Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Music from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s least known Supermarionation series, The Secret Service, is coming out from Silva Screen.

This is the 7th in the Silva Screen Gerry Anderson series – newly compiled, mastered and designed by the creative team at Fanderson, The Official Gerry And Sylvia Anderson Appreciation Society.

Whilst working at Pinewood Studios in 1968, Gerry Anderson bumped into the comic actor Stanley Unwin. With his whimsical charm and hilarious gibberish double talk (playfully christened ‘Unwinese’) Unwin had earned great popularity throughout the 50s and 60s and the Anderson’s immediately knew that they had found someone to base their next puppet series on. For several years the Century 21 team had toyed with directly basing a puppet character on a real-life actor, now the time had come to make it a reality. Duly, the Andersons developed a premise around Unwin, creating ‘Father’ Unwin, a kindly priest who, despite outwardly disappearing into whimsy, doubles as a determined agent for British Intelligence. In the series the lines would be blurred even further between the miniature Supermarionation world and reality, as live action footage of Stanley Unwin would also be used in the series.

To appropriately reflect the The Secret Service’s premise and complement the gentle title sequence created to introduce the series, Barry Gray decided to write a three-part fugue in the style of the Baroque composer Bach. To perform the vocals, the Mike Sammes Singers were hired, the vocal group who Gray had used on the Supercar theme. Once coupled with soft organ and minimalist percussion, a unique music piece was born to bookend Father Unwin’s adventures. perfectly capturing the off-beat nature of the series.

For more details on the series, and Lew Grade’s reaction to seeing the opening episode, check out the new edition of Filmed in Supermarionation, out now.