The Adventurer brought to book

The Adventurer didn’t exactly inspire a great deal of tie-in merchandise back in the day, there was no Adventurer jigsaw puzzle, no Adventurer board game and no cartoon strip in TV Action. John Barry’s Adventurer theme tune was however released on the Polydor label (the B-Side being Barry’s theme tune from the 1972 film ‘Follow Me’) and a tie-in novelisation of the series emerged from Pan books in 1973. Hiding behind the ‘Robert Miall’ name was one John Frederick Burke (1922-2011) an extraordinarily prolific author under his own name, as well as several other names (as well as Miall he was also Jonathan George, Martin Sands, Owen Burke, Russ Ames, Roger Rougiere). Burke also had quite the career side-line going when it came to novelizing films and TV shows. He was there at the birth of the tie-in novelisation boom of the early 1960s (his earliest efforts included novelizations of The Entertainer and Look Back in Anger) and he was still turning them out decades later. His last tie-in novelizations being a series of ‘London’s Burning’ books from the mid-1990s. Somehow along the way Burke also managed to find the time to write the source story and original script to the 1967 cult movie The Sorcerers, and appear as a contestant on the TV quiz show Mastermind, a busy life for sure.

For the Adventurer novel, Miall/Burke drew on three of the earlier Adventurer episodes ‘Return to Sender’, ‘Thrust and Counter Thrust’ and ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’, seemingly on account of the fact that all those episodes take place in Nice. Forming what could be described as ‘the Nice trilogy’. Rather than portray these as three separate short stories part of Burke’s assignment involved trying to rework these three episodes into one continuous narrative, by having each storyline flow into each other. Despite Burke’s best efforts though, only the most unobservant reader could fail to notice how the narrative stops and restarts twice over during the course of the book.

The VHS era and the popularisation of off-air TV recording in the 1980s began to spell the end for tie-in novelizations, but prior to those innovations such books remained one of few ways people could keep the memory of a film or TV show alive. By rights these books should have been rendered obsolete once the public were able to own the actual films or TV shows themselves, but tie-in novelizations aren’t entirely without their value. As these books were written to cash in on the release of a film or TV series they were often likely to have been written whilst the projects in question were on-going and be based on early shooting scripts rather than the finished product. Tie-in novelizations therefore can usually be relied upon to feature subplots, scenes and characters that for whatever reason never made the final cut of the project that they were promoting. Given the troubled nature of the production it is no real surprise that the book version of The Adventurer does also differ and divert from what made it onto TV.

Here then is a brief breakdown of how the book differs from the TV series:



What is immediately noticeable about the book is that Gene Bradley isn’t called Gene Bradley in it, rather he is ‘Gene Brady’. As to why the main character underwent this slight name change, we can but speculate. The most obvious answer is that the Brady surname would have been synonymous to audiences of the time with the notorious child killer Ian Brady, and that having a lead character in a cheery TV action series whose name evoked memories of the Moors murderers may not have been the wisest decision. It is also worth considering that, what with the series having an eye on the US market, the name ‘Bradley’ had more of an all-American feel to it than Brady.

The book begins a few scenes into the plot of ‘Return to Sender’ with Gene arriving in Nice, and being mobbed by all and sundry in a hotel lobby “Gene Brady was completely surrounded. Fingers touched him, clawed at him. Someone was breathing reverently in his left ear”. By rights amongst the crowd should be Debbie Russ’ character Debbie Pinter, but rather than a starstruck Debbie Pinter, in the book Gene is confronted by a starstruck Danny Pinter. The character being a nine year old boy in the novelisation. Danny’s obsession with Westerns, and the fact that he is dressed as a cowboy, leads onto this aborted piece of dialogue that didn’t make it to TV.



The in-joke there being that the most famous portrayal of Bat Masterson at the time was on the eponymous TV series (1958-1961), where he was played by a certain Gene Barry. Hence Gene’s slight agitation at the kid favouring John Wayne over Bat Masterson. Presumably either Gene didn’t find the joke funny, or the chance to capitalise on Debbie Russ’ ‘Here Come the Double Deckers’ fame lead to Danny undergoing a gender switch to Debbie for the TV show.

Back when we looked at the Return to Sender episode, I wondered how Burke could bring the fight scene -in which Gene slaps a man around the face with a plant then falls off a curtain rail- to the printed word. Perhaps wisely, the book diverts slightly from the TV version. Instead of a curtain rail being the reason for Gene losing the fight, in the book it is a pesky mirror that proves to be his downfall.



