The Adventurer (1972) episode 9: Love Always, Magda

Larry Taylor was an actor who appeared in over 130 films and TV shows…he was in several Carry On films, Zulu, Psychomania…just about every British TV series you could name, and acted in so many quota quickies that barely a week goes by these days without his face showing up on Talking Pictures TV. Taylor also had a tendency to pop up where you least expected, appearing fleetingly in Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler and enjoying a surprisingly prominent role in the Cannon produced sword and sorcery epics ‘Gor’ and ‘The Outlaw of Gor’. To me though Larry Taylor will forever be ‘Leonard’ from Derek Ford’s The Wife Swappers…as a result I am incapable of watching him in anything else without being plagued by flashbacks of him playing the oldest swinger in town. Leonard’s slightly obscene, gap toothed smile, his blindingly bright cravat and shirt…the exposed tuff of white chest hair…the unforgettable scene in which Leonard helps to break the ice with his swinging buddy’s wife by following her into the kitchen and literally helping her to break some ice…all these things haunt me whenever L. Taylor is onscreen. Including his stint in this episode of The Adventurer. Come to think about it, multiple Leonard flashbacks actually proved a welcome distraction from what is a rather routine, by the numbers Adventurer episode.

Gene is excelling at yet another sport, this time it’s the turn of cricket, which Gene is practicing in his living room. Why? Well Gene is ‘wacky’ like that and loves to shake things up around stuffy Brits. An urgent telegram though causes him to call time on rehearsals for the Lord’s Taverners, and pilot his own personal jet ’88 Delta’ to Beirut. What else could distract Gene from the chance of winning yet another sporting cup, and cause him to fuel up 88 Delta than of course a woman. Not just any woman though, but the elusive Magda (Cyd Hayman), Gene’s ‘one that got away’ who four years earlier broke off their relationship and seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving him with only memories and a watch inscribed ‘To Gene, love always Magda’. Now however she has been sighted in Beirut by Gene’s good buddy Don Fleming (Paul Maxwell). Gene seems rather excited by the prospect of a reunion with Magda and has barely unpacked his bags before he is popping a champagne cork in her honour (yes…that old bit of sexual symbolism).

It seems though that Gene has popped his cork prematurely, as after Don’s initial sighting of her Magda has once again gone to ground and Don is suspiciously determined to get Gene to return home. A turn of events that sees Gene go from horny to grumpy to angry within the space of a few seconds. “That cable made it sound like she really did want to see me” Gene shouts at Don. Cool it, Gene Baby! There is of course more to the situation than meets the eye. As tends to be the case with Gene’s exs, Magda has fallen in with a rich, powerful criminal with links to a crime syndicate, and the man in question Nessim (Kieron Moore) has put the frighteners on Don, hence Don’s lack of enthusiasm for finding Magda again.

Gene sure is fond of Adventurer storylines that involve him re-entering the lives of former flames and driving their current beaus crazy with jealously. This is of course identical to what he did in last week’s Othello knock-off episode, as well as a throwback to the very first Adventurer episode. While Gene never appears to tire of playing out this scenario, it is hard to avoid the sense of déjà vu creeping into the series.

As Catherine Schell and Garrick Hagon are entirely absent from this episode, and Mr Parminter appears only briefly, this episode is tasked with writing in a few all new supporting characters. Following in the footsteps of Brett from last week’s episode, Don Fleming seems to be an attempt to establish the Adventurer equivalent of a Felix Leiter character. Don being an ex-CIA man turned private eye who has trod a similar path in life to Gene, and comes across as an equal to him rather than just another fresh faced male assistant. Magda herself is an initially intriguing character who goes against expectations that she’ll turn out to be a Bond girl type or a femme fatale. Serious and at times bordering on aloof, her independence seems to motivate men even more into trying to own and possess her. Alas, once the ‘romantic’ subplot starts to kick in, Magda becomes rather pathetic and needy, as the character’s increasing purpose becomes to complement Gene. Unsurprisingly Magda’s motivation for severing ties with Gene turns out to flatter rather than crush his ego. She felt guilty for making the first move and ‘causing’ him to fall in love with her, even though she felt she wasn’t worthy of him “you deserve someone better than me”. The funniest line of the episode occurs when Magda tells Gene that Nessim “was nearly as rich and charming as you”, the all important part of that line being NEARLY. To complicate matters (and we all know how Adventurer episodes love to do that) Magda is also an undercover spy who after romancing Nessim was recruited by Mr Parminter to infiltrate Nessim’s criminal organisation.



