Virgin of the Secret Service - Network

[dpgmel]

This 1968 ATV series, that I've never heard of but sounds intriguing, starring Clinton Greyn is to be released by Network on the 22nd October, looking round the web I saw one description saying it wat ITV's answer to Adam Adamant Lives ! which if true would be very nice indeed.

Does any member remember it at all ?


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virgin-Secre...1387879&sr=8-4

http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/virgin.htm

[Gerald Lovell]

Excellent news. I have fond memories of this series - I can still hum the theme tune. A boys' own story, tongue-in-cheek adventure, which certainly does not warrant the "18" certificate it is currently showing.

[dpgmel]

Thanks Gerald it's sounding better and better, the 18 certificate is Amazon's default until they know the show's actiual classificatiom.

I've also tracked down more info here :

http://www.startrader.co.uk/Action%2...insecserve.htm

[Arfur Teacake]

Ahead of its time and a lot of people 'didnt get it' and thought it was rather silly hence it only lasted one season.

Possibly if it had come after Monty Python rather than before it would have been accepted?

[Westengland]

Ahead of its time and a lot of people 'didnt get it' and thought it was rather silly hence it only lasted one season.

Possibly if it had come after Monty Python rather than before it would have been accepted?

I would say it was very much of its time; the comparison to Adam Adamant Lives! is because of the fashion for things Victorian/Edwardian in the 1960s that peaked in 1966-1968 (there are plenty of television programmes and films from the time that show this trend, VOTSS being of the sub-genre of Imperial daring-do). As with AAL, I don't think it could have lasted more than two or three seasons at the most.

I shall get this release at some time, however, as I lived over the road from the late Betty Paul Lambda, who wrote one episode, Entente Cordiale (1.3), 11/4/68 - which also guest-starred Britmovie favebabe Katherine Schofield.

It's unfortunate that, of those British Empire programmes, Frontier has apparently been lost for good, including its written production material, only one VHS recording of one episode supposedly surviving in private hands and a "book based on the series".

[Arfur Teacake]

I would say it was very much of its time; the comparison to Adam Adamant Lives! is because of the fashion for things Victorian/Edwardian in the 1960s that peaked in 1966-1968 (there are plenty of television programmes and films from the time that show this trend, VOTSS being of the sub-genre of Imperial daring-do). As with AAL, I don't think it could have lasted more than two or three seasons at the most.

I shall get this release at some time, however, as I lived over the road from the late Betty Paul Lambda, who wrote one episode, Entente Cordiale (1.3), 11/4/68 - which also guest-starred Britmovie favebabe Katherine Schofield.

It's unfortunate that, of those British Empire programmes, Frontier has apparently been lost for good, including its written production material, only one VHS recording of one episode supposedly surviving in private hands and a "book based on the series".

I was thinking more on the humour side of things but good observation of that era.

I think (maybe wrong) that trend was pensioned off with a show called The Misfit
which IIRC was about an old duffer coming to terms with modern life.

[Moor Larkin]

I think (maybe wrong) that trend was pensioned off with a show called The Misfit
which IIRC was about an old duffer coming to terms with modern life.

That show was brilliant. I loved it and my dad loved it. Ronald Fraser was fantastic. I remember one scene where some young girl was finding him "sexy" and she remarked how nice it was to see a man whose trousers were baggy round the crotch........

The Misfit was a meditation on the way Britain had changed so rapidly that within that man's lifetime he was now a foreigner in his own country (having recently returned from 'the colonies') and was largely sympathetic to his bewilderment rather than belittling it.

[didi-5]

Frontier - some of the production photos and other material are in the hands of Gary Bond's partner ...

[Westengland]

Frontier - some of the production photos and other material are in the hands of Gary Bond's partner ...

Yeah, that's good to hear - I thought that the cast, writers and crew (or their heirs) would have most of the Frontier memorabilia that survives - but as for the company (ABC/Thames) archives for the series, who knows if they survive and if so where they are?

A great deal of time and money and creativity was spent on Frontier with results that in hindsight (as ever) may not have been genre-redefining but were good enough to deserve preservation for the future but that didn't save it from the Big Skip (compare The Indian Tales Of Rudyard Kipling - one episode surviving).

Meanwhile, for late sixties Raj TV & Films we now have Virgin Of The Secret Service to add to, er, Carry On Up The Kyber whilst the early seventies The Regiment remains unreleased.