Physically the majority of the characters in the book match up to the actors who played them in the TV series, the book even anticipates the problem Gene would have with Stuart Damon in its description of Damon’s character ‘Vince Elliot looked, as ever, like an overgrown jockey’. The only character who doesn’t closely resemble the actor who played him is Mr Parminter, who appears to have originally been envisioned as a hugely overweight man (he is constantly described in the book as ‘podgy’ and ‘plump’ and at one point has trouble getting up from Gene’s couch). Personality wise though, Gene ‘Brady’ is a rather different character to Gene ‘Bradley’. In the book Brady manages to conceal his double life as a spy by pretending to be something of a film industry jackass. Whenever his job as a spy forces him to walk away from acting jobs, Gene covers his tracks by pretending he has fallen off the wagon, had a nervous breakdown or run into ‘creative differences’ with the filmmakers. Thus, while he gets a reputation as a famous hell-raiser and a risky, pain in the ass to employ as an actor, at the same time he manages to keep the real reason for his frequent vanishing acts from movie sets a secret. As written, Brady has more in common with such bad boy actors of the day like Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Richard Burton than the actor who eventually played him. Of course this aspect of the character is completely absent from the TV series, which favours a more squeaky clean portrayal of Gene, without a hint that his double life earns him a terrible reputation within the film industry. Absent also from the TV version, but retained in the novelisation, is a rather embarrassing subplot in which Gene gets out of an acting assignment by pretending he has contracted dysentery in Nice.



Whenever Burke’s writing expands on the Adventurer universe, the novelisation tends to get extremely meta. In the novel Gene’s acting career takes him to London where he is kept busy by playing the lead in an action packed British TV show called ‘Go Get Him’. The producer of Go Get Him being a fast talking Jewish impresario called Max Knight, a character who is err rather reminiscent of a certain Lew Grade (even the ‘Knight’ name seems to be a pointed reference, Grade having been knighted a few years earlier). It all gets rather self-referential with Burke even using the first names of actual Adventurer writers Donald James and Dennis Spooner for the much put upon writing due of ‘Don and Dennis’ who are knocking out all these Go Get Him scripts for Mr Knight.



Art also uncannily mirrors life when Gene causes problems during the making of ‘Go Get Him’, driving a regular director of the series to the bottle. A mere coincidence, or were horror stories from the set of The Adventurer filtering back to Burke and providing him with inspiration?



Burke’s most original contributions to the book are of course the chapters that link the three episodes together. After the incidents of ‘Return to Sender’ Gene has trouble concealing his double life as a spy to his girlfriend Valerie (played by Sharon Gurney in the TV episode) a character who hangs around a bit longer in the book than she does the TV series. Ever wondered how Gene met the Countess Krevisky from the episode ‘Thrust and Counter Thrust’?....Burke fills in those blanks too. After Valerie leaves for London, production of ‘Go Get Him’ switches to Nice. There Parminter cunningly arranges for a sword fighting scene in Go Get Him to be filmed outside of the Moravian embassy, knowing that this will bring Gene to the attention of the Countess Krevisky and earn him an all-important invite to the Moravian embassy.

While Gene and the Countess’ subsequent romantic interlude made it into the TV series, largely absent was much of their conversation about his singing ability. In the book, the Countess mentions being impressed by his singing in a film she saw, which leads to her asking him to perform a musical number at the Moravian embassy. Trouble is, in the book Gene is actually a fairly mediocre singer who admits to only sounding good on film due to backing singers and recording studio enhancement. In a further piece of backstory we didn’t hear about in the TV series, Gene reveals to the Countess that he turned down the role in another Max Knight TV action series called ‘The Troubadour’ due to reservations about his singing ability. (Should anyone wish to have an idea of what The Troubadour would have looked like, check out the 1958 poverty row thriller ‘Hong Kong Confidential’ in which Gene plays a spy who masquerades as a famous lounge singer).

All references to Gene being just an average singer were wiped clean from the TV series, with Gene Barry preferring to play the character as an excellent singer who can effortlessly bring the house down. In doing so, forgoing a great deal of suspense the book manages to generate over whether Gene might possibly give an awful performance, and risk both embarrassing himself and causing his motivations for being at the Embassy to come under scrutiny.



