Today's blog offering, crossing the border from MovieLand to TVLand for a brief visit to the world of the small screen, is not a review per se, more a nostalgic remembrance.
One of my all-time favourite TV shows is The Champions, a British 30-episode, single-series sci fi/fantasy show first screened here in the UK during the late 1960s, by the TV channel ITV. Created by Dennis Spooner and Monty Berman (Berman also serving as its producer), with its very memorable theme music written by Tony Hatch, and distributed by ITV Studios Global Entertainment and Granada International Media Ltd, it centred upon three special agents (played by William Gaunt as Richard Barrett, Stuart Damon as Craig Stirling, and Alexandra Bastedo as Sharron Macready), working for an international intelligence agency called Nemesis, based in Geneva, Switzerland.
During the opening episode, while on one of their covert missions, their aeroplane crashes in the Himalayas. However, although badly injured, their lives are saved by a mysterious sect of mountain-dwelling holy men, who not only restore their health but also confer upon them super-human abilities, including telepathy, telekinesis, immense strength, incredible memory, and much more. The trio – now constituting the titular Champions – decide to keep their powers secret, even from their boss, Commander Tremayne (played by Anthony Nicholls after original choice Douglas Fairbanks Jr dropped out), the only other regular character in the show), but use them skillfully and successfully in each of the following 29 episodes when pitted against some villainous genius or corrupt organisation.
Many
notable TV (and movie) actors of the day guest-starred in The Champions. These include the likes of Burt Kwouk, Peter
Wyngarde, David Prowse, Anton Rodgers, Patrick Wymark, Kate O'Mara, Patrick
Magee, Julian Glover, Gerald Harper, Mike Pratt, Zia Mohyeddin, Donald
Sutherland, Colin Blakely, Bernard Lee, Terence Alexander, Philip Madoc,
Talfryn Thomas, David Lodge, Frank Thornton, Rupert Davies, Nicholas Smith,
Jeremy Brett, Roger Delgado, Peter Madden, Patrick Allen, Gabrielle Drake,
Hannah Gordon, William Franklyn, Paul Eddington, and Eric Pohlmann – to mention
but a few! Moreover, Ian McShane had tested (unsuccessfully) for the role of Richard Barrett.
The Champions was repeated many times down through the years and I always watched it avidly, not just because I loved the whole supernatural/fantasy premise (and was smitten with Alexandra Bastedo!) but also because somehow I'd missed seeing that key opening episode when it had originally been screened. Yet bizarrely, although the subsequent 29 episodes were rescreened many times, never once was the opening episode rescreened.
Then, during the late 1980s, not long after I'd rented my first videcassette recorder (everyone rented VCRs back then, as they were still horrendously expensive to buy), I saw in the TV listings for ITV that Episode 1 of The Champions was scheduled to be rescreened! At last!
As it happened, I would be out with my parents at the time of its rescreening, so I set the VCR to record it, and greatly looked forward to watching it when back home that evening – until, while out, a horrible thought hit me. My parents had a habit of always turning off the electricity at the mains when we went out somewhere for the day! And so, totally dreading what I was about to hear, I nervously asked them if they'd turned the electricity off, to which my father cheerfully confirmed that he had indeed done so!
No electricity meant no recording by the VCR, which meant no Episode 1 to watch! Curses, foiled again!
Eventually, however, sometime during the 1990s, an official videocassette of the first 3 episodes of The Champions was released, which I lost no time in buying, and I can still recall finally – finally! – sitting down and watching that crucial series-setting Episode 1, which had eluded me for over 20 years.
I now own the entire 30-episode box set on DVD, but nothing will ever beat the blissful joy that I had experienced when watching that magical first episode after waiting so long to do so. Moreover, if you'd like to see it, all that you have to do in this online day and age is click here, to watch it straight away and for free on YouTube! (Other full episodes are also currently available to watch free of charge there.)
And finally: just in case you're wondering, as I did many times as a youngster, whether the huge, spectacular vertical fountain shown in the opening titles to every episode of The Champions was real, or whether it was simply a TV-created special effect, I am happy to confirm now that it was indeed real, and still exists today – it is the famous 460-ft-tall Jet d'Eau, at Lac Leman, in Geneva, and is one of that city's most celebrated, iconic sights. Conversely, the building standing in for the Geneva-based headquarters of Nemesis was situated far from Geneva – in the London borough of Barnet!
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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