The Adventurer (1972) episode 17: The Solid Gold Hearst

The Solid Gold Hearst flirts with the idea of being the series’ horror themed episode, as police inspector Farley (David Weston) prowls around a dark and misty Highgate cemetery before entering a crypt and attempting to prise open a coffin. At first glance it would appear that we’re knee deep in Hammer horror territory, but instead of the coffin containing Christopher Lee, its contents are revealed to be gold bullion, and instead of being set upon by Dracula’s female followers, Farley is discovered by a group of sinister undertakers. Headed by Wyvern (Sydney Tafler) this unfriendly bunch are actually gold smugglers who’ve only been masquerading as undertakers, and the fact that he has now uncovered their secret means that Farley might have been better off discovering Dracula in that coffin after all.

From Highgate cemetery we then cut to the old American West, where honest, god fearing townsfolk are being bothered by rampaging outlaws who are looting and burning down the town. Thankfully, pistol packing sheriff Gene Bradley is on hand to restore some law and order to this place. Just when you think this show has flipped its lid big time, this is all revealed to be part of the latest movie Gene is working on at the moment. Gene looks to be having a whale of a time starring in this cut price Western and throwing his male co-stars about, he even gets carried away and accidentally flips the assistant director over his shoulder at one point as well. In fact, Gene is having so much fun that as a result he can’t be arsed saving the world this week, and aside from chipping in a bit of advice over the phone, largely leaves this episode’s heroics to the ‘New Adventurers’ trio of Mr Parminter, Diane and Gavin.



When a TV episode opens with a character we’ve never heard of before being placed in mortal danger, usually it means the next time they show up will be when they are dead. While The Adventurer never likes to play by the rules, even so it is surprising to then find Farley alive and well, and reporting back to Mr Parminter about his pre-credits encounter with the phoney undertakers. Exactly how Farley managed to escape from the crypt that the undertakers locked him in at the end of the pre-credits scene remains a mystery, presumably known only to the cutting room floor.

What with Farley in line for some well-earned leave (and never to be heard from again) Mr Parminter teams up with the two agents who happen to be on the ‘duty roster’ that day…which happens to be Diane and Gavin. Incidentally, if Mr Parminter has a ‘duty roster’, this of course begs the questions…just how many Adventurers does he have on the payroll? Acting on Gene’s advice, The New Adventurers make their way to a London wharf, but with Mr Parminter in charge things quickly descend into chaos, with Diane getting trapped on board the ship that is carrying the gold bullion to Belgium.

By this stage in The Adventurer, Gene and Parminter seem to have done a complete reversal on their original roles in the show. Now it is Parminter as the wannabe hero and man in the field, while Gene assumes the role of the short tempered boss barking orders to underlings over the phone. Needless to say, it doesn’t reflect too well on Gene Bradley that he favours acting in some schlocky looking Western (complete with fake cacti) over helping out his supposed friends. The pursuit of the gold bullion relocates the action to Antwerp, where with his usual bad timing Parminter has just missed the gold bullion being transported from the ship. It’s not all bad news though, as Diane turns up safe and well, having managed to avoid detection whilst on the ship by passing herself off as one of the guys. Ever had the burning desire to see Catherine Schell dressed up as a Belgian fisherman? Well then, consider this your lucky day.



The Adventurer continues to act as its own spin-off show with this episode, which carries with it all the pros and cons of any legitimate spin-off show. Negative aspects being that you’re always aware you’re watching characters who were never envisioned to be anything more than background characters now forced into becoming the main focus of attention, not helped by scripts that look understandably rushed. Still it is difficult to not feel sympathy for writers of The Adventurer, who initially must have thought they were on to a winner with the series, only to then have to go back to their scripts time and time again…changing the name of Stuart Damon’s character, writing more Parminter material, reducing Catherine Schell’s role…and doing more re-writes to make sure various characters were always sat down in Gene’s company. On top of all that they then had to quickly come up with all these episodes based around the supporting characters. So, spare a thought for The Adventurer writers, who must have been suffering for their art by this point.

I don’t want to dwell on the negative too much though, because rather than lazily just offer up more of the same these Adventurer episodes do use the opportunity to take the series in a very different direction. Under Parminter, The Adventurer is a more playful and tongue in cheek show, with Barry Morse gamely assuming the role of the series’ court jester. We’re into some very uncharted waters for an ITC series here, what with the lead character now being a blundering middle aged fool, who needs long suffering youthful companions to come to his aid. After being addled for so long with a star who was touchy about mocking his screen image, it comes as a breath of fresh air to see another actor jump at the chance to try his hand at comedy, with no qualms about transforming his character into a figure of fun. Make no mistake; Parminter is an incompetent force of Inspector Clouseau proportions. In my favourite scene in this episode, Parminter lectures Gavin and Diane about the importance of discretion in their job, then proceeds to follow the bad guys into a building whilst waving about a rather indiscreet film camera. He also manages to get into an argument with Gavin about how unnecessary violence is in their job, in the process alerting the bad guys to their presence and instigating a brawl between New Adventurers and the faux-undertakers.



