I suppose but it was fun all the same.

The Avengers: The House That Jack Built (1966) Season 4, Episode 23

Just About the Best of Series 4

[9/10 · 18 April 2016]

This episode is not as famous The Cybernauts and nor does it have the unforgettable image of Diana Rigg wearing an outfit straight out of a Velvet Underground song in the way that A Touch of Brimstone has but it is a superior episode to both- and they were both very, very good.

Emma Peel (Rigg) learns that she has inherited a mansion from an Uncle Jack- whom she cannot even remember and decides to take a break from Steed ( Patrick McNee) developing his holiday snaps and visit her stately pile. On the way down she encounters an overgrown boy scout ( Michael Wynne) whom she drops off at the gate of her inheritance. When Mrs Peel enters the mansion she enters a surreal world of moving floors, passageways that lead to a room in the centre of which is a glass case inside which is a machine emitting a regular beam of light and a strange noise.

Once Emma begins to work out what is going on the episode things gradually begin to return to something approaching reality and the reason why she has been brought to this place - a sacked former employee seeking revenge by building a giant computer that will drive her insane as she tries to escape- is I suppose fairly banal but as so often with this show the occasional plot holes are glossed over by the sheer inventiveness and originality of the writing and the superb performances of Ms Rigg and her fellow prisoner, an escaped convict (Griffith Davies) who has already gone pretty mad. Good too is Michael Goodliffe as the now dead Keller who has arranged this, the most devilish of all hauntings.

There are some fisticuffs between Rigg and Davies but mostly this is about Mrs Peel showing her greatest asset- her intelligence. She works it out with precious little help from Steed who arrives on the scene pretty much as she is routing the machine.McNee was obviously the mainstay of the show and he does get the best line as quoted elsewhere on the shows entry here but mostly he takes a back seat and the show hardly suffers as a result.

The Avengers was at its peak in this the first of the Emma Peel series and this episode avoids some of the gimmicks and clowning that occasionally marred later shows whilst retaining the style, panache and wit that makes it alongside The Prisoner the best of the 60s Action series made by commercial television in Britain. This episode is, arguably, the pinnacle.

And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Effective, creepy British thriller

[9/10 · 17 April 2016]

I saw this film for the first time in nearly forty years recently and was surprised at how well it stood up.

When I saw it as a teenager I had thought the ending a bit corny but that the first 90 minutes up to the revelation as to identity of the killer were as tense as almost any film I had seen up to that point of my life that was not called Psycho. I have seen several tenser films since that night long ago but the ending was better than I gave it credit for too.

The plot is simple enough. Two young English girls are on a biking holiday round France and they have different agenda for their trip. One, Kathy, is blonde and there for a party and to meet blokes whilst the other, Jane, is more sensible and apparently intent on doing a mileage similar to that of a rider in the Tour De France. Kathy takes a fancy to a suave young man, Paul, in a café and when Paul follows the girls on his Lambretta and the girls stop for a sunbathe Kathy falls out with Jane at least partly we suspect because she hopes Paul will double back to meet her. Jane goes on for a while then returns to her friend and discovers that she has disappeared. Paul arrives on the scene, conveniently, and tells her that he is a detective. Gradually Jane comes to disbelieve him and flees to the office of the local gendarme. Paul tracks her down and she escapes his desperate, threatening attempts to speak to her. She finds Cathy's dead body, bashes Paul on the head and rushes into the arms of the gendarme and then realises that he, not Paul, is the killer. The film ends with two more girls on bikes cycling through a rain storm whilst a police car heads towards the crime scene.

The film looks great, the scenes of these two attractive young women cycling through the sunlit corn fields are idyllic and the growing menace is very well done. We know something has happened but not quite what. The locals seem an increasingly bizarre lot partly because the lack of subtitles makes us identify with an increasingly anxious Jane as we have no idea if they are hostile or not. And that damn Paul keeps turning up when he shouldn't.

As I watched the film again I was reminded of the later Franco-Dutch classic Spoorloos ( The Vanishing) whilst the discovery of Cathy's body is like Jamie Lee Curtis in the wardrobe near the end of the original Halloween. And Soon The Darkness lacks the psychological insights of The Vanishing and is not as genuinely scary as Carpenter's slasher masterpiece but it is well done.

Paul is played by Sandor Eles who was for many of us best remembered as Mr Paul the Maitre'D in the chronically bad soap Crossroads but he is fine here and John Nettleton as the gendarme is convincing and a million miles from his affable gossipy mate of Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister. The two girls are good too. Michelle Dotrice as Kathy is best remembered as Frank Spencer's wife Betty but she looks good and is credible as the slightly sillier girl whilst Pamela Franklin is terrific as she gets more and more scared.You never stop wanting her to find her friend and when she is saved at the end I breathed a sigh of relief.

