The Baron, anyone?
Napoleon Plural
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Never happened upon this TV 'detective' series before, but it's currently showing nightly on Channel 42 I think, at 8pm, after The New Avengers and The Avengers, and it's very much in that ilk, also The Saint.
Any thoughts?
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
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I've never seen that one, is that the one where his cover is as an antiques dealer with a Jensen? I get them a bit mixed up!
I vaguely remember it from the ‘60’s. It was never something the family watched on a regular basis. It’s one the lesser ITC series in their portfolio.
I have watched the odd episode. ITC made loads of these easily watchable and instantly forgettable series in the sixties. Most of them are poor imitations of The Saint. I saw them when Channel4 ran repeats on Sunday mornings. The theme tune is good. There is a whole series of books about the Baron by John Creasy. I do not know if the TV show was brand new material or adaptations. If my memory serves me, the Baron is an antique dealer. Another sixties spy/thriller character, Charles Hood, was also an antique expert, so I guess James Mayo knew his John Creasy.
Good Reads lists all the books in order with some reader reviews and some interesting cover art. Anthony Morton was one of many pseudonyms used by John Creasy, and I believe specifically created for the Baron novels. Note they outlasted the TV series.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/42625-baron?page=1&per_page=15
I did a piece on John Creasey back in the dim and distant on one of the threads on here. He published over 600 books using 20-odd pseudonyms as well as his own name.
I think Steve Forrest's suits are brilliant. I wonder who the tailors were.
He would have made a decent Bond, as he wasn't too "American" - more transatlantic.
I never recall seeing The Baron on telly as a kid and whether it was on or not, I don't think it ever entered the popular conciousness. Corgi or Dinky toys never, as far as I'm aware, came up with a toy car replica of the character's Oyster grey Jenson sports car, while they did for other shows, no matter how tangential the vehicle.
It's a cliche now to work AI into everything, so suffice to say that The Baron seems like the missing link between The Saint and The Avengers, and if so it's also the weakest link because it lacks the USP of those other shows.
Which isn't to say it's not enjoyable as a curiosity. It like how I finally got round to listening to the Beatles' second LP, With the Beatles, after several decades. Many of the tracks, tbf, I did already know but all the same many I didn't and overall it felt like listening to an imposter album, an imitation. Or you could say watching The Baron is like stumbling upon a Boots wallet of family photos taken when you were a child or teenager, pictures you don't recall seeing before; they may not be the best photos but you just can't help but be curious.
Perhaps in middle age I lean towards mediocrity, or rather find the good in it, and find brilliance off-putting. Perhaps that's why I shy away from Barbel's Imaginary Conversations thread?
Anyway, enough of that. Steve Forrest is The Baron, and several episodes I have no idea how or why he has that moniker, it simply isn't referenced much. The actor looks like Roger Moore, presents like him too, but he's American. He may well be a better actor, better in the fights, better with a gun (Moore's Saint didn't use a gun much did he, and Steed in The Avengers never) but that's not the point. He's not Roger Moore. He doesn't have Moore's enjoyable pretty boy looks, nor his charisma, nor that sense of a persona having been created. (Moore resembles his fellow Londoner - loosely speaking - David Bowie, their entire persona is a creation so one wonders if that didn't inhibit their onscreen acting, as they are already acting the whole time, to improvise within that fictional persona is asking too much.)
Forrest may look like Moore's Saint but seems a decade older, despite being only a couple of years older in real life - maybe the actor faked his age as so many do? To give you an idea, on wiki it says Forrest was to take over the role of Jock Ewing in the 1980s soap Dallas when the lead actor died; this fell through after a fan outcry. Well, Jock was the ageing patriach of the Ewing clan and at this time, Moore was still just about a viable romantic lead, albeit on the final furlong of Octopussy and so on. In fact, Moore was of the same generation as Ewing son Larry Hagman. But that's a generational difference between the two actors in terms of appearance.
So, he looks like The Saint but isn't, some of the set ups are more The Avengers. The lead's name is Mannering, and as the show came about in 1966 you can't blame them for not knowing that this would be similar to the name of the stuffy, pompous blank clerk turned captain in the legendary sitcom Dad's Army, played by Arthur Lowe, but it does undermine the thing because it's not a cool name, is it. I guess if they were basing it on a series of books, they were landed with that one.
