User Reviews

It is the second episode and with William Tell now an outlaw. Gessler is annoyed with Tell's activities. he has become a thorn on his large cheesy backside.

Gessler takes six men from the village and interrogates them to find out if they know of Tell's whereabouts.

When that does not work, Gessler proclaims that they will be executed at sundown.

Tell's wife gets to the cave where he is hiding out and informs of Gessler's plans.

Can Tell rescue them in time and overcome all the soldiers?

There is a discussion between Gessler and Captain Hofmanstahl with the latter calling the proposed executions mass murder. The influence of the post World War 2 era.

James Booth makes an appearance. He was the barrack room lawyer in Zulu and even appeared in Twin Peaks.

Peter Hammond who plays Captain Hofmanstahl went on to become a prolific television director including the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes stories.

I watched many of the William Tell episodes some 60 years ago when I was a small boy. About 4 minutes into 'The Hostages' when the Austrian soldiers were pursuing Tell in a boat you can clearly see in the background a large motor vehicle, perhaps a tanker or a lorry, moving from right to left. The outdoor scenes were filmed in North Wales probably in the winter of 1957/58.