And Soon The Darkness is not a great film though it certainly deserves a better reputation with critics for the 'guides' who seem to have based their sniffy reviews on the synopsis and the knowledge that the director, Robert Fuest, and writers, Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, had extensive backgrounds in pot boiler British television of the sixties and seventies. Not great but worth catching.

The Night Manager (2016–2025)

Not as bad as some think but no classic either

[7/10 · 3 April 2016]

I went into this with high hopes.

The novel is , like virtually everything LeCarre has published post Cold War ,very good as opposed to truly brilliant but the talent both in front of and behind the camera was top drawer so this could have been, like the novel, close to a classic. It was not really but it held my attention with several fine, tense set pieces although the ending was a bit cheesy.

It looked great and the contrast between the bright, shining, hot world outside London and the grey, cloistered world of Whitehall worked well.Tom Hiddleston was very good indeed and Tom Hollander as the jealous aide-de-camp to the villainous Richard Roper stole every scene he was in. The femme fatale looked nice though she was a bit lacking in variety when it came to facial expression and an uneasy, seedy Neil Morrissey may have finally escaped the clutches of being Tony from Men Behaving Badly.Olivia Coleman was okay too though I preferred her in the first series of Broadchurch and Rev.

The plot- occasional MI6 man who works as a night manager in a swanky Cairo hotel goes under deep cover to help an MI6 offshoot catch the villainous, gun running Roper whilst at home the infighting in Whitehall hampers his progress- is pretty standard stuff from LeCarre since George Smiley packed up his Circus but it all went along at a good clip.

My big real disappointment was Hugh Laurie as Roper. I may be in the minority here but I think he is a terrible serious actor and in this he was execrable - he was not remotely menacing and instead made Roper seem like a gullible buffoon who would suck his thumb when he got caught. And that transatlantic halfway between House and Lieutenant George accent really grated too.

It would be tempting to say that the Night Manager was not a classic in the way that the BBC's majestic adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People and the underrated A Perfect Spy were simply because the source novel is not as good as those three masterpieces and there is some truth in that idea but really, and leaving Laurie out of this, I think there was more to it than that. There was a slackness in some if it and although the sumptuous locations suggested a big budget having, for example, an English actor playing an American, suggested that there was some corner cutting in the budget and a certain laziness in this production.

So good but not great -though Hiddleston was the latter.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

A mixed bag

[7/10 · 30 March 2016]

This is I believe the first of the Amicus portmanteau films and like all of the others I have seen it is flawed and variable in quality but a couple of the stories are pretty good and another two are real curios.

The linking story is probably the weakest aspect of the film. Peter Cushing as the mysterious Dr Terror meets the five central characters of each of the five stories in a railway compartment - not a house at all so the title of the film is a misnomer- and shuffles his tarot cards and encourages each man to take his cards and see the story which will unfold. At the end of each sequence the man is to take a final card which will show what he must do to avoid what has happened in their tale and each chooses the death card. This is not a great device and from my memory of Tarot the death card is to signify the end of a particular phase of life or the end of a story not the death of the person who draws it. Even allowing for this misuse of Tarot symbolism the death of each of the five seems a bit harsh on at least two of the five are hardly the causes of their own misfortune. Cushing, normally one of my favourite actors, looks a bit silly too.

The first story, Werewolf, stars the now largely forgotten Neil McCallum and it is pretty routine stuff whilst Creeping Vine is just a rip-off of Day of the Triffids though it does have one or two spooky moments with good performances from the dependable Jeremy Kemp and Bernard Lee whilst the often slightly kooky Ann Bell is fine as the increasingly scared young wife of the central character Bill Rogers. The curio of this segment though is that the central character is played by Alan 'Fluff' Freeman the Anglo-Australian disc jockey whom I had forgotten had also been an occasional actor in the 1960s until I saw this film for the first time in decades six or seven years ago. He is okay but he was a better DJ.

Voodoo is the worst tale of the five featuring as it does Roy Castle at his most irritating - which is considerable- but there is a real bonus for fans of British Modern Jazz with the Tubby Hayes band doing a couple of pretty strong numbers. Castle himself was a jazz trumpeter but I am not sure whether he plays on the soundtrack of these scenes and certainly at one point when he is blowing away like a hurricane there is no sound of trumpet. The tale itself is hackneyed and more than a touch racist.