As the book appears to pre-date the issues Gene had with Stuart Damon, his character Vince is present throughout the book including its version of the ‘Thrust and Counter Thrust’ story. By the time that episode went before the camera, Damon was off the show and ‘Vince’ had become ‘Gavin’ with Garrick Hagon taking over the role. This isn’t the only name change the character underwent however, and while in the TV series Gavin goes undercover as hippie musician ‘Wild Man Jones’ in the book Vince adopts a more risqué stage name.



Concerns about TV censorship are the likely reason for why Reefer Jones was rechristened Wild Man Jones for the series. There are a few mild expletives in the book (esp. ‘bastard’) but it is hard to know whether these were in the original scripts and taken out, or whether Burke inserted them himself in order to give the book a more ‘adult’ tone. The only other scene from the ‘Trust and Counter Trust’ part of the book that didn’t make it into the TV episode involves Gene over hearing the Countess bad mouthing him to others, hurting his feelings in the process. Presumably this scene really did hurt Gene’s feelings, hence its exclusion from the TV episode.



I suspect that Catherine Schell was probably glad the following piece of dialogue never made it to TV, this is hardly a line befitting someone descended from Hungarian nobility.



Speaking of which, it has to be said that this book’s description of the characters Diane Marsh and Suzy Dolman doesn’t exactly flatter Catherine Schell and Judy Geeson.



In order to merge the plots of ‘Trust and Counter Trust’ and ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ the book introduces the character of Suzy Dolman at the Moravian embassy, where her low opinion of Gene’s singing marks the beginning of her emotionally fraught relationship with Gene. ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ is the Adventurer episode that looks to have suffered the least when it came to being rewritten to appease Gene. This part of the book plays pretty much like a straightforward transcription of the TV episode, its only serious diversion from it occurs when Gene gets Suzy out of the mock-jail he’d had Vince lock her up in. In the TV episode, Gene pretends to bribe Vince (who is dressed as a gendarme) in order to get her out of jail, but in the book Gene pretends to overpower Vince and breaks her out of the prison cell. Given Gene’s issues with Stuart Damon’s height it doesn’t require any amount of detective work to get to the bottom of why a physical confrontation between Gene and Vince was nixed by Gene for the TV version.



If truth be told, Burke probably didn’t regard writing The Adventurer novelisation as anything more than a pay check assignment. Saying that the often hilarious self-referential aspects of the book do suggest a man who was having allot of fun writing it, especially when it came to tackling the troubled production of ahem.. ‘Go Get Him’. The Adventurer book is an example of good, efficient hackwork, tailor made for sale at airports. A relatively brisk read, it is likely you could get through the entire book during just one flight, especially if you’d seen its plot(s) played out on TV a few weeks earlier. Burke’s loving descriptions of foreign holiday destinations no doubt wetting his audience’s appetite for their own forthcoming sunny adventures. Where, unlike Mr Brady/Bradley, they were hopefully left alone by giant Hungarian women with bobbing heads and far out hippie musicians with stage names that couldn’t be said on British TV in 1972.


 

The Adventurer (1972) episode 18: To the Lowest Bidder

If I’m remembering rightly there are one or two more ‘New Adventurers’ episodes still in the pipeline, but ‘To the Lowest Bidder’ marks the beginning of Gene’s return to the show. Likely filmed after Gene’s holiday mid-way into the series, this episode ushers in slight changes to Gene’s appearance. Evidentially he must have stopped off at the barbers on his hols, as his hair is shorter than before. Gene also appears to have sworn off hair dye for the second block of Adventurer shooting, as his hair begins to revert back to its natural grey in these episodes. In keeping with this new ‘mature’ look Gene’s dress sense tends to become a bit more conservative at this point, in this episode he is mainly outfitted in a dapper, tweed suit. Energy levels are slightly up here too, Gene even jumps over a small fence in this episode without the aid of a stuntman- this truly is a Gene reborn.

As well as a new hairdo, Gene is also sporting a new girlfriend on his arm, Laura (Sheila Gish) and a new set of wheels in the form of a silver Corvette Stingray, no doubt courtesy of the show’s Chevrolet sponsors. Noticeably absent from this episode is Brandon the Butler. Although we haven’t seen the last of ol’ Brandon yet, you do have to wonder why Gene keeps him on the payroll. Brandon is nowhere about when he clearly is needed, and in his absence it is Gene himself who has to do all the mundane chores that keep him from his latest love interest. Gene has to collect the milk bottles from the doorstep, answer the phone and serve up champagne for himself and Laura. Given the nightly rave-ups that Brandon must have been having while Gene was away on his holidays though, I suppose it is nothing short of a miracle that there is a drop of champagne still left in that household.

