Whilst out fishing for his breakfast, Danny somehow gets a briefcase full of secrets chained to him by a dying man. This does rather spoil their camping holiday, because various interested parties will go to any lengths to retrieve it.
This is a pretty representative episode of 'The Persuaders' in that it has a good cast (many of whom we will have seen elsewhere), a fair amount of action, a beautiful lady secret agent, a good deal of tongue in cheek humour, and a wildly implausible plot.
Peter "Grouty" Vaughan plays a bad guy, George Baker and Suzanna Leigh are secret agents, with good performances from the rest of the cast too.
Terry Nation's script is one that with minor changes could have been shoehorned into 'the Saint', 'the Avengers', or one of several other shows. Probably it was meant for one of those and just ended up being a Persuaders episode because that was the series being made at the time.
What elevates this above the average are the humorous bits; Brett's 'glamping' arrangements are wildly OTT (e.g. his tent has a chandelier in it....), Tony Curtis makes a good effort to clown about with his chained briefcase, and there are other moments with good dialogue such as when Brett visits his friend the electronics expert, who is listening to some taped music which appears to end;
" ...it's not finished yet; it's a silent movement...enchanting, isn't it?".
"...well, how do you know when it's finished...?".
".. the orchestra gets up and goes home..."
Danny the fugitive is described as being 'about six feet tall' whereas Curtis must have been somewhat conscious of his height playing alongside Moore; Curtis wasn't quite 5'9" in reality and regularly wore built-up heels. Of course this might go unnoticed alongside Brett's extravagant "designed by Roger Moore" wardrobe, which is arguably the single thing that most dates this show in modern eyes; start as you mean to go on... some folk refer to the '70s as 'the decade that taste forgot' and not without justification.
The scene where the briefcase is opened (by George Baker) appears to have been edited; in a recently broadcast version on UK TV (which is in 16:9 format, surprisingly without obvious detriment), you don't get to see that there are James Bond books inside; there is the barest glimpse of -AM- -ON- and that is all. Presumably some copyright issue...
In this episode they ought to have been blown up, shot, irradiated, hospitalised through having been beaten up, and heaven knows what else. How they failed to find a hacksaw or a file for that long is a mystery. Brett's clothes strangely clean themselves at the end of the episode, and Danny (despite voluntarily wearing the same, presumably now rather whiffy shirt that he hasn't been able to change for days) gets the girl.
So on the face of it, it is all a bit nonsensical, absolute hokum; and it is. But it is quite enjoyable hokum, and I guess that is the point. Although another series was planned, and then not made because of Moore's Bond commitments, in hindsight twenty-four episodes of this sort of thing was probably plenty enough; any more and the descent into ever-greater levels of self-parody would have been too much.
This is a pretty representative episode of 'The Persuaders' in that it has a good cast (many of whom we will have seen elsewhere), a fair amount of action, a beautiful lady secret agent, a good deal of tongue in cheek humour, and a wildly implausible plot.
Peter "Grouty" Vaughan plays a bad guy, George Baker and Suzanna Leigh are secret agents, with good performances from the rest of the cast too.
Terry Nation's script is one that with minor changes could have been shoehorned into 'the Saint', 'the Avengers', or one of several other shows. Probably it was meant for one of those and just ended up being a Persuaders episode because that was the series being made at the time.
What elevates this above the average are the humorous bits; Brett's 'glamping' arrangements are wildly OTT (e.g. his tent has a chandelier in it....), Tony Curtis makes a good effort to clown about with his chained briefcase, and there are other moments with good dialogue such as when Brett visits his friend the electronics expert, who is listening to some taped music which appears to end;
" ...it's not finished yet; it's a silent movement...enchanting, isn't it?".
"...well, how do you know when it's finished...?".
".. the orchestra gets up and goes home..."
Danny the fugitive is described as being 'about six feet tall' whereas Curtis must have been somewhat conscious of his height playing alongside Moore; Curtis wasn't quite 5'9" in reality and regularly wore built-up heels. Of course this might go unnoticed alongside Brett's extravagant "designed by Roger Moore" wardrobe, which is arguably the single thing that most dates this show in modern eyes; start as you mean to go on... some folk refer to the '70s as 'the decade that taste forgot' and not without justification.
The scene where the briefcase is opened (by George Baker) appears to have been edited; in a recently broadcast version on UK TV (which is in 16:9 format, surprisingly without obvious detriment), you don't get to see that there are James Bond books inside; there is the barest glimpse of -AM- -ON- and that is all. Presumably some copyright issue...
In this episode they ought to have been blown up, shot, irradiated, hospitalised through having been beaten up, and heaven knows what else. How they failed to find a hacksaw or a file for that long is a mystery. Brett's clothes strangely clean themselves at the end of the episode, and Danny (despite voluntarily wearing the same, presumably now rather whiffy shirt that he hasn't been able to change for days) gets the girl.
So on the face of it, it is all a bit nonsensical, absolute hokum; and it is. But it is quite enjoyable hokum, and I guess that is the point. Although another series was planned, and then not made because of Moore's Bond commitments, in hindsight twenty-four episodes of this sort of thing was probably plenty enough; any more and the descent into ever-greater levels of self-parody would have been too much.