After last week’s display of fencing you may well ask yourself…what sport is Gene excelling at in the opening of this week’s episode? Well, it is a case of ‘Silver Gene Racer’ as Gene completes in a motor racing competition. Despite a pit stop to take a call from that pesky Mr Parminter, Gene still manages to bring home the cup, to add to the countless other cups currently cluttering up chez Gene. A small price to pay though, for being brilliant at everything.
For once it is Gene who has to explain to Parminter what is going on in this week’s episode, which centres around Suzy Dolman (Judy Geeson) a free spirited dropout who has decided to reject her privileged background in favour of a hippie existence hitchhiking around Provence. Suzy has appeared on The Adventurer’s radar due to her headline making decision to sign away her entire fortune, a 51% share in an oil company to a small, fanatical “Red country”. An offer that has been generously accepted by the country’s slimy, sneering Consul (John Savident) who would surely take the number one spot in an “Adventurer villain most likely to win a Lenin look-a-like competition”. Should the similarity be lost on some viewers we also get a crash zoom in on a portrait of the real Lenin that adorns the Consul’s office, subtlety isn’t in this series’ vocabulary.
Since the future of the oil business is at stake it is up to Gene and Co to put the kibosh on the deal going through, prevent Savident from grapping Suzy’s assets, and try to convince Suzy that signing over every penny she has to a bunch of Lenin fanboys may not be the smartest decision she’ll ever make.
This episode of The Adventurer appears rightly pleased by its coup of securing the services of Judy Geeson, a hip young actress who’d first come to prominence in 1967’s To Sir with Love, and thereafter cornered the market in playing strong willed yet vulnerable wild child roles. Poor Little Rich Girl does fit in quite nicely with her roles in films like ‘Three into two won’t go’ and ‘One of those things’, in which the culture and generation gap between Geeson and her older male co-stars fuelled the dramatic fireworks. Poor Little Rich Girl can’t be accused of squandering Geeson’s talents. The personality and philosophical clashes between Suzy and Gene dominate the episode’s opening half, with Suzy’s rejection of money and responsibility pitted against Gene’s unswerving belief that capitalism and big business can be a force for good. The fact that this series is brought to you courtesy of Chevrolet /General Motors had I’m sure no bearing on the fact that this episode fights in Gene’s corner of these debates, or how much of this episode is taken up by Chevrolet vehicles doing their thing around the back roads of rural Provence.
After week in, week out of women falling head over heels for Gene, it does make a refreshing change to encounter a female character who is initially at loggerheads with him. Suzy even gets to insult him by claiming “I’m not one of your fans”, wash your mouth out with soap young lady!! After an ear bashing like that Gene is in need of an ego boosting pit stop, which comes in the form of a visit to a transport café. Of all the transport cafes in all the world, Gene just so happens to stop at one that has a poster for one of his films hanging on the wall. The poster in question being for his foray into French ‘art’ cinema “La Vallee du Funnerre”, a poster that of course is in immediate need of a Gene Bradley autograph.
A long, black cloud is hanging over Gene in this episode…oh, no, hang on that’s just Stuart Damon’s shadow. Yes, Damon’s character Vince Elliott is back in the show, and raring to do as much adventuring as Gene will allow, which isn’t very much. Vince’s purpose in this episode being to dress up as a gendarme and occasionally drag diversion signs into the middle of the road in order to send the bad guys in the wrong direction….not exactly up to the James Bond level of excitement is it? Again Damon and Gene’s screen time together defines their positions in the show’s hierarchy. Gene the supercool dude out to rescue the damsel in distress in his Chevrolet, Damon given the silly uniform and lowly job of hanging around in the middle of nowhere, arranging and rearranging street signs…. Eat my dust, Damon!!!
The behaviour of the good guys in this episode is at times suspect, Gene steals Suzy’s purse, causing her to get in hot water with the owner of the transport café. She is then picked up by Damon’s fake gendarme who locks her up in a mock-up of a jail in order to prevent her business deal going through. Technically Gene and Co are guilty of theft, impersonating a police officer and false imprisonment in this episode, it is just as well they are allowed to run around Europe with seeming immunity from prosecution…and less we forget, everything they do is to serve the greater good. Try telling that to Suzy though, who really loses it in that phoney police cell, in the process reminding us that when Judy Geeson does go nutzoid onscreen the results can be fucking terrifying. There is definitely a proto-Inseminoid look of madness in Geeson’s eyes during this scene.
Poor Little Rich Girl is yet another Adventurer episode that insists on casting an actor whose height was at odds with its star’s strict requirements. In this case 6’0” John Savident, yet another who has fallen foul of the show’s ‘sit down for Gene’ rule, and is tellingly required to remain seated in all his scenes playing opposite Gene. You’d think the producers of this show would cast people whose size was more in keeping with Gene’s comfort zone. I mean, surely Kenny Baker, Rusty Goffe and Charlie Young Atom weren’t totally inundated with work throughout 1972.
Since Savident is prevented from standing up in Gene’s company, much of the subsequent villainy in this episode is relegated to henchmen who abduct Suzy from Gene’s apartment and steal documents signing Suzy’s shares in the oil company over to them. Proving once again that the most glamorous stars of the show always get handed the least glamorous assignments, Catherine Schell and Damon have to disguise themselves as French peasants in order to prevent the papers from leaving the country. Gene on the other hand gets to fire up the Chevrolet and speed off to a bullring where Suzy is being held hostage. Eagle eyed viewers will note this is the exact same bullring that Gene’s movie was being shot in at the start of Episode one. For a show with such a globe-trotting ethos about it, the world of The Adventurer often seems like a small one at times. The overall message of this week’s episode seems to be “money itself isn’t evil, just some of the people who have it are” either that or- if you have to speed off to rescue a troubled wild child from Commie goons make sure the car you’re driving is a Chevrolet.
On a sad note this is the last we’ll see of Stuart Damon on the show, not that we ever saw much of him anyway. So, its bye bye Vince Elliott, we hardly knew you. By the time of next week’s episode Vince will have regenerated into Ed Bishop and for some reason will be calling himself ‘Wayne’.
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