Network, out now

A special set to mark the 50th anniversary of Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde’s exploits…

Squeezed between his time as The Saint and his years as 007, Roger Moore starred in 24 episodes of what’s regarded by many as ITC’s finest series – The Persuaders! Moore’s aristocratic Lord Brett Sinclair was teamed up with Tony Curtis as Danny Wilde, a self made American millionaire (the title sequence set to John Barry’s simply brilliant theme sets out the backstory with a conciseness that I wish was emulated by so many TV series today!) and found themselves either pushed to help those needing it by Laurence Naismith’s Judge Fulton or ending up in perilous situations inadvertently. The show played to both men’s strengths with their very different styles in and out of character on display.

Sadly just 24 episodes were made and 16 of them feature in this latest set from Network, which ties in to their online event. The set begins with that complete evening’s entertainment which includes presentations of two episodes – Overture and Greensleeves – as they might have been seen at the time (i.e. complete with contemporary adverts, in a similar way to the Cybernauts disc from a few years back), accompanied by two key interviews, one with Roger Moore from the 40th anniversary celebrations, the other with Tony Curtis (which unsurprisingly has a warning on it for content!). Both are well worth your time – and can be accessed separately from the main menu.

The other four discs contain eight The Persuaders! movies. These have an interesting genesis (and thanks to Jaz Wiseman for the explanation): the first one contains Overture and Five Miles to Midnight and is a new compilation completely for this set. Overture was combined with a different episode originally for a Turkish compilation release but that episode was later used for the Italian movies, and so Network wisely changed things up for this, and created a new bridging sequence. Mission Monte Carlo (Powerswitch and The Gold Napoleon) and London Conspiracy (Greensleeves and A Home of One’s Own) were released in 1974 around the world with Sporting Chance (Someone Waiting and Anyone Can Play) in 1975 and The Switch (The Ozerov Inheritance and Angie, Angie…) in 1976. (The first three of those were available in the UK on VHS.) Then further compilations were made for the Italian market: Ultimo Appuntamento (The Man in the Middle and To The Death, Baby in 1977), Ancora Insieme (A Death in the Family and Someone Like Me in 1979) and Che Coppia… Quei Due! (That’s Me Over There and Element of Risk in 1980) which become Last Appointment!, Death Becomes Me and The Masqueraders for this release.

Confused? Actually, it doesn’t really matter – all you need to know is that two episodes have been bolted together for each movie, with new titles, and are fresh edits from the high definition versions of the episodes. They’re now in widescreen rather than 4:3 television ratio (which the films were originally released in), which does affect some of the directors and cinematographers’ compositions.

The set is completed by the wonderfully nostalgic book The Time and the Place by Wiseman which brings together material from around the world that accompanied the series’ release. We’ve got covers from listings magazines, Countdown! and many other comics, toys, posters for the movies, gum cards… a wealth of images not seen for decades.

Verdict: If you’re a purist about watching episodes in their originally intended format (but aren’t going to go quite so far as to get an old 405 lines set to watch them on!) then you’ve probably already got the 40th anniversary release with these in high definition, but for everyone else this is an excellent presentation of two-thirds of the series, with some great extras. Come on, Network – time to put together the final four movies… 9/10

Paul Simpson

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