The Saint Reborn: James Purefoy Re-Canonized

Last weekend, Saint.org called attention to this enticing nugget on Sir Roger Moore's website hidden amidst his regular monthly Q&A: "I am told The Saint will film in July in New Orleans. I’m booked there from mid-July. More news as I get it." As far as I'm aware, the Saint to which he's referring is the latest incarnation of the ongoing attempt to launch a new Saint TV series, this time through a TV movie (and potential backdoor pilot) called The Saint in New Orleans. (This per a statement last December from sometime Saint continuation author and collaborator on the new project, Burl Barer, also reported on Saint.org.) But we've had so many false starts on this project over the last couple of years that I was hesitant to write about any of this until we heard something more concrete. Well, today there's finally something worth reporting on this very exciting project! On the CommanderBond.net forums where he's been carefully dispensing tidbits of information over the course of developing a new Saint show, Saint expert and co-producer Ian Dickerson has revealed the actor who will play the part—and it's a name halo-heads have heard before: James Purefoy!

Longtime readers will recall that Purefoy (Rome, Solomon Kane) was originally cast as Simon Templar back in 2007, when Barry Levinson was set to direct the TV reboot. That version of the project fell apart, and Purefoy moved on to the somewhat Saint-like series The Philanthropist instead (review here), rendering him unavailable for further attempts to get a new TV Saint off the ground. Dougray Scott's name was bandied about in conjunction with a later version, but in time that too collapsed. Now, years later, at last the stars have aligned and schedules have freed up, and it looks like Purefoy is once again attached to the project. Granted, it still has a long way to go before becoming a reality. Perhaps there's no cause for celebration until cameras are actually rolling (and Roger Moore possibly cameoing?), but, personally, I'm thrilled that Purefoy is back on board. That casting seemed so perfect. To me, he always seemed like not only the best but the only legitimate candidate to interpret Leslie Charteris' immortal adventurer in a new TV series. I hope everything comes together this time, because I can't wait to see his take!

And for Roger Moore fans, there's one other tantalizing tidbit buried in that March Q&A as well: Sir Roger reveals that in addition to the Blu-ray set from Network, there is also a new book on The Persuaders! in the pipeline to commemorate that series' 40th anniversary! Something else to look forward to.

Trailer For Network's ITC Blu-Ray Collections

Network posted a trailer on YouTube last week for their previously announced upcoming Region B Retro-Action Blu-ray collections, which will contain sample episodes from a whole bunch of Sixties and Seventies ITC spy/adventure series including The Saint, Return of the Saint, Danger Man, The Persuaders!, The Champions, The Prisoner and more.

I love it!  I love it, I love it, I love it!  This montage not only shows off what you'll get on these releases, but captures everything that I love about Sixties ITC adventure series.I could watch it all day.

Network Brings The Persuaders! And Other ITC Shows To Blu-ray In 2011!

Today Network revealed that the UK company would release classic Sixties and Seventies ITC series on Blu-ray in 2011.  (They tested the waters with an excellent Blu-ray Prisoner set last year.)  Since many of these shows were originally filmed in 35mm, they should actually benefit from high-definition transfers, unlike TV shows filmed on 16mm or video.  First up appears to be The Persuaders!, which, as regular readers will no doubt surmise, makes me very happy.  That series has had some good DVD releases in variously countries and regions, but it still hasn't seen a definitive remastering that shows it to its maximum potential.  Hopefully this release will do that! 

Even before The Persuaders! gets a series release, however, Network will release three sampler Blu-rays, under the "retro-Action!" banner, showing off select episodes (generally good choices, in my opinion, although I think there are better episodes of Return of The Saint than "One Black September"–particularly "Duel in Venice") of lots of ITC series in HD.  These samplers are all listed as Region B, meaning that they won't be playable on standard North American Blu-ray players.  (Many more Blu-rays than DVDs are actually released region-free, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.)  retro-ACTION!: Volume 1 includes what might be my favorite Persuaders! episode, "Chain of Events" (directed by Peter Hunt!), along with Department S ("A Small War of Nerves"), The Champions ("The Invisible Man," a great one) and episodes of Strange Report and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Volume 2 showcases the color series of The Saint ("The Queen's Ransom," a great episode), the hour-long Danger Man ("No Marks for Servility"), Man in a Suitcase ("Somebody Loses, Somebody... Wins?") and Gideon's Way.  Volume 3 showcases the half-hour Danger Man ("View From the Villa," which was filmed in Portmeirion), The Invisible Man ("Secret Experiment"), The Baron ("Something for a Rainy Day"), Return of The Saint ("One Black September"), The Zoo Gang ("Revenge: Post Dated"), Shirley's World and The Adventures of Robin Hood. (Who would have imagined–Shirley's World on Blu-ray?) All three volumes are expected on February 28, 2011, and will retail for £19.99 apiece–though they'll each be available from Network's website for £15.99. 

This is very exciting news!  I hope that the series releases turn out to be region-free, though, because if they're not, I'll probably end up shelling out for a multi-region Blu-ray player.  The chances of American releases of some of these shows seems unlikely, though since A&E did put out The Prisoner and Space: 1999 on Blu-ray, I suppose The Persuaders! at least has a chance... Fingers crossed!