The Spirit of ‘The Avengers’ does tend to hang over The Adventurer when Gene isn’t around. Mr Parminter’s bowler hat sporting appearance and adoption of a cane as his weapon of choice, automatically invites John Steed comparisons. The idea of the bad guys disguising themselves as undertakers adds to the Avengers-esque vibe you get from this episode. The episode’s centrepiece, a high speed chase through the streets of Antwerp, also benefits from the eccentric, very Avengers like touch of having the bad guys use a hearse to tear around the streets of Antwerp, with the New Adventurers in hot pursuit.

If I had to nit-pick about this episode, I do wish we’d have seen more of the hilarious sounding subplot in which Diane stows away on a ship by disguising herself as a fisherman. Admittedly Catherine Schell isn’t at all convincing as a man (which at the same time is precisely what is so funny about it) and maybe the powers that be felt that this was too implausible to linger on. Still as The Adventurer has now ‘discovered’ intentional comedy, the glossing over of Catherine Schell going all Yentl on us, does seem like a missed opportunity. Papa, can you hear me?

Of course we should perhaps be grateful we’re getting any Diane Marsh content at all at this point in The Adventurer, since Gene was under the impression he had been successful in getting Catherine dropped from the show. Another tricky problem the writers faced with these episodes was coming up with scripts in which Diane Marsh played a prominent role in, while at the same time making sure the character was never brought up in scenes involving Gene. In last week’s episode Mr Parminter managed to summarise his Wuppertal adventurer to Gene without ever bringing up Diane’s sizable involvement in it. While in this week’s episode Parminter does mention Diane’s name in a phone call to Gene, Gene’s side of the conversation carefully avoids giving Diane a name check in any of his dialogue. For now at least, the fact that Diane Marsh was still clocking on at Adventurer HQ remained the series’ big secret. One that Gene is kept distracted from by this week’s Wild West playtime, which allowed him to relive his youth as the star of the TV Western ‘Bat Masterson’ as he guns down the bad guys, restores law and order to the old West, and rides the high plains of Elstree. Giddy-Up!!!



As we haven’t seen too much of Gene in this episode, maybe it is only fair we should let him sing us out this week. So here is Gene’s version of ‘Moonlight Gambler’ a song that could well have been the theme tune to the Western he was working on in this episode…and before you ask…yes, this record is being played at the right speed, even if Gene’s singing makes it sound otherwise.

The Adventurer (1972) episode 16: I’ll Get There Sometime

Having left Blackpool and the clutches of Ann Somerby behind him ‘I’ll get there sometime’ finds Gene far away in Sydney Australia, but this being The Adventurer it is not long before he is soon in trouble again. Spotting two suspicious looking characters in an elevator, one of whom is concealing a gun, Gene follows them back to their hotel room where they are in the process of roughing up sitcom royalty Arthur Brough (Mr. Grainger in Are You Being Served?). Since Gene has always had a thing about coming to the aid of defenceless old men, he tricks a chambermaid into letting him into the room, then the moment the door is opened charges at Mr. Grainger’s assailants like a mad bull, which soon scares them away. However this opening scene is rather deceptive, since ‘I’ll get there sometime’ is the first in a series of Adventurer episodes that Gene barely appears in.

Rather than rest on their laurels while Gene took a holiday midway into the shooting of the series, the makers of The Adventurer seized the opportunity to make a few episodes centred around Gene’s sidekicks Mr. Parminter, Diane Marsh and Gavin. In the process re-hiring Catherine Schell, and sneaking the Hungarian giantess back into the show. Catherine having been fired from The Adventurer at Gene’s insistence for being too tall. Thus Gene only appears in these episodes in sequences shot later, which tend to keep him at arm’s length from his co-stars, especially of course, Catherine. The excuse for Gene’s absence in this episode being that he is having difficulty piloting his private jet ’88 Delta’ from Australia to West Germany, where Parminter, Diane and Gavin are currently located. A running gag in this episode being that rather than arriving in West Germany, Gene accidently pilots the jet to other far-flung parts of the globe like Bangkok, Deli and anywhere else that ITC could dig up stock footage of.

