DANGER MAN - THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (5DVD)

Details

• Release Year: 1960
• Genre: Drama
• Plot: Before The Avengers and the James Bond films, the pioneering 1960 British series Danger Man helped to usher in spy-mania in Great Britain. Patrick McGoohan stars as 'Drake, John Drake,' an agent of NATO's secret service branch. 'A messy job,' he informs us, 'That's when they usually call on me.' Most Americans only know Drake as the Secret Agent Man, the title of the hour-long series that debuted on these shores in 1964. This half-hour series never aired in the United States, making this five-disc set, containing all 39 first season episodes, essential for Brit-TV aficionados, not to mention that branch of Prisoner devotees who insist that the kidnapped 'No. 6' is actually Drake himself. Like 007, the dapper and unflappable Drake possesses a keen wit and 'animal sense of danger,' and his assignments take him all over the world, from Rome and Paris to the Arabian desert. But Drake is old school. He very rarely uses a gun. He is not a womanizer. He does not possess an arsenal of cool gadgets. His missions are more gritty and realistic; classic 'cloak and dagger' stuff. He foils not megalomaniacs trying to take over the world, but a rogue's gallery of embezzlers, assassins, slave traders, traitors, and the like. Also fun for Anglophiles are early glimpses of favorite British character actors, including Miss Moneypenny herself, Lois Maxwell ('Positions of Trust'); a pre-Avengers/Pussy Galore Honor Blackman ('Colonel Rodriguez'), Judy Carne, Laugh-In's Sock-It-to-Me girl ('Hired Assassin'; Charles Gray from the Bond films You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever ('The Key'); and Jean Marsh of Upstairs, Downstairs fame ('Name, Date and Place'). The jazzy score is also killer. --Donald Liebenson
• Cast: Patrick McGoohan, Richard Wattis, Lionel Murton, Michael Ripper, Warren Mitchell, Ric Young, Hazel Court, Lisa Gastoni, Donald Pleasence, Maxine Audley, Barbara Shelley, John Phillips, Julia Arnall, Moira Redmond, Ronald Allen, Charles Gray, Zena Marshall, Derren Nesbitt, Paul Maxwell, Paul Stassino, Heather Chasen, Michael Peake, Cyril Shaps, Patrick Troughton, Campbell Singer, Anthony Dawson, Charles Farrell, Alan Gifford, Louise Collins, Lawrence Davidson, Burt Kwouk, Bill Nagy, Irene Prador, Robert Raglan, Walter Gotell, Bobby R. Naidoo, Marie Burke, John Rae, Joseph Cuby, Charles Lloyd Pack, Harry Lockart, Eric Pohlmann, Richard Clarke, William Dexter, Guy Deghy, Glenn Beck, Anthony Chinn, Pearl Prescod, Lloyd Reckord, Harvey Hall, Antony Viccars, Jimmy Fung, Frank Thornton, Ralph Smart
• Director: Ralph Smart
• Runtime: 16:15
• Company: Carlton, A&E Home Video
• Media Format: Series