R.I.P. Tony Curtis

One half of The Persuaders! is gone.  It's with great sadness that I mark the passing of Tony Curtis, who died yesterday of a heart attack at the age of 85.  It's kind of weird that I've blogged so little over these past four years (four years?!) about the two spy shows I love the most, The Avengers and The Persuaders!, but I've just been exploring other, more obscure shows in the time I've been blogging instead.  Eventually, I will go back to those first loves and it will feel like coming home.  But coming home to The Persuaders! won't quite be the same knowing that Tony Curtis is no longer in this world. 

The Persuaders! hinged on the chemistry of its two stars, Curtis and Roger Moore (or "Curtis + Moore" as the pair were equably billed on the same screen), and their interplay is what makes it a favorite of mine.  I'll admit, it was Moore (unsurprisingly) who first attracted me to The Persuaders!, but I quickly realized that Curtis played an equal part in making it great.  And the show made me love him.  Sure, I was familiar with his more famous film work before seeing it, but bore no particularly strong feelings one way or the other.  But his performance as the freewheeling American adventurer Danny Wilde, impetuous, contrary and always gloved, made me see a different side of Tony Curtis and gave me a new appreciation for his talents.  In fact, I would rank his work in its pilot, "Overture," right up there with his most famous film performances.  The Persuaders! is likely to be little more than a footnote in most obituaries, but hardly anything better displayed the actor's great charm and wit.  Which isn't to say he didn't have a hell of a career before it, as well. 

For an actor who dabbled in many, many genres over the years, Curtis (born Bernie Schwartz) played surprisingly few spy roles (although he spawned a daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, who went on to star in a pretty big one, True Lies).  Besides The Persuaders! (which, like all ITC shows, featured espionage plots with reliable regularity), Curtis' only notable spy role that I can think of off the top of my head was in the somewhat execrable Who Was That Lady? (1960) with Dean Martin and Curtis' then wife Janet Leigh. But The Persuaders! alone (even if his character isn't a professional secret agent) ensures Curtis a prominent spot in Spy Star Valhalla.  He can also claim (in a tangiential spy connection) to have worked with three Bonds.  In addition to working with Moore on The Persuaders!, Curtis also made The Mirror Crack'd, with Pierce Brosnan (in a very small, uncredited role) and the infamous Sextette with Timothy Dalton.

Curtis' early career, marked by lots of frothy matinee idol roles, saw him quickly categorized as a lightweight actor. Such generalizations, however, ignore some impressive early parts, like the title role in the 1953 biopic Houdini. Critical acclaim did come, though, for strong dramatic turns in movies later in the Fifties like The Sweet Smell of Success, The Defiant Ones (for which he earned an Oscar nomination) and of course Billy Wilder's classic drag comedy Some Like It Hot (a role he wasn't above riffing on later in his career, from absurd Seventies sex farces like the guilty pleasure Some Like It Cool - also starring spy sirens Marisa Mell, Sylva Koscina and Britt Ekland - to a hilarious reference on The Persuaders!).

He took some heat for his Bronx accent when playing in historical dramas and swashbucklers like Spartacus, The Vikings and The Black Shield of Falworth ("Yonda lies da castle of my fadda!"), but the truth is he's pretty awesome in them.  I love his performance in Spartacus!  Curtis himself was fond of pointing out that a stuffy British accent was no more accurate to ancient Rome than his own Bronx brogue, except that conventions had dictated us to expect it.

Curtis considered the Sixties the nadir of his career (up to that point anyway; he couldn't have imagined the Eighties!), which was revived the following decade on TV.  But many of my personal favorite Curtis movies come from that decade, including the zany race caper Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies, a terrifying turn as The Boston Strangler and my own favorite Curtis movie, Don't Make Waves (1967).  Seriously, when everybody else is paying homage this weekend by watching Some Like It Hot for the zillionth time, try this one instead (if you can find it).  It co-stars the luscious Claudia Cardinale and Sharon Tate, features an awesome Byrds title track and captures California culture on film better than anything from that decade besides The Loved One.

Tony Curtis was one in a million.  We've seen (again and again) the first half of his life unfold (in the guise of Danny Wilde) to one of the greatest theme songs of all time (courtesy of John Barry).  Now, for Persuaders! fans, at least, his afterlife is ensured to unfold to that theme as well, because with a show as good (if underrated) as that, and an equally imporessive filmography, Tony Curtis is truly immortal.

CD Review: The Zoo Gang: Original Soundtrack

I can’t remember if I’ve ever said this before in reviewing one of Network’s comprehensive ITC soundtrack sets, but one of the reasons I find these scores so appealing is because, being TV scores, they serve as sorts of digests for everything cool that’s happening in film music in their given era. Let me be clear: I do not mean this as a slight! That they are derivative does not mean that they aren’t creative. Quite the opposite, in fact. If the producers had merely slated in bits of existing movie scores or used total sound-alike bits, then they wouldn’t be fun and would probably detract from the shows in question. Instead, they hired very talented composers (including the great Ken Thorne, responsible for the music for The Zoo Gang) to synthesize what was popular, distill it to its essence, and regurgitate it in exciting and unexpected new ways, greatly enhancing the programs it accompanied. Because the ITC shows themselves were often reflections of big screen entertainment that was popular at the time (obviously Bond, but plenty of other influences as well), it’s only right that their music reflect that. There is no better capsule of an era in film music than an ITC soundtrack; what's going on in movies inevitably trickles down to television as well.

