Manhunt
There doesn't seem to be anything much to interest me on television at the moment so I'm taking the opportunity to catch up with some DVDs I have lying around. One of these is a show called Manhunt that I got last Christmas.
I have strong memories of watching this when I was at school, studying for my A-levels. The IMDb says that the first episode was broadcast on 2nd January 1970 and it occupied 24 successive Friday nights for the first half of the year. I'm sure I didn't watch it at first but it was one of those shows that gathered momentum and soon everyone was talking about it and the papers were full of snippets about up-coming episodes.
The basic plot is simple. In September 1942, an RAF pilot crashes his Spitfire in occupied France. Meanwhile, in Paris a young student is attending a meeting of the resistance which is broken up by the Germans. She escapes and makes her way to a village where she seeks a resistance leader code-named Vincent. Vincent is suspicious of her and thinks he ought to kill her when suddenly the RAF pilot, who calls himself Jimmy, appears. Vincent is suspicious of him too - he thinks they are too far south to be in range of a Spitfire - and decides to kill them both. But his radio operator defies orders and contacts London, to be told that both the pilot and the girl are to be sent to London. The girl, real name Anna but code-named Nina has memorised the details of the entire resistance operation she was involved with. London needs that information but it mustn't fall into German hands. The three of them leave the village just before the Germans start rounding up the resistance, alerted by the wireless transmissions they'd picked up.
Vincent, we later learn, is the son of an aristocrat. As his mother is called the countess, we assume a count. But he had been educated in England. His father was shot soon after war broke out as a Nazi collaborator. (We get to see his mother. The three hide in her château, unknown to her, which is also the headquarters of a German general. She is obviously suffering from Alzheimer's and thinks the Kaiser is still ruling Germany.)
I've seen six episodes so far, a quarter of the entire series, and Nina's knowledge is just a McGuffin in the Hitchcockian sense. The real story is about how the three get on together when no-one trusts anyone else.
Vincent was played by that fine actor Peter Barkworth, famous for Telford's Change, a series about a bank manager, and was also in a great Stoppard television play Professional Foul, about philosophy and football in communist Prague.
Jimmy was Alfred Lynch. I remember seeing him in the Elizabethan play The Shoemaker's Holiday at the National Theatre many years ago. He was also Commander Millington in the Doctor Who episode The Curse of Fenric. (There is a curiosity about his character which is mentioned both on the IMDb and Wikipedia entries for Manhunt. His name is given as Jimmy Porter both on Wikipedia and on the DVD box, but in the first episode he announces himself as Squadron Leader Jimmy Briggs. Jimmy Porter is the main character in the play Look Back in Anger and Lynch had played that role on stage.)
Nina is Cyd Hayman, a glamorous young actress at that time. I must admit I now find her stilted RP acting slightly odd.
The DVD box lists one other main character and two supporting characters. One was Robert Hardy (the minister for magic in Harry Potter) as Abwehr Sergeant Gratz. I remember this character well but he hasn't turned up yet. The IMDb says he was in only nine of the episodes.
The Abwehr was the intelligence section of the German army and I remember that many of the episodes involved the friction between the Abwehr and the SS. The SS is represented by Lutzig, played by Philip Madoc, famous for playing the U-boat captain in that episode of Dad's Army. ("Don't tell him, Pike.") I was amused to read in his obituary that he was actually a fluent German speaker, and read German at the University of Vienna.
The other recurring character was Adelaide, played by Maggie Fitzgibbon, an Australian actress and I seem to recall that her character was supposedly Australian although how she comes to be in occupied France I can't remember.
The one thing that stands out watching it now is how cheap it must have been to film. The episode I've just watched had just the three main characters. They arrive at a house that is supposed to be the home of a resistance contact and find it deserted and they spend the episode mostly bickering about what to do. In another episode, Lutzig and a German general (played by Richard Hurndall who played the first doctor in The Five Doctors) are standing at a doorway watching a thousand soldiers go out to search for the fugitives. But the camera stays looking at the two and we don't see any soldiers.
