Danger Man - Patrick McGoohan's action adventure TV series, sometimes known as 'Secret Agent'

DANGER MAN

INTRODUCTION

ARTWORK

MUSIC

DANGER MAN (aka SECRET AGENT) was an early 1960's British TV series featuring Patrick McGoohan as the mysterious secret agent JOHN DRAKE. Despite it being a hugely popular programme, it never achieved the cult status of later series "THE PRISONER". None-the-less, it holds a fascination for all devotees of Patrick McGoohan and TV cultists everywhere.
'Danger Man' was created by Ralph Smart in 1960 at the behest of Lew Grade, then a director with ATV, part of the British ITV group of companies.

Grade had enjoyed a lot of success with television programmes designed for both domestic and overseas markets and was looking to consolidate that success with something he could sell to the USA, which was a very difficult market for the UK to crack at that time.

The spy novel was extremely popular with the general public in the 60's, and Danger Man was probably the first TV show to translate those elements to the small screen. The original intention had been to present John Drake (as the 'Danger Man' would come to be known), as the usual stereotype of the fictional secret agent - quick with a gun and going through glamourous women at a fair rate of knots.

However, when Patrick McGoohan got the coveted role, he was given considerable leeway with the character development and presented a higher moral plain - no guns unless absolutely necessary, problems solved with brains first and fists second, and certainly no overt sexual dalliances. Glamourous women there were a-plenty, but they all departed with virtue intact! Sounds a little boring today, but it gave the character a lot more credibility and substance, with the plots never given the easy 'kiss-kiss, bang-bang' way out.

In an intervew, McGoohan said,"I hardly ever use a gun in the series and any violence is as restrained as possible. I wanted Drake to be in the heroic mould - like a classic Western - which meant he had to be a good man."

As a personal aside, I have to wonder what "restrained violence" actually means, given that in "Koroshi/Shinda Shima" alone, there are deaths by poisonous gas, explosions, shooting with bow and arrows, booby-trapped cars, drowning and stabbing in the back. The hand-to-hand fighting includes every punch, jab and karate-chop you can think of, plus a good deal of kicking in the face, stomach and lumber regions and not forgetting that good old standby, hurling your opponent through a closed window. Well, thank goodness the violence was restrained, I'd hate to think what mayhem might have ensued if they'd really got nasty!

Lew Grade's intention was always to export Danger Man to the States, and, in the first series, Drake was a NATO agent as it was felt that overseas viewers would relate better to an international organisation. However, although series one did well in Britain, it didn't sell in America. The second series was therefore re-vamped, with a much more British feel

as it was realised that 'Britishness' was actually quite fashionable. Drake was now working as Special Security Agent for M9, a secret UK governmental agency, spoke with a British accent instead of pseudo-American, and drove a Mini-Cooper.

This achieved the objective of the exercise. The Americans loved it, albeit requesting some minor changes. The series became 'Secret Agent' and a different theme tune was grafted onto redesigned title and credits sequences. The second and third series extended over two seasons between October 1964 and November 1965.

In an interview, Patrick McGoohan said of making the series,"I enjoy playing the role, though when it was put to me a few years ago I was a little worried about doing it. It is very difficult on a TV series to maintain a high standard of production. But I'm sure we have done so. Teamwork is so obviously important in a series, and we do have a marvellous team. The scripts are of a very high standard. I think the impression we give is that we enjoy ourselves. Well, we do! each story is filmed in fourteen days. The pressures are great, but we've survived!"

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