Mannering poses as - no that's not quite fair - is, a reputable Mayfair antiques dealer. After several episodes we're not quite clear whether his spy duties spring from this officially or unofficially though I'm sure some episodes do cover this, maybe I just missed them. Lovejoy not withstanding, it doesn't naturally lend itself to spy work. With Simon Templer you do get the sense he's an adventurer who moves in jet set circles and looks for opportunity and with it comes trouble, and Steed and co just seem to be self-appointed sleuths within the bosom of State backing. Mannering doesn't have a natural pretext and he seems a cautious character, not one for chancing things or taking a risk.
I slightly disagree with @chrisno1 's assertion about the theme song but then again even The Saint isn't that great, it's certainly can't match that of The Avengers but what can. It's a noisy theme better suited to some gritty top brass police or MI5 drama, set against a series of antiques on a black background it seems to anticipate John Barry's Lion in Winter theme. Well, a bit. Oddly, it's preceded by a slam bang introductory bit of music with fisticuffs and women screaming. I think this is to make clear to viewers they are watching an action thriller series and not some staid drama about antiques. And this need to remedy this becomes growingly obvious; the thing about Lovejoy is that the character was a working class heterosexual lad with long dark hair and a leather jacket; he resembled under Ian Macshane a 1970s rock star. So, obviously not gay then. The stereotype of a gay antiques dealer may be the reason Mannering's male assistant was jettisoned after several episodes in favour of Sue Lloyd. Lloyd was the female interest in The Ipcress File, but while she looks the same, she presents as a less alluring type, she seemed a better actress in the movie, more appealing too. She isn't given much to do here, and you have two leads who don't have much appeal either by themselves or by sparring off each other. She's not an Emma Peel type exactly, she's sort of a Moneypenny without the repartee in what I've seen so far.
Mannering's Jenson is another AI creation it seems, it's kind of 'Okay, let's find something like the Saint's Porsche , only it can be grey like the Aston Martin DB5, should be good, right?' It just looks a bit bug-eyed to me.
A thing about The Saint and The Avengers is that they are carried by their very English leads, who had a terrific way with comedy. Without them, it's hard to see the shows would have got anywhere - as evidenced by the ill-fated big screen adaptations with Val Kilmer and Ralph Fiennes. Then again, if you had Mannering played by an English character, it might look even more fey.
Someone mentioned the exclusivity of the jet set and this held true in 66 - I am reading the James Bond novel Colonel Sun and there is a snobby passage - an observation by Bond - about how in 68 such excursions could now be enjoyed by the riff raff on package holidays.
I do quite enjoy The Baron and there is the enjoyment of seeing the occasional familiar face in an unfamiliar role - Brian Wilde, who plays the liberal-minded screw in the prison sitcom Porridge, with a starring role as a laughing sadistic killer.
But generally there is the feeling that it doesn't quite have a theme.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Good post.
Yes, Forrest did look like an older Moore.
I think Mannering did have some connections to MI6 or the CIA, and that his antiques business was a cover. In one episode about a stolen artwork this seems to be hinted at.
His car was brilliant — far better looking than Templar's Volvo. It's a pity a Corgi or Dinky toy wasn’t made of it.
Yes, The Baron did seem like a sort of Saint. It was in colour though, whereas The Saint up until 1968 was in black and white. In the early Saint episodes Moore played Templar more seriously and straight, only becoming more like the way he played Bond around 1965.
Both The Saint (the black-and-white ones) and The Baron are being shown on Freeview channels in the UK now, and seeing them side-by-side I actually prefer The Baron. The black-and-white Saints were pretty dull.
I got ChatGPT to create an imaginary “intelligence dossier” on John Mannering as if he was working for an intelligence agency.
It wouldn't copy and paste properly here, so I have attached it.
Well, I have to agree here - and it's a shame because ChrisNo1 has a thread on the black and white Saint episodes, so presumably he likes them, and it makes me seem quite shallow, but I do like the colour photography of these things. Some b+w Avengers episodes are classics and look great but... it makes me recall Cliff Richard when asked whether he preferred A Hard Day's Night or Help!, opted for the latter 'because it's in colour so that makes it better, I mean real life is in colour, isn' it?' I mean check out the cinefile! But yes, the colour does bring it into the mid 60s.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sorry, for just a few minutes of the day we were both thinking of The Baron and our posts got mixed up. That's brilliant stuff, opal - I've not got the hang of using the ChatGPT to devise this, it's quite astonishing/scary isn't it.