Vincent's plan is to go south into unoccupied France. Unbeknownst to him, German is about to occupy the whole of France and just as they cross a river under the cover of a weir, the German officers talk about the column of tanks going across the bridge. Of course we don't see any tanks, just hear a German marching song.
There are other actors appearing who went on to appear in other things. (And I was amused to see that one episode had been written by Roy Clarke, who created Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours.) In the first episode, the radio operator's wife was played by Yootha Joyce, of George and Mildred fame. In the next episode, there is a sadistic policeman played by Stephen Lewis, Inspector Blake in on the buses. Whilst googling for information about this show I found a page that had scan of an issue of TV Times from the period. On the Buses was on half an hour before Manhunt. Incidentally, there is a mistake in this and a subsequent episode. The policeman is identified as belonging to the Milice, a force of collaborators set up by the Germans. But this must still be set in late 1942, as it wasn't until late in that year that the Germans occupied all of France. But Wikipedia says the Milice wasn't set up till the end of January 1943.
I recall a later episode that involved a sabotage attack on a factory. The episode started with the resistance synchronising their watches and someone saying "Now" or maybe "Go". After that there wasn't a single word of dialogue, thirty years before Joss Whedon made Hush. (I have seen that episode since 1970, as it was repeated in a history of television series a few years back.)
One thing that makes this look odd to modern eyes is that television was done "as live" even when it was being recorder. So if an actor fluffed their lines, it stayed in usually. (I have the DVDs of the sixties series Adam Adamant Lives, and in an episode set in Japan an actress calls herself Chinese by mistake.) I remember seeing a documentary about the series Doomwatch a few years ago and Robert Powell said that he made sure his mistakes weren't left in by swearing every time he got a line wrong.
And, on a personal note, I have kept a diary since the age of ten, usually recording what TV programmes I watched. I still have my diaries from 1970 and I went through them. I don't mention the show once, whereas I do mention things like The Val Doonican show. I wonder why. It certainly has stuck in my memory more than that show. (I also discovered I'd written lost about what was being reported about Apollo 13 during this period.)
I have strong memories of watching this when I was at school, studying for my A-levels. The IMDb says that the first episode was broadcast on 2nd January 1970 and it occupied 24 successive Friday nights for the first half of the year. I'm sure I didn't watch it at first but it was one of those shows that gathered momentum and soon everyone was talking about it and the papers were full of snippets about up-coming episodes.
The basic plot is simple. In September 1942, an RAF pilot crashes his Spitfire in occupied France. Meanwhile, in Paris a young student is attending a meeting of the resistance which is broken up by the Germans. She escapes and makes her way to a village where she seeks a resistance leader code-named Vincent. Vincent is suspicious of her and thinks he ought to kill her when suddenly the RAF pilot, who calls himself Jimmy, appears. Vincent is suspicious of him too - he thinks they are too far south to be in range of a Spitfire - and decides to kill them both. But his radio operator defies orders and contacts London, to be told that both the pilot and the girl are to be sent to London. The girl, real name Anna but code-named Nina has memorised the details of the entire resistance operation she was involved with. London needs that information but it mustn't fall into German hands. The three of them leave the village just before the Germans start rounding up the resistance, alerted by the wireless transmissions they'd picked up.
Vincent, we later learn, is the son of an aristocrat. As his mother is called the countess, we assume a count. But he had been educated in England. His father was shot soon after war broke out as a Nazi collaborator. (We get to see his mother. The three hide in her château, unknown to her, which is also the headquarters of a German general. She is obviously suffering from Alzheimer's and thinks the Kaiser is still ruling Germany.)
I've seen six episodes so far, a quarter of the entire series, and Nina's knowledge is just a McGuffin in the Hitchcockian sense. The real story is about how the three get on together when no-one trusts anyone else.
Vincent was played by that fine actor Peter Barkworth, famous for Telford's Change, a series about a bank manager, and was also in a great Stoppard television play Professional Foul, about philosophy and football in communist Prague.