Usually it is Mr Parminter who acts as the show’s coitus interruptus on legs, and always turns up just as the Gene Genie is about to get all hot n’ seamy with his latest conquest. In this instance though, Parminter isn’t to blame for Gene not getting a bit, rather it is a phone call from an elderly civil servant called Samuel Cookson (Anthony Nicholls). We the audience know from the outset that Cookson is already at his wit’s end. Since the pre-credits sequence of this episode had found Cookson walking the streets of Brussels in a depressed state before returning home and contemplating shooting himself. As Gene is always a sucker when it comes to old men, it is a foregone conclusion that he’ll forgo horizontal pleasures with a woman in favour of flying out to Brussels to help out an old timer.



In fact Gene and Co spend so much of The Adventurer rushing to the aid of old men that arguably this series is far more deserving of the title ‘The Protectors’ than the Robert Vaughn one. After Gene takes the first plane out to Brussels and meets Cookson it transpires that it isn’t Cookson himself who needs protection, rather it is his daughter Sarah (Jane Asher) who is in danger. As to why? Well as tends to be the case with Adventurer episodes…it’s complicated. Cookson is the head of a governing body that decides which company will be awarded the contract to build ‘Europe 100’, a ginormous European super highway. In the spirit of E.U. generosity the contract will be awarded to the company that submits the lowest bid. A decision that has come back to haunt Cookson, as one particularly nefarious company has now resorted to threatening Cookson and his daughter in order to ensure the contract is awarded to them. As Gene also happens to be engaged in the bidding war for Europe 100, he too has become a person of interest to the company threatening Cookson. Laura –who in fact works undercover for this company- teams up with another of its operatives Forrester (Carl Rigg) to tear apart Gene’s muse home in search of the answer to how much he plans to bid on Europe 100. What with Gene’s house being cluttered up with the countless amount of sporting trophies he has won over the years though, it is no surprise that Laura and Forrester come up empty handed.

It is unclear why Cookson insists on Gene visiting him in Brussels in order to ask for Gene’s help in protecting his daughter…who lives and works in London!! Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Cookson to have just asked Gene to protect his daughter during their phone call, thereby sparing the need for Gene to journey from London to Brussels, then immediately take the first flight back to London. That’s ITC for you though, any excuse for some overseas location shooting.

Once we’re back in London, the action relocates to Parkington’s School for Girls, where Sarah works as a teacher to a gaggle of young schoolgirls. All of whom are of course thrilled to bits that a sex symbol like Gene walks in their midst (lest we forgot “Gene Bradley is everyone’s pin-up, Nobody Fool”). While Gene has to grin and bear being a lust object for young schoolgirls, his own attention (and libido) is focused upon the well-to-do, horse riding obsessed Sarah. Insane as it sounds, it would appear that Gene’s height ‘thing’ also extends to the animal kingdom. In scenes involving Sarah’s horse, director Val Guest tends to only cut to Gene whilst the horse is lowering its head, with Jane Asher possibly having been directed to pull on its bridle in order to get its head into such a position.



(Fun fact: the horse that was originally meant to play this role was called Stuart ‘Neigh’mon, sadly it had to be taken out and shot when it was discovered to be taller than Gene).

While Gene is getting all hot for the teacher, two further villains Carlson (David Kelly) and Johnny (John York) show up at the girl’s school with a devious plan. Rather than try and kidnap Sarah, who is being heavily guarded by Gene, they instead abduct one of the schoolgirls Lizzy (Gillian Bailey), then force Sarah into exchanging herself for Lizzy.



The Adventurer continues on its puzzling quest to be mistaken for a spin-off series from ‘Here Come the Double Deckers’, by casting yet another of the Double Deckers, Gillian Bailey. Closely following in the footsteps of Debbie Russ, who guest starred in the ‘Return to Sender’ episode. The casting of The Adventurer does suggest an attempt to target every demographic possible, using female glamour –usually in the form of ‘Au Pair Girls’ cast members- to get the dads watching, and former Double Deckers to get the kids huddled around the box to watch Gene Bradley as well.