Doesn't mention his assistants however - he's not always working alone!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I should add that it's not because the early Saints are B&W that I don't like them, it more to do with the poor storylines and lackluster plots. At least the ones I've seen.
Yes, I forgot to get ChatGPT to mention his assistants. He had two, I think, a man and woman. The man was only in the first few episodes, but the woman was in the rest.
The woman is played by Sue Lloyd, who cropped up a fair bit in The Saint and was the female operative Michael Caine seduces in The Ipcress File. The Baron was transmitted in black and white in the UK [no colour transmissions until 1968] but made in colour for the US market. I believe it was made in 1965 before The Saint and The Avengers switched to colour in 1966.
Yes, that was her name. She was also later in the UK TV soap Crossroads.
You might be mistaken about The Baron colour transmissions. According to Wikipedia:
"The Baron was the first ITC show without marrionettes to be produced entirely in colour."
You might be getting it mixed up with The Saint that was in black and white until around 1967/68.
It was MADE in colour - it was not TRANSMITTED in colour
I see, but there's no need to shout at me with block capitals. Take a deep breath.
Yeah I know what you mean; I'd also heard that the b/w Saints are considered better, and I've been trying them as they appear on the Retro Telly YouTube channel (which I think is owned by ITV so it's official) and, well, just not enjoying them as much as the later colour ones. The stories are a bit pedestrian so far.
In terms of ITC shows just nothing beats The Persuaders for me, it's just so much fun, the leads are charisma personified and when it clicks it absolutely sings. ITC plots are all fairly basic and rote, and if you don't have that special ingredient X, as you do in Jason King or Persuaders, then they can be pretty dull. I tried The Protectors recently and although it's all very glossy, nothing made me want to watch more than a couple of them. I'm not massively desperate to do The Baron, even though I think Jensen CV8s are cool in a sort of ugly way.
The Avengers, as it was mentioned above (I know it's not ITC), is terrific too of course.
Oh, my apologies, I wasn't being objectionable, just wanted to emphasise the difference.
That's why the producers changed The IPCRESS Files to The Ipcress Files, because in test screenings they found that cinemagoers wound up shouting at the poor cashier....
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It's ok. I just saw that there is no option to use italics in the typing layout for posts here, so using capitals is the only way to emphasise things,
@emtiem. Yes, the b/w Saint episodes did tend to have more pedestrian plots. The colour ones were more interesting, and sometimes even slightly surreal.
The Persuaders is probably the best of the ITC shows in terms of character development, charisma and performances. Though Randall and Hopkirk had some of that too.
I agree about The Protectors. It never quite clicked for me. I think the 20 minute per episode format limited what it could do. If it had an hour, it might have had more room to develop. I like the theme music though.
What do you think of The New Avengers? I didn’t think it was as good as the original.
(I tried to reply using "quote", but something went wrong)
Yeah I know what you mean about New Avengers; it feels a bit schizophrenic as it’s sort of like an early The Professionals in tone but still wants to occasionally keep one foot in the surrealistic world of The Avengers. I did quite enjoy it, the leads are all great and the scripts are mostly decent and it’s got great production values, but it’s just a bit hard to pin down what it actually is. Then it goes to a very sterile-feeling Canada and it goes even more weird.
As we’ve been ranking them by cars (!) I would say that Steed’s Jaguar is one of the coolest TV cars ever though, and suits him perfectly 😁
You can italicise incidentally; just highlight the word and a context menu will appear. Works on phones too.
Yes, the New Avengers was schizophrenic. It was shot on 16 mm, I think, and not 35 mm like the original, which made it look cheaper and less glamorous. It's amazing how a small thing like film stock can change the whole feel of a series.
I thought they should have stuck with the original theme tune and possibly also the original type of opening credits, but that might not have fitted in with the late 1970s.
Yes, the ones they shot in Canada were very strange. I can't put my finger on why.
Thanks for the tip about the context menu.