Disembodied Hand is the best of the five stories and is so by some distance. Christopher Lee plays Franklyn Marsh who is a narcissistic art critic. During an exhibition of the Avant garde artist Eric Landor- played by Michael Gough- Marsh produced several pithy phrases to rubbish Landor's work to the delight of the critic's sycophantic acolytes before the artist trumps his sternest critic by showing that work praised by Lee's character was actually done by a chimpanzee. Marsh is stung by this public humiliation and eventually runs over Landor causing the artist to lose a hand. Unable to paint Landor kills himself and possibly tormented by guilt Marsh is haunted by the disembodied hand which follows him everywhere. Eventually the hand causes Marsh to crash his car causing and the accident leaves him blind- and unable to work. It is a neat enough morality tale and the brief appearance of the delightful Isla Blair would lighten a wet November morn but the real highlight is Lee who is brilliant here –possibly his best performance until The Wicker Man. The arrogance of Marsh is one of Lee's trademarks but he does snivelling fear really well here too.

The final tale, Vampire, stars Donald Sutherland as Bob Carroll a doctor returning to practise in the US after marrying a glamorous young French woman played by Jennifer Jayne (who was English I think). Prompted by the advice of his older colleague Dr Blake (Max Adrian) it begins to dawn on Carroll that his lovely wife is in fact a vampire causing havoc in her new hometown. Eventually after some bidding by his colleague, Dr Carroll carries out the old stake through the heart trick on his wife and is arrested by the police who believe he is a madman as Blake dismisses the notion that he has had anything to do with the slaying. It is a bit corny that Blake turns out to be the vampire himself but it is slickly done – Freddie Francis directs all the 5 stories rather well in fact- and Sutherland is, as he usually was, very good whilst Adrian is good too.

The final scene where those on the train/house are revealed to be already dead became something of an Amicus trademark and it is not particularly well done here – certainly in comparison with the generally superior Tales From The Crypt- and is a rather bland ending to a film that is short on gore but strong on atmosphere.

The Saint: The World Beater (1969) Season 6, Episode 20

Bye Bye Roger

[6/10 · 16 February 2016]

I have to confess to having something of a personal nostalgia for this episode of the long running series starring the then future 007 Roger Moore and that is that it was the first programme I ever saw on cable television in my own house. The new toy had 60 channels where once there were but 4 but on the day it was installed this was the one thing I found on the new stations that was in anyway watchable.

It is now barely watchable although it is not without interest as it is the last ever episode made of the programme. The final series had a new, less memorable, arrangement of the theme tune and some of the stories were more humdrum than the fanciful tales of previous series as most are set in England and have stories that are grittier than those in the preceding five series.

This story set in the world of rallying is rather different from one of the Saint's previous forays into the world of motor sport that featured women motor drivers (including Kate O'Mara sporting a really bad attempt at an Italian accent as well as a hit-man whose modus operandi recalled Kubrick's gunman in The Killing). The World Beater is far less fanciful. I would not quite say that you can smell the engine oil but this is about as near to realism as ITC's take on Templar ever got and it is none the worse for it.

The tale revolves around two feuding cousins- George and Justin both of whom have developed cars that they have entered into a rally sponsored by a millionaire named Laker ( the ever excellent George Cooper). George has hired Templar but his car is sabotaged during a test run by Justin's latest girlfriend, Kay Collingwood ( played by Patricia Haines).Laker insists, much to Justin and Kay's chagrin, that Templar take over driving duties of Justin's car known as the Sentinel

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing Templar ropes Kay- a con artist with whom Templar has had some past, possibly romantic, dealings- into being his navigator. Templar does of course win and then reveals that he had arranged for the original Sentinel engine to be replaced by the engine from George's spare car meaning that George and not Justin has won after all.

This is pretty routine stuff and I doubt whether many people could not see the twist coming in February 1969 and there are one or two stupid moments - not least the actress playing Kay's slightly dopey personal assistant, Dilys, obviously having no idea how to type as she is hitting the same two keys throughout - but Patricia Haines is far less of a dolly bird than was usual for the show and although John Ronane is too sympathetic an actor for the role as the devious Justin he gives it some pathos the writers may not have expected. And Moore is, as he often was, fine. Not a hair out of place, debonair and better than he usually was as Bond.

There were far better episodes of this show than this one - not least the one I mentioned that had Kate O'Mara in it- and it is surprising that the producers chose it to bring down the curtain on the series ( I do not think they were sure that it would be the last episode of all). But despite the occasional silliness it is hard to dislike it.