[CaptainWaggett]

This 1968 ATV series, that I've never heard of but sounds intriguing, starring Clinton Greyn is to be released by Network on the 22nd October, looking round the web I saw one description saying it wat ITV's answer to Adam Adamant Lives ! which if true would be very nice indeed.

Does any member remember it at all ?


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virgin-Secre...1387879&sr=8-4

http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/virgin.htm

As Captain Virgin he was accompanied by Col. Shaw-Camberley played by Noel Coleman and Mrs Virginia Cortez (Veronica Strong), one of the Edwardian women who used emancipation to become a photographer. The glamorous lady was (fictionally) a well known figure in London society of the early 1900s. Diplomats, statesmen and royalty visited her studio - and often uttered useful indiscretions during their sittings. Then there was the faithful Fred Doublett (John Cater). He was Virgin's batman, an amateur escapologist, expert at picking locks and a man who enjoyed a bet or two.

So the hero and heroine are called Virgin and Virginia?

[dpgmel]

So the hero and heroine are called Virgin and Virginia?

Obviously a far more innocent age......

[Moor Larkin]

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[Westengland]

I wonder if someone had been reading MacDonald-Fraser, or was it just the zeitgeist.

The zeitgeist is important - s I said on #5, around 1966-1968 was the peak for the Victorian/Edwardian fashion revival (or what people thought was Victorian and Edwardian) of the nineteen-sixties, which had actually started in the nineteen-fifties and has never really gone away, just changing its emphases from year to year.

Back then, Moor, you could have walked down your local high street dressed like your avatar (even with the helmet) and most people would not have stared at you (but you should have avoided the "difficult" parts of town); would you do so now? - go on, you know you want to, really...

[Moor Larkin]

Back then, Moor, you could have walked down your local high street dressed like your avatar (even with the helmet) and most people would not have stared at you (but you should have avoided the "difficult" parts of town); would you do so now? - go on, you know you want to, really...

What makes you think I didn't....

I withdrew my initial comments because I realised this prog predated Fraser's books.

I have to say I had never heard of it before. I was reading a short while back that George Markstein and Lloyd Shirley were behind "Frontier" and it was said to have got a bit of a drubbing from the PC-wallahs of the time. They've been with us a long time it seems......

[Westengland]

I have to say I had never heard of it before. I was reading a short while back that George Markstein and Lloyd Shirley were behind "Frontier" and it was said to have got a bit of a drubbing from the PC-wallahs of the time. They've been with us a long time it seems......

I think my memories of Virgin Of The Secret Service -if they are real memories at all - are contsructed from reading about it when looking through old TV listings and TV old programme guides in the c.forty-five years since it was broadcast. I may have seen some episodes but honestly can't be sure now and the same with Frontier. This shows how memory is a reconstruction not a record - and what is a "record" anyway.

I don't know about the "PC-wallahs"of the time" - one of the things that made Frontier a step up from the usual sixties Raj TV fare was the use of what were then called "Indian" actors for "native" parts and plausible stories written by people who knew the North-West Frontier, like Berkley Mather (back then there was usually an effort made to represent fairly the various peoples of the Empire in imperial set dramas - don't trust some teenager writing today about what they think happened - the kind who could never "get" McGoohan as Brand, for example).

If and when somebody started a Frontier thread here or over at the other place (The Mausoleum Club), I was going to mention that it involved archive TV "heroes" (Gary Bond) and "villains" (George Markstein) - let's hope George M. kept a stash of recordings, scripts and photos etc.

[Moor Larkin]

I don't know about the "PC-wallahs"of the time" - one of the things that made Frontier a step up from the usual sixties Raj TV fare was the use of what were then called "Indian" actors for "native" parts and plausible stories written by people who knew the North-West Frontier

This is the fragment wot I remembered.... something about wog-bashers and New Statesman....
http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=N...#search_anchor

I think the Illustrated London News has an online archive now, so if anyone is a ,member of the cultural elites, they probably can get access to it.

Me? I'm just a worker of the government... or tax-payer as we are now known.... so all I can do is scavenge on the fringes of the googlemonster......

[Moor Larkin]

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[Toscana]

VOTSS: Watch out for the late Peter Diamond (d2004) in most of the episodes. If you don't know him by sight he will be the baddie. Top stunt and swordsman went on to Starwars, Highlander, Superman ect. Also I think Rodney Bewes blacked up as an Indian in one episode, not very PC.

[dpgmel]

Rats ! Amazon are now showing the release date for this as April 8th next year ( one I was really looking forward to )

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virgin-Secre...814531&sr=1-12