The Protectors – Set One
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Episodes: B
After Sir Lew Grade’s The Persuaders wrapped up
sooner than desired, he was not going to just give up and forget about action
television. After all, he had too much
success in it. This time, Gerry and
Sylvia Anderson were on board, leaving their groundbreaking SuperMarionettes
behind for great shows like U.F.O. and Space: 1999 (both reviewed
elsewhere on this site) as well, to do an outright live-action spy show. With the producers wanting to land another
big name, they got Man From U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn to play Harry
Rule, and The Protectors was greenlighted.
A few changes were made, but the most significant change
was that each show would be made for a half-hour time slot. The half-hour lave-action show was becoming
more and more popular, staring with the Adam West Batman in the 1960s,
extending to many hit shows in the then-golden age of Saturday Morning
television. They also went to
less-expensive film stock (see technical notes below) and called in another
group of ace crew people behind the scenes.
Like The Persuaders, The Protectors was trying to pick up
where The Avengers left off, hoping to cash in on the decline, missed
opportunities and wrap-up of the series.
When the show was greenlighted in 1971, the James Bond film Diamonds
Are Forever made the Spy genre seem viable again, with Persuaders
star Roger Moore the next Bond. Could
the show take advantage of all these changes?
Joined by Tony Anholt as Paul Bouchet and Nyree Dawn
Porter as Contessa di Contini (which felt like as much of a reference to Diana
Rigg in the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as it did to
Rigg, Honor Blackman and Linda Thorson on The Avengers) to form the
private troubleshooting organization in the show, the series is off to a good
start in the pilot. Porter does not
have any extraordinary chemistry with either of her male co-stars, but when the
show is not trying to be The Avengers, it has some good ideas
going for it. The episodes for this
first season are:
Disc One:
1) 2,000
Ft. To Die
2)
Brother Hood (with guest stars Vladek
Sheybal and Patrick Troughton)
3)
See No Evil
4)
Disappearing Trick
5)
Ceremony For The Dead
6)
It Was All Over In Leipzig (silly
Eisenstein Potemkin opening)
Disc Two:
7)
The Quick Brown Fox
8)
King Con (with guest star Anton Rodgers)
9)
Thinkback (with guest star Ian Hendry)
10)
A Kind Of
Wild Justice
11)
Balance Of
Terror (with guest stars Nigel Green & Laurence Naismith)
12)
Triple
Cross (with guest star Peter Bowles)
Disc Three:
13) The Numbers Game
14) For The Rest of Your Natural…
15) The Bodyguards (with
guest star Freddie Jones)
16) A Matter Of Life & Death
17) The Big Hit
18) One & One Makes One (with
guest stars Michael Gough and Neil McCallum)
19) Talkdown
Disc Four:
20) Vocal (with guest star Shane Rimmer)
21) …With A Little Help From My Friends (with
guest star Jeremy Brett)
22) Chase (with guest star Patrick Magee)
23) Your Witness (with
guest star Stephanie Beacham)
24) It Could Be Practically Anywhere On The
Island (with guest star Vernon Dobtcheff)
25) The First Circle (with
guest star Ed Bishop)
26) A Case For The Right (with
guest star Milo O’Shea)
Brian Clemens, who masterminded the best years of The
Avengers, wrote shows 4, 9 (with Avengers veteran Ian Hendry), 20
& 22. They are among the best shows
here. Dennis Spooner wrote show 15,
while Roy Ward Baker directed show 17 (another highlight), and famous Rock film
director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Let It Be (1970), plus many concerts and
Music Videos even to this day) did the final show for the season. Despite the limits facing Reg Hill &
company, they were being very ambitious and it makes the show more watchable
than expected. Car fans will see a
1960s Mustang and a Maserati & Alfa Romeo in spots, saved for the last
episode. The last few shows were strong
and were probably saved until the end because of that.
The problem is obviously that these shows are far too
short to develop the characters, but watching them non-stop shows how the
various writers were trying to build up the show. They nearly succeeded, but some of the fight scenes do not work,
and none of the shows here were two-parters, something Batman did all
the time. Vaughn did not repeat his
Napoleon Solo character, which is a plus, and it could be argued that this
arrangement inspired The New Avengers.
That may have been a bit more successful, but this show deserved better
than it got. It is not as remembered as
it ought to be; something this DVD set should help correct.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 looks good, but has the distinction
of being the first such series to be shot in 16mm, as opposed to 35mm. You can see this in the varying color
quality at times, but like digital High Definition since the late 1990s, the
late 1960s was a time when 16mm film was beginning to become an interesting
alternative to shooting in 35mm. Rank
did the processing, and it shows in a great way, particularly in the color
richness of many shots. Many of Andy
Warhol’s films were shot that way, as well as endless Rockumentaries, so the
format and the quality of the stocks of the time were finally coming into their
own. For The Protectors, it was
a move to save money by Sir Lew Grade, but also gave the show its own unique
look. Color and detail are still often
impressive, even against the best digitally-shot video today. Having veteran cinematographer Brendan J.
Stafford, B.S.C., on board paid off big time here. Frank Watts, B.S.C., also shot shows towards the end of this season.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is a nice boost-up from the
original monophonic sound that the shows first were broadcast in. It offers no surrounds, but is not bad. The theme song is Avenues & Alleyways,
a Tom Jones sound-a-like theme song that is an instrumental in the opening and
with vocal by Tony Christie in all the end credits. Jones did the theme to the biggest of all hit Bond films, Thunderball
from 1965. Jones was still a big
mainstream hit artist, so that at least makes sense. John Cameron did the score, which is not bad, but was not
involved with the theme song. Extras
include a stills gallery on DVD 2, 3 & 4 and director John Hough does an
audio commentary on the 2,000 Ft. To Die pilot that could have went on
for hours. Though he only returned this
season to helm show 14, his insight on the series and the whole British action
cycle is mandatory listening. We can
only hope he’ll be back for the next set, which we will get to when we return.
- Nicholas Sheffo