Eagle eyed viewers of the series will note that while zigzagging around the globe in 88 Delta the flask that Gene and his co-pilot are drinking from is the same flask that Ann Somerby was carrying around with her in the last episode. It is sweet that Gene is still carrying a memento of his biggest fan around with him, whilst back home Ann herself is safe and sound in her straight jacket, as a result of letting Lew Grade’s tires down. Of course it takes allot of incompetence and or tiredness to accidently pilot a jet bound for Germany to Bangkok and Deli instead, but…who knows… maybe Ann managed to slip some rohypnol into that flask before she was carted away.

On the basis of how little Gene is in these episodes, The Adventurer has the dubious honour of anticipating all those direct to DVD action films that Steven Seagal craps out these days. Y’know… the ones where Seagal is advertised as the main star, but in reality is only in the film for about five minutes, usually sat on the chair and talking on the phone to the real star of the film, who invariably is Luke Goss or some bloke you’ve ever heard of before…and will never hear of again. Far more fascinating, with regards to the history of British cult TV, is how The Adventurer –once Gene has largely been taken out of the equation- bears a resemblance to a more successful, better remembered series that would come along four years later. Once Parminter, Diane and Gavin are at the helm, The Adventurer becomes a series in which an eccentric, middle aged man from British intelligence teams up with two youthful assistants…a sexy, karate chopping female, and a suave, handsome bloke who is eye candy for female viewers. Rings a bell, doesn’t it?...kinda like The New Avengers…only four years before The New Avengers.



There is a slight connection between the two series, in that Brian Clemens wrote one episode of The Adventurer, and a far greater connection in Dennis Spooner, who devised, produced and takes ‘executive story consultant’ credit on The Adventurer, and would later be instrumental in writing and devising The New Avengers. As both Clemens and Spooner are no longer around, we can but speculate whether these Adventurer episodes planted the seed that would become The New Avengers and that The New Avengers arose from the smouldering debris of The Adventurer. However the similarities between these two series form a compelling argument for that being the case.

While Gene manages to save Mr Grainger from a beating, his assailants Ryker (Patrick Jordan) and Werner (Frank Barrie) now have their sights set on Mr Grainger’s daughter Karen (Pippa Steel). It seems that while in Australia, Mr Grainger had been conducting a mining survey (presumably on behalf of Young Mister Grace) and his report could be worth a fortune to whoever gets their hands on it first. As doddery Mr Grainger has an unfortunate habit of mailing his reports to his daughter who lives in Germany, his actions have now placed her in danger from Young Mister Grace’s deadly business rivals. Since Gene is up in the sky, it is left to Mr Parminter, Diane and Gavin (or perhaps we should call them ‘The New Adventurers’) to come to her rescue.



Okay, okay, I’ll admit it, I have been pulling your leg slightly there, Arthur Brough doesn’t really play Mr Grainger in this episode, his character is actually called Mr Dorron, but the fun of ‘I’ll get there sometime’ can be added to by re-imagining it as the Adventurer/Are You Being Served? crossover episode we never got. For some unknown reason Arthur Brough goes uncredited in this episode, despite having a few lines of dialogue at the beginning, and playing a character who is referenced several times over elsewhere in the episode. While it is not uncommon for unknown actors in small roles to receive no screen credit at the outset of their careers, Brough was already an established character actor by this point, and soon about to become a household name thanks to AYBS. Indicating that his no show in the credits may have been by request, rather than an error. The truth though, is probably one of many Adventurer mysteries now lost to time.

The Adventurer without The Adventurer might still have its flaws, but this does now feel like a happier show, with cast members who might conceivably be having a good time and enjoying each other’s company. An atmosphere of ‘while the cat’s away the mice will play’ is abound in this episode with each cast member gleefully making the most of the opportunity do to things they’d never have gotten away with on Gene’s watch. It is impossible not to notice the changes to Catherine Schell’s character once Gene’s back is turned. While previously Diane Marsh had been relegated to such girlish hi-jinks as going undercover as a nurse or communicating with Gene via a two way radio disguised as a hand mirror, The New Adventurers episodes find her taking an active role in fight scenes, breaking boxes over heads and KO’ing men with her handbag. Dialogue practically flaunts this hitherto suppressed side of the character, Diane taunts one of the bad guys with “aren’t you a little young to play with guns”, and even gets playfully aggressive with one of her fellow New Adventurers by remarking “Gavin, if you don’t tell us what it is all about I’m going to hit you”. This new and improved, kick-ass Diane Marsh points the way forward to both The New Avengers’ Purdey and Catherine Schell’s own role as Maya in Space 1999.