‘To the Lowest Bidder’ also illustrates The Adventurer’s unfortunate habit of casting actors who soon after would become household names in sitcoms, often making it difficult to take them serious in these earlier, straight roles. Previous Adventurer episodes have featured Allo Allo’s Richard Marner and Are You Being Served’s Arthur Brough, and upcoming episodes feature Man About the House and The Good Life cast members playing bad guys. Here we get David Kelly as the schoolgirl abducting Carlson, shortly before he achieved fame as the one armed cook Albert Riddle in Robin’s Nest. Stupidly, a relative of mine did for many years believe that David Kelly really did only have one arm, on account of his Robin’s Nest role. So it was all rather surprising to see him with all limbs intact in The Adventurer. It wasn’t Kelly’s arms that caused problems in this episode though, rather the problem was –surprise, surprise- his height. Fortunately the writers of this episode came up with an ingenious way of writing a confrontation between Gene and Carlson whilst avoiding the height ‘thing’. Namely by having Gene rough up Carlson while Carlson is sat in a car!!



To the Lowest Bidder also brings back an element of the series that has been largely absent of late, the shameless showcasing of Chevrolet cars. The plot of this episode just so happening to require Gene to do allot of riding about in his brand new silver machine. In the process demonstrating his car’s superiority to rival brands of car when it comes to speed, breaking and the ability to run them off the road. As someone who has never regarded a car as anything more than a means to get from A to B, I must admit that the ‘car porn’ aspect of The Adventurer does often go over my head. Even so, it is impossible to deny that Gene’s new set of wheels is one impressively cool vehicle, and this episode makes good on its hidden agenda of doubling as a 25 minute advert for it.



It is all rather surprising then to see this episode feature close-ups of cars bearing logos for the likes of Opel and Vauxhall as well. While your first reaction is to wonder whether The Adventurer has started two-timing Chevrolet by endorsing other manufacturers of cars, the conspiracy theorist in me suspects something cleverly underhand is at work in this series. Whenever rival brands of car appear in The Adventurer it is usually in a highly negative context. When the depressed Cookson carelessly steps out into a road at the start of this episode he is nearly run over by an Opel vehicle, likewise when Carlson and Johnny drag the Double Decker poppet into their car, it is a Vauxhall. The references to these brands are quite blatant too, in ways that would be in violation of rules against product placement on British television, had the series genuinely have been taking back handers from these brands. Whenever The Adventurer plugs Chevrolet cars it tends to be a bit more subtle, showcasing the cars for a lengthy amount of time but never drawing too much attention to the brand name. In America however, the series could be a bit more upfront about its sponsorship, with the Chevrolet name being worked into the title sequence when it was shown there.



To the Lowest Bidder is overall a rather fragmented episode, sporting two sets of villains (Laura and Forrester, Carlson and Johnny) who are working for the same aim but who rarely share screen time. Heroics too seem equally divided between Gene and Mr Parminter. While Gene comes to the aid of Sarah and Lizzy at the girls school, Parminter is busy in Brussels trying to thwart attempts to extract information from Cookson. In all likelihood this episode was constructed in such a manner in order to gently ease Gene back into the swing of things after his holiday. In light of Barry Morse’s comments about the series’ regular directors not getting along with Gene though, it is hard to avoid the feeling that Val Guest probably wished he was helming a solo Parminter episode here.



To the Lowest Bidder serves its purpose when it comes to demonising drivers of Vauxhall cars, keeping the cast of Here Come the Double Deckers in employment and planting the idea in the audiences’ minds that their next car should be a Chevrolet. Still, it is one of those Adventurer episodes that you tend to remember for its guest stars more than anything else. This one having for years been filed away in my mind as ‘the one with Jane Asher in it’, or alternatively ‘the episode with the one armed cook from Robin’s Nest, who as it turns out actually has two arms’.

Of course this wouldn’t be an episode of a 1970s TV series set at an all-girls school unless it featured some inappropriate remarks destined to now land this episode on the cultural naughty step. The scene featuring Carlson eyeballing a bunch of schoolgirls and remarking that “you have to set a sprat to catch a mackerel” feels like it belongs in a public information film warning schoolgirls not to talk to strangers… especially if they drive Vauxhall cars. While Carlson is meant to be a creepy character, even Gene himself gets a little pervy at times in this episode, remarking of the schoolgirls “well, you call them rosebuds, but I can tell you they are flowering…did you hear some of the questions they asked me”. 

Now then, now then Gene…as it happens…you don’t want to be the leader of that gang…oh no…so extinguish that little bit of boogie woogie from the back of your mind…best stick with Jane Asher, she is of age, isn’t too tall and –so I’m told- makes exceedingly good cakes.

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)