Danger Man - Wikipedia. Danger Man (titled Secret Agent in the United States, and Destination Danger and John Drake in other non- UK markets) is a British television series which was broadcast between 1. The series featured Patrick Mc.
Goohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the programme and wrote many of the scripts.
Danger Man was financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. Series development. Grade was looking for formats that could be exported. This evolved into Danger Man. After Patrick Mc. Goohan was cast, he also impacted character development. Under the Secret Agent title, the same network aired the entirety of the second and third series in 1.
Fleming went on to assist in pre- production on the 1. American series, The Man from U.
Danger Man (titled Secret Agent in the United States, and Destination Danger and John Drake in other non-UK markets) is a British television series which was. Mosquito Girl (.
N. C. L. E., as well as the Eon Productions series of James Bond films. Plotline. America, CIA; France, Deuxi. NATO also has its own.
A messy job? Well that's when they usually call on me or someone like me. Oh yes, my name is Drake, John Drake. The line . They were filmed in black and white. In episode 9, . Many of Drake's cases involved aiding democracy in foreign countries and he was also called upon to solve murders and crimes affecting the interests of either the U. S. His nationalty became British, and he was an agent working for a secret British government department, called M9 (analogous to Secret Intelligence Service), though his Mid- Atlantic English accent persists for the first few episodes in production. These were also filmed in black and white. Other than the largely nominal change of employer and nationality, Drake's mandate remains the same: .
In keeping with the episodic format of such series in the 1. Drake's NATO adventures in the later M9 episodes. Pilot episode. In an interview Clemens said. And obviously the location stuck in Patrick Mc. Goohan's mind, because that's where he shot his television series The Prisoner much later. The second unit director on the pilot, according to Clemens. Ralph Smart looked at them, hated them, and called up the second unit director and said .
The name of the second unit director? John Schlesinger.
Cancellation and resurrection. However, when American financing for a second season failed, the program was cancelled. Also, by this time James Bond had become popular, as had ABC's The Avengers. Danger Man's creator, Ralph Smart, re- thought the concept; the second series' (1. Drake gained an English accent and did not clash with his bosses at first.
The revived Danger Man was finally broadcast in the U. S., it was now re- titled Secret Agent, and first shown as a CBS summer replacement program, given the theme song . In other parts of the world, the show was titled Destination Danger or John Drake. The fourth season consists of only two episodes, .
These two separate but related episodes were recut together as a feature for cinemas in Europe, as done with two- parters from other ITC series such as The Baron and The Saint. When the episodes were completed, Mc. Goohan announced he was resigning from the series to create, produce, and star in a project titled The Prisoner, with David Tomblin as co- producer and George Markstein as script editor. Markstein was then the Danger Man script consultant. A number of behind- the- scenes personnel on Danger Man were subsequently hired for The Prisoner. The European cinema film feature version, Koroshi, did not receive theatrical release in the US but instead aired on network television as a TV movie in 1.
Character of 'Drake'. In the second series, Drake is an undercover agent of the British external intelligence agency. As in the earlier series, Drake finds himself in danger with not always happy outcomes; sometimes duty forces him to decisions which lead to good people suffering unfair consequences.
Drake doesn't always do what his masters tell him. Drake is rarely armed, though he engaged in fist fights, and the gadgets he uses are generally credible. In one episode (To Our Best Friend), Drake says; 'I never carry a gun. They're noisy, and they hurt people.
Besides, I manage very well without.'Agent Drake uses his intelligence, charm and quick thinking rather than force. He usually plays a role to infiltrate a situation, for example to scout for a travel agency, naive soldier, embittered ex- convict, brainless playboy, imperious physician, opportunistic journalist, bumbling tourist, cold- blooded mercenary, bland diplomat, smarmy pop disc jockey, precise clerk, compulsive gambler, or impeccable butler. Unlike James Bond, Drake is often shown re- using gadgets from previous episodes.