Love makes people do funny things, and love is definitely in the air in this Adventurer episode. Nessim loves Magda, Magda loves Gene, and Gene also loves Gene as well. Even taking this into account though, people behave exceptionally dumb in this episode. Magda jumps at the first opportunity to meet Gene, thereby compromising her undercover work. Gene continentally ignores Don’s pleas to leave town and gets Don drunk instead. Causing Don to miss his flight home and resulting in his demise when Nessim sends Leonard from The Wife Swappers round to shoot Don to death in the shower. Of course, all this could have been avoided had Parminter simply informed Gene that Magda was working for him as an undercover agent, thereby clearing up the mystery of what she was doing in Beirut. Although admittedly if Parminter had done that then this episode would have just been 25 minutes worth of Gene practicing cricket in his front room.




In contrast, the bad guys of this episode are ultra-efficient and seemingly blessed with second sight ability when it comes to detecting trouble. No sooner has Gene stepped off the plane than they have a man on his trail. They also just happen to have an undercover man on standby at the hotel Gene and Don are staying at, allowing them to bug Don’s room, which then allows them to become wise to Gene’s meeting with Magda. On a roll they also bug Gene’s room, resulting in Magda’s feelings for Gene and her undercover status to become known to Nessim. How good manages to triumph over evil in this episode is beyond me!!

Maybe it was impractical to do so, or maybe the purse strings were tightening on the show’s budget at this point, but ‘Love Always, Magda’ is the first of the series not to have been filmed on location. While every episode up until now had made the most of its location, the over reliance on stock footage here makes this episode look cheaper and more set bound than anything that has come before. The hellishly hot locations evoked by the stock footage often feels at odds with Gene’s dress sense in the episode, with a preference for yellow shirts and brown leather jackets and pants giving Gene a look here that could be best described as “the funky canary”. Realistically you’d be sweating buckets wearing leather gear like that on the streets on Beirut, just as well then that he didn’t really venture outside of Elstree for this one.



This episode’s setting however must have been a godsend to every actor or belly dancer who could convincingly pass as ‘Arabic’ after a quick touch up in a tanning salon. Of the actors playing Arab henchmen in this episode, David Cargill who plays Nessim’s undercover man at the hotel hailed from Canada, and another of Nessim’s henchmen Stefan Kalipha was from Trinidad. Whilst Leonard from The Wife Swappers alias Larry Taylor, managed to chalk up numerous appearances as Arab and Mexican thugs in his career, despite actually being from Peterborough. This Adventurer episode also comes complete with its own unsolved mystery thanks to another of Gene’s ‘exotic’ co-stars, the mono named ‘Kerima’, who briefly plays a belly dancer in this episode. An appearance notable for the early example of photo-bombing she does in her brief screen time with Gene.





According to several online sources this was the final screen appearance of 1950s screen sensation Kerima nee Miriam Charriere, famous in her day for appearing on the cover of Life magazine and several major movies including Carol Reed’s Outcast of the Islands and the Hollywood epic Land of the Pharaohs. Whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, I’m not too convinced that the Kerima in the Adventurer really is the same Kerima who was famous in the 1950s. Would an actress world famous in her day, and off-screen since 1962 really be lured back to acting a decade later by a small, insignificant belly dancing bit part in The Adventurer. It feels unlikely, also taking into account that the 1950s Kerima would have been 47 by 1972, and unless she has spent the years in-between bathing in the blood of virgins, The Adventurer Kerima sure looks allot younger than that. Could the popularity of Kerima in the 1950s have merely led to that name entering into the popular lexicon and have resulted in imitators taking up that moniker? To complicate matters further the Kerima who appears in The Adventurer is definitely not the same Kerima who appeared nude in the 1972 British sex comedy ‘The Love Box’ nor is she the belly dancer of the same name whose act was showcased on the 1980s US public access television show ‘Beyond Vaudeville’. Meaning that they may have been at least four different Kerimas, three with overlapping careers!!! It’s almost as complicated as your Adventurer episode.

Sadly ‘Love Always, Magda’ goes out with a whimper, or rather a minor skirmish that sees Magda shoot Leonard from The Wife Swappers in the arm before fleeing, leaving Gene to turn Nessim over to the authorities. So, unusually Gene doesn’t get the girl this week, but he does get to play some cricket at the end…and he does get to keep the watch she gave him…and he did get to meet Leonard from The Wife Swappers…so as they say ….what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.