Jimmy was Alfred Lynch. I remember seeing him in the Elizabethan play The Shoemaker's Holiday at the National Theatre many years ago. He was also Commander Millington in the Doctor Who episode The Curse of Fenric. (There is a curiosity about his character which is mentioned both on the IMDb and Wikipedia entries for Manhunt. His name is given as Jimmy Porter both on Wikipedia and on the DVD box, but in the first episode he announces himself as Squadron Leader Jimmy Briggs. Jimmy Porter is the main character in the play Look Back in Anger and Lynch had played that role on stage.)
Nina is Cyd Hayman, a glamorous young actress at that time. I must admit I now find her stilted RP acting slightly odd.
The DVD box lists one other main character and two supporting characters. One was Robert Hardy (the minister for magic in Harry Potter) as Abwehr Sergeant Gratz. I remember this character well but he hasn't turned up yet. The IMDb says he was in only nine of the episodes.
The Abwehr was the intelligence section of the German army and I remember that many of the episodes involved the friction between the Abwehr and the SS. The SS is represented by Lutzig, played by Philip Madoc, famous for playing the U-boat captain in that episode of Dad's Army. ("Don't tell him, Pike.") I was amused to read in his obituary that he was actually a fluent German speaker, and read German at the University of Vienna.
The other recurring character was Adelaide, played by Maggie Fitzgibbon, an Australian actress and I seem to recall that her character was supposedly Australian although how she comes to be in occupied France I can't remember.
The one thing that stands out watching it now is how cheap it must have been to film. The episode I've just watched had just the three main characters. They arrive at a house that is supposed to be the home of a resistance contact and find it deserted and they spend the episode mostly bickering about what to do. In another episode, Lutzig and a German general (played by Richard Hurndall who played the first doctor in The Five Doctors) are standing at a doorway watching a thousand soldiers go out to search for the fugitives. But the camera stays looking at the two and we don't see any soldiers.
Vincent's plan is to go south into unoccupied France. Unbeknownst to him, German is about to occupy the whole of France and just as they cross a river under the cover of a weir, the German officers talk about the column of tanks going across the bridge. Of course we don't see any tanks, just hear a German marching song.
There are other actors appearing who went on to appear in other things. (And I was amused to see that one episode had been written by Roy Clarke, who created Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours.) In the first episode, the radio operator's wife was played by Yootha Joyce, of George and Mildred fame. In the next episode, there is a sadistic policeman played by Stephen Lewis, Inspector Blake in on the buses. Whilst googling for information about this show I found a page that had scan of an issue of TV Times from the period. On the Buses was on half an hour before Manhunt. Incidentally, there is a mistake in this and a subsequent episode. The policeman is identified as belonging to the Milice, a force of collaborators set up by the Germans. But this must still be set in late 1942, as it wasn't until late in that year that the Germans occupied all of France. But Wikipedia says the Milice wasn't set up till the end of January 1943.
I recall a later episode that involved a sabotage attack on a factory. The episode started with the resistance synchronising their watches and someone saying "Now" or maybe "Go". After that there wasn't a single word of dialogue, thirty years before Joss Whedon made Hush. (I have seen that episode since 1970, as it was repeated in a history of television series a few years back.)
One thing that makes this look odd to modern eyes is that television was done "as live" even when it was being recorder. So if an actor fluffed their lines, it stayed in usually. (I have the DVDs of the sixties series Adam Adamant Lives, and in an episode set in Japan an actress calls herself Chinese by mistake.) I remember seeing a documentary about the series Doomwatch a few years ago and Robert Powell said that he made sure his mistakes weren't left in by swearing every time he got a line wrong.
And, on a personal note, I have kept a diary since the age of ten, usually recording what TV programmes I watched. I still have my diaries from 1970 and I went through them. I don't mention the show once, whereas I do mention things like The Val Doonican show. I wonder why. It certainly has stuck in my memory more than that show. (I also discovered I'd written lost about what was being reported about Apollo 13 during this period.)