SO SO thriller filler based on famed torture-proof creation of US writer Elleston Trevor, previously subject of big budget mid-60s United Artists effort The Quiller Memorandum. MICHAEL “GUILLAM” JAYSTON did the honours for the Beeb, including being drugged up and afflicted by numerous voodoo curses.
Quiller
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graysonscolumn
February 3, 2017 at 2:36 pm
Perhaps one of those instances in which the theme tune has lived longer in the memory than the show, this boasted a particularly funky number written by the ubiquitous Denton and Cook of The Great Egg Race, Tomorrow’s World and Eureka fame. I’ve half got it in my mind that The Avalanches might have sampled it, too (TBC).
George White
October 30, 2020 at 9:18 am
Some eps have turned up on youtube, on Jayston’s own youtube feed. And it’s just as extraordinarily terrible as I imagined. Apparently, the eps were written with foreign locations in mind, but were quashed fairly late. So it’s mostly stock footage, with scenes in provincial parks and beaches as the Caribbean. There’s a scene at some kind of horse show that we learn is supposed to be Greece, via stock footage of undistinguished streets, and bouzouki music. And scenes at a bar that literally seems to have travel posters with the words cut off and glued to the windows. And obvvious cardboard flats at an airport.
It’s the BBC doing ITC five years late, and with much video interiors.
BC attempt to do ITC five years late. It’s extraordinary.
it tries so hard, bless it’s little heart
but it’s stifled at every corner
the titles often begin with you have been watching style sceens of the guest stars turning to camera, and it’s got some great guest stars. There’s an ep that begins at a Viennese tractor show where we see a Soviet tractor salesman CSOED in front of stock footage of Massey Fergusons, then cut to interior, and the soviet tractor salesman takes off his hat and glasses and he’s not only English, hes George Cole. And then 1948 Oscar nominee Oskar Homolka is wheeled out seemingly doing his Harry Palmer role as Colonel Stok again.
Other ep is set in US air force base in England, featuring Lee Montague as a mad American with a wobbly ccent, Lalla Ward as the daghter of a US Air Force defector (Paul Maxwell) and the inevitable Shane Rimmer.
Patricia Hodge searches for her East German father. Gemma Jones appears. Sinead Cusack has a recurring role.
Everything feels a bit Lindsay Shonteff.