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ROGER MOORE tours famous back projection blue screens of the world in-between exchanging fisticuffs with fat-necked bug-eyed heavies, opening secret panels, coaxing a mini-skirted moll to change sides and shooting a pistol out of the reach of a struggling evil henchman. Also suffered unlikely medical condition when constant recognition in crowded continental piazza caused tell-tale Colgate ring of confidence to appear over head, instantly blowing undercover operation. Rog later bought up the rights to the Leslie Charteris-created louche gadabout Simon Templar, mounting repeated attempts at relaunches in subsequent decades. Most notable was IAN OGILVY’s stint, replete with ace quasi-singalong theme tune (“It’s the re-TURN of the SAINT!”). SIMON DUTTON donned the halo for a hopeless and shortlived 1989 re-return.
Purists never took to the Return of the Saint but it was just as good as the original with more location filming and a cool theme tune. 18 million viewers can’t have been wrong.
The Simon Dutton version wasn’t THAT bad and introduced British audiences to a mega star in Europe, Arielle Dombasel, who was almost unknown over here. She played some martial arts whizz in one episode about a plan to sabotage the reunification of Berlin. However, the critics completely savaged it.
Always easy to do at charades – stick a roll of Sellotape over your head for ‘The Saint’, then do it again straight away for ‘Return of the Saint’!
Jaguar refused to lend the production team an E-Type as they were worried about publicity overkill, so they went for a Volvo P1800 instead.
When ROTS came along a Jaguar XJS was used, though Ian Ogilvy complained about the ice cold water that used to drip out of the A/C vents every time hedrove round a corner.
The Return of the Saint missed a trick, everyone’s favourite bit was the animated stick man titles, so they should have made him the star of the show and had him interact with the guest stars, do the stunts, etc. Sorry Ian.