The New Adventurers episodes might not reinvent Garrick Hagon’s to the same degree, but they do undoubtedly give him the chance to step out from Gene’s shadow. After numerous episodes, the series finally gives his character a second name –he is Gavin Taylor- and there is a frisson of sacred cows being deliberately trampled underfoot when Gavin is allowed to throw a punch directly into the camera. This being somewhat of a trademark move of Gene’s, and something Gene did in the opening credits of both The Adventurer and Amos Burke-Secret Agent.



Partly filmed on location in Wuppertal, Germany, this episode no doubt had its sights set on that location due to its innovative monorail system. Wuppertal’s suspension railway, with its high-speed trains that travel using suspended rails, had been rather underutilized in films and TV over the years. A wrong that this Adventurer episode seeks to set right. Its centrepiece being Ryker and Werner’s attempted escape using the mono-rail, unaware that Gavin has positioned himself on the roof of the train whilst Diane and Mr Parminter chase after the train in her distinct, yellow coloured ‘Dianemobile’.



Realistically it would have been easier for Gavin to merely have boarded the train and hidden amongst the regular passengers. Climbing on the roof and hanging on up there is just showing off. Still having gone all the way to Wuppertal to film this sequence, the makers of The Adventurer would have been fools not to have milked that mono-rail for all its worth. It is also hard to begrudge the frequently underused Garrick Hagon this shot at a James Bond moment whilst bossman isn’t around.

However of all three of the New Adventurers, the character who develops the most over the course of the series has to be Mr Parminter himself. Initially a dull, authority figure who tended to only pop up at the beginning and end of episodes, a likely combination of other characters being slowly written out of the show and Barry Morse’ dissatisfaction with such a limiting role resulted in Parminter becoming a greater presence in the show. Not to mention his reinvention as the show’s resident buffoon. Describing Parminter as a ‘chinless wonder’, Morse leapt at the chance to create a character who was the polar opposite of his tough, obsessive police lieutenant in The Fugitive. A ‘Boy’s Own’ obsessed public schoolboy, trapped in a middle aged man’s body, Parminter is the kind of upper class twit that Morse’s performance makes impossible to dislike. This may be the reason why much of Gene’s wisecracks and put downs of Parminter throughout the series strike such a wrong note. Had Parminter remained the pompous, headmaster type he was at the start of the series, then Gene’s attitude towards him might have been an endearing example of showing healthy disrespect to an authority figure. The more comical Parminter gets though, the more Gene’s lip towards him comes across as cruel and mean spirited.



Back when The Adventurer was repeated on ITV4 in 2005, someone noted that the sensible thing to have done would have been to write Gene out of the show at this point and hand over the keys to the series to Mr Parminter and Co. Even the episode itself makes a none too subtle case for Gene being the show’s deadwood that needed to be set adrift, illustrated by the running gag of him making a hash of getting to Germany, and the episode’s punch line, which sees Gene fall asleep during Parminter’s retelling of his Wuppertal adventure. ‘I’ll get there sometime’ proves that Parminter and Co were more than capable of carrying on Adventuring duties without Gene. A shame then that Lew Grade was such a push over when it came to former big-name stars, viewing such types as holy for ITC series and film productions, and resulting in Gene being this series’ unmovable object. The later success of The New Avengers single handily proves that this series could have had legs with its very similar formula and characters. The fact that Barry Morse, Catherine Schell and Garrick Hagon all would go on to far greater things and each achieve cult fame via Space 1999 (in the case of Morse and Schell) and Star Wars (in the case of Hagon) also invalidates any argument that those three lacked the necessary charisma to keep a TV series afloat. Media powerhouse and smart decision maker that Lew Grade was in many other respects, there is the unavoidable sense that he may have let something special slip through his hands with The Adventurer.

The general consensus between die-hard Adventurer fans –all half dozen of us- is that the New Adventurers episodes are far preferable to the later Gene dominated ones. Adventurer fandom even extends to fan-edits of the show, evidenced by this rejigging of the opening titles which portrays Morse, Schell and Hagon as the main stars and reduces Gene to guest star status. A YouTube video that has caused one- no doubt well meaning- soul to enter the incorrect tit-bit ‘when the series aired in England, Barry Morse has top billing’ into the IMDB. This isn’t actually true…but I won’t tell them if you don’t.

Luan Peters : Homage to a Seraph

As a tribute to the recently deceased Luan Peters, Tim Greaves has generously allowed me to post his 1994 publication ‘Luan Peters: Homage to a Seraph’. Which all these years later still stands as the greatest overview of her career that I’ve ever read. Many thanks to Tim for allowing me to bring this long out of print booklet to the internet, and it goes without saying R.I.P. Luan Peters (1946-2017)