Among the more frequently seen are a small spy camera hidden in a cigarette lighter and activated by flicking the lighter, a miniature reel- to- reel tape recorder hidden inside the head of an electric shaver or a pack of cigarettes, and a microphone which could be embedded in a wall near the target via a shotgun- like apparatus, that used soda siphon cartridges containing CO2 as the propellant, allowing Drake to eavesdrop on conversations from a safe distance. As Drake gets involved in a case, things are rarely as they seem. He is not infallible — he gets arrested, he makes mistakes, equipment fails, careful plans do not work; Drake often has to improvise an alternative plan. Free Download Song One By Metallica Drop. Sometimes investigation fails and he simply does something provocative to crack open the case. People he trusts can turn out to be untrustworthy or incompetent; he finds unexpected allies. John Drake, unlike Bond, never romanced any of the women, as Mc. Goohan was determined to create a family- friendly show.
Mc. Goohan denounced the sexual promiscuity of James Bond and The Saint, roles he had rejected, although he had played romantic roles before Danger Man. The only exceptions to this rule were the two . The implication is that it is impractical for him to launch any liaison. It was also the fact that many times the women in the show turned out to be femmes fatales, and heavily involved in the very plots Drake is fighting. Although the villains are often killed, Drake himself rarely kills.
An examination of all episodes indicates that, in the entire series, he only shoots one person dead, in one of the last half- hour episodes from the 1. While another shooting occurs in . Yet The Encyclopedia of 2. Century American Television by Ron Lackmann incorrectly claims Danger Man was one of the most violent series ever produced. Drake is almost never shown armed with a gun, and the episode . This interaction with disagreeable London- based superiors was phased out over the course of the 5.
In the first half- hour series he had an equally edgy, but more good- humoured relationship with his superior . The original version features a subdued rhythm section with almost inaudible drums. This was replaced with a revised version with drums and bass pushed to the fore in the mix. The end credits theme tune was set to end in the same manner as the opening theme, ending on the held, questioning, lower . The two- note coda was added soon afterwards to make a definite ending.
An audio clip from the recording session this comes from can be heard as an extra on the final disk of the DVD set from Network DVD. The revised theme featured this as a normal end to the tune.
As series 4 was to be made in colour for the first time, a completely new arrangement was recorded which owed much to the arrangement on Astley's full- length version of . The feature film . Features electric piano) - PYE 7. N 1. 57. 00. 19. 65 - Danger Man . The first series had Mc.
Goohan leaving a building and getting into a convertible under the opening narration reproduced earlier, and driving off. The earlier of the two sequences for the hour- long series features a photograph of a benevolently- smiling Mc. Goohan zooms partly out towards the right of the frame, then stops, adding the legend .
The three- ringed 'target' revolves round in time to the three- note orchestra hits to obscure Mc. Goohan's photo as it reveals the programme logo on a pure black background. The second version was in two segments. The first segment is filmed, comprising a full- length Mc. Goohan in stark negative, menacingly taking a few paces towards the camera, then stops.
In quick succession, the camera zooms- in fast onto his eyes, freeze- frames, then switches from negative to positive. The legend . This then switches to a different photo with Mc. Goohan looking left out of picture. The familiar three- ringed 'target' then reveals the programme logo on a pure black background as before.
The music was re- recorded for this version of the ident and lasted for the rest of the programme's run. Transition to The Prisoner. He created a new project titled The Prisoner, with David Tomblin as co- producer and George Markstein as script editor. Markstein was then the Danger Man script consultant. A number of behind- the- scenes personnel on Danger Man were subsequently hired for The Prisoner. In this surreal episode, Number Six meets .
Christopher Benjamin portrayed the character in both series. As well as guest- starring in this show, Paul Eddington played another spy and No. Cobb, in the opening episode of the latter show. The first Danger Man season includes four episodes which use footage filmed in the Welsh resort of Portmeirion, which later became the primary shooting location of the Village in The Prisoner. Further inspiration came from a Danger Man episode called .
The school, in the middle of nowhere, is set up to look like a normal English town in which pupils and instructors mix as in any other normal city, but the instructors are virtual prisoners with little hope of ever leaving. It is often thought this episode was a precursor to The Prisoner; it was filmed in the new town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Vincent Terrace's The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs 1. John Drake's resignation reason is revealed in the . Richard Meyers makes the same claim in his 1. TV Detectives. He further states that this connects directly to . Mc. Goohan stated in a 1.