Case in point: The Zoo Gang. This short-lived series about a group of wartime resistance fighters now well past their prime but reunited first to bring to justice a traitor who betrayed them decades earlier and then to right new wrongs lasted only six episodes in 1974, but the incidental music for those episodes plays like “Now That’s What I Call Film Music 1974.” From the bold staccato track that opens Disc 1 and will instantly evoke George Martin’s first cue in Live And Let Die for Bond fans to the funky Paul McCartney theme tune this disc (like that Bond soundtrack) segues into, to even more funky, Roy Budd-ish action music to even the occasional T-Rexian riff, The Zoo Gang represents the very best in music of its era. The mere fact that Paul and Linda McCartney were hired to compose and perform (along with Wings) the theme bespeaks an ITC much more attuned to its era–and particularly the youth culture of its era–than the last time the company mounted a show about reunited war veterans more than a decade earlier in The Four Just Men.  That series about older heroes offered no concessions to the younger generation who would become television's biggest market; in fact there was an episode about how the remarkably out-of-it heroes couldn't even understand them.  A show with leads all in their fifties or above might seem like a strange match for a Wings song, but I think that was actually a canny strategy on ITC's part to lure younger viewers.  (Sadly, it seems to have failed.)

Disc 2 offers an equal variety of musical influences to that on Disc 1. Track 21 is a somber, even mournful orchestral piece that evokes Nino Rota’s score for The Godfather. The suspenseful, exciting track 24 (and tracks 36-38 of alternate versions) sounds like it could easily be torn from one of those great, funky Hammer scores of the early Seventies like Dracula AD 1972 or The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Other tracks offer the perfect cocktail of smooth, Seventies lounge music, akin to Laurie Johnson’s Jason King music (or John Barry’s 1971 Diamonds Are Forever score, to which I also compared Johnson’s music).

While there’s something to please every musical taste (well, at least every Seventies-leaning musical taste, anyway) on The Zoo Gang soundtrack, it’s by no means a hodgepodge. Ken Thorne (Help!, Inspector Clouseau) brings all of these disparate sounds together and skillfully blends them in service of the show. While I obviously appreciate the many different musical genres he touches on, the end result is very much his own. In fact, I think it’s the best representation of Thorne’s work I've heard on CD. (I have most of his officially released soundtracks save for that awesome-looking, super-expensive Superman box set that includes his music and his arrangements of John Williams’ music for Superman II and III.) It’s great original music, great arrangements of the McCartney theme and great music for the show itself. (To me, nothing better evokes the South of France as the ultimate Seventies vacation destination!) Furthermore, it all sounds great on Network’s release. (Even the alternate takes, amidst which Thorne can occasionally be heard talking to the orchestra–but far less detrimentally than the frequent vocal intrusions on the Laurie Johnson Avengers CDs–sound terrific, and don’t get as repetitive as some of Network’s sometimes frustratingly thorough compilations.) And none of these ITC shows sound cheap*; the studio didn’t skimp when it came to recording stellar scores.

I’ve said many, many times before that my own personal Soundtrack Holy Grail is Thorne’s music for The Persuaders!, of which we received one meager incidental cue on Network’s Best of ITC collection. It’s been said that the music is lost; it’s also been said that it’s been recently found. I choose to remain optimistic and hold out hope that one of these days, Network will release a set as wonderful–and hopefully at least as complete–as this one. In the meantime, though, The Zoo Gang: Original Soundtrack is as close as you can get. Even if you’ve never seen the series, if you enjoy Thorne’s work on The Persuaders!, you’ll enjoy this too. (Despite its older heroes, The Zoo Gang shares a similar tone and French Riviera location with The Persuaders!) The Zoo Gang is Seventies television music at its very best, and probably my favorite release yet in Network’s ongoing series of ITC soundtracks. This is essential spy music–essential for fans of the show, for fans of Thorne, for Beatles fans and Paul McCartney completist, and essential for fans of the studio and the genre at large. The Zoo Gang itself is a fun series, but by no means essential. Its music, however, is!

In Britain, The Zoo Gang: Original Soundtrack is available for £15.99 as a Web Exclusive from Network's site. In America, it can be ordered from Screen Archives Entertainment for $29.95. You can listen to a good representative sampling of the music here.

*A lot of Thorne’s best music is besot by cheap-sounding recordings. He wrote some wonderful themes for Lassiter–and I’m grateful to have that obscure score on CD thanks to BSX–but it sounds like it was recorded by a three-piece orchestra. The same can sadly be said of his Superman work (at least compared to The London Symphony Orchestra’s bombastic and enthusiastic performance of Williams’ score to the first movie), though I hear FSM has worked wonders to make it sound better than ever on that box set.