Danger Man - The Complete First Season
BeforeThe Avengersand theJames Bond films, the pioneering 1960 British seriesDanger Manhelped to usher in spy-mania in Great Britain. Patrick McGoohan stars as "Drake, John Drake," an agent of NATO's secret service branch. "A messy job," he informs us, "That's when they usually call on me." Most Americans only know Drake as theSecret Agent Man, the title of thehour-long seriesthat debuted on these shores in 1964. This half-hour series never aired in the United States, making this five-disc set, containing all 39 first season episodes, essential for Brit-TV aficionados, not to mention that branch ofPrisonerdevotees who insist that the kidnapped "No. 6" is actually Drake himself. Like 007, the dapper and unflappable Drake possesses a keen wit and "animal sense of danger," and his assignments take him all over the world, from Rome and Paris to the Arabian desert. But Drake is old school. He very rarely uses a gun. He is not a womanizer. He does not possess an arsenal of cool gadgets. His missions are more gritty and realistic; classic "cloak and dagger" stuff. He foils not megalomaniacs trying to take over the world, but a rogue's gallery of embezzlers, assassins, slave traders, traitors, and the like. Also fun for Anglophiles are early glimpses of favorite British character actors, including Miss Moneypenny herself, Lois Maxwell ("Positions of Trust"); a pre-Avengers/Pussy Galore Honor Blackman ("Colonel Rodriguez"), Judy Carne,Laugh-In'sSock-It-to-Me girl ("Hired Assassin"; Charles Gray from the Bond filmsYou Only Live TwiceandDiamonds Are Forever("The Key"); and Jean Marsh ofUpstairs, Downstairsfame ("Name, Date and Place"). The jazzy score is also killer.--Donald Liebenson