Jason King
scaramanga1
The English RivieraPosts: 845Chief of Staff
Thought I'd give a heads up to any Jason King Fans out there -and if any of you don't know who or what - It was a TV series from the late sixties which kind of reached a cult status. Here's the general info:
Jason King - The Complete Series
Jason king Britain's dandiest crime investigator heads to DVD next month with the launch of Jason King - The Complete Series Special Edition.
As the name suggests, this is everything - seven discs with all 26 episodes complete and uncut, with Peter Wyngarde in the title role, mixing life as a crime fighter, author, playboy and late 60s clothes horse. Extras include a documentary, stills gallery, music suite and the TV play The Cross Fire starring Peter Wyngarde.
It's out on 30th June 2008, selling for £59.99.
Jason King - The Complete Series
Jason king Britain's dandiest crime investigator heads to DVD next month with the launch of Jason King - The Complete Series Special Edition.
As the name suggests, this is everything - seven discs with all 26 episodes complete and uncut, with Peter Wyngarde in the title role, mixing life as a crime fighter, author, playboy and late 60s clothes horse. Extras include a documentary, stills gallery, music suite and the TV play The Cross Fire starring Peter Wyngarde.
It's out on 30th June 2008, selling for £59.99.
Comments
blimey -that's a bit cheaper!
I'm struggling to remember Jason King - so I haven't really seen much of Department S. Again, it would be good for one of ITV's digital channels to re-show these.
Same here.Jason king didn't really feature in our house, but I do remeber seeing bits of it. I've always liked Peter Wyngarde.Must have been the 'tache
Its a shame to think his career was destroyed by an incident that in this day and age would have enhanced it!!
Sure was - means he was a bloody good actor though
Bumping this ancient thread, because I have just completed watching yet another vintage ITV adventure series, the one and only season of Department S, which introduced the character of Jason King. Before I rewrite my experiences as the basis for my new novel, I had best file my top secret report to our superiors here at ajb007.
Running from March 9 1969 through March 4 1970 this was fairly late in the cycle of ITV spy/adventure shows, well after the peak of spy mania. The importance of Wyngarde's fashion sense may indicate a greater interest in the counterculture as a new audience, as well as the show's stated emphasis on the weird and supposedly inexplicable.
starring;
Exciting theme song and incidental music by Edwin Astley. Here is the theme music and opening credits:
(I think we need to start an Edwin Astley thread, all these 1960s ITC adventure shows themes he composed are excellent)
Department S is a unit of Interpol, called in to solve mysteries that are too bizarre for the regular authorities. Sir Curtis Seretse is their boss, a mysterious British diplomat who gets two minutes or so of every episode to deliver exposition. Stewart Sullivan is team leader, the American in the gang, a typical tough two fisted teevee detective and a bit of an old fashioned idealist. Annabelle Hurst is the computer programmer and scientific type, though we mostly just see the room size computer she works with (named Auntie) and rarely learn what it actually does. Jason King is a well-known published author, famous for the Mark Caine series of books, and the intuitive genius type on the team. They have their headquarters in Paris, and we usually see (painted backdrops of) the Eiffel Tower and those nice mansard roofs outside their windows.
Every episode begins with a teaser showing us a scene so weird it defies explanation, and the text we see during the credit sequence emphasizing these weird mysteries suggests this is going to be a precursor to the X-Files. The rest of the episode is the team solving the mystery, each contributing their particular skill set. There is inevitably a logical explanation at the end, though the logic is often painfully forced and frequently the weird teaser is not even relevant to the actual criminal plot. Aside from the setup, Hurst and King also engage in reason vs intuition debates that somewhat anticipate Mulder and Scully, though Nicols is not a fraction the actress Gillian Anderson is, whereas Wyngarde is far more fascinating than Duchovny, so these debates are not evenly matched. Jason is always right at any rate and the conclusions to the episodes are never ambiguous.
Here are some examples of weird openings:
Six Days s1e01 March 9 1969: An airplane arrives six days late yet none of the passengers know they've lost time. (this is the series opener and immediately suggests to me, 50 years later, all that missing time experienced by UFO abducteees in the X-Files. But there is a much more "logical" explanation in this show, as there will bein every episode)
The Pied Piper of Hambledown s1e04 March 30 1969: A quaint English village is emptied of its population overnight, with one witness who saw them all being led away by men in hazmat type suits (again a very X-Files-ish image in itself, and the sensible explanation is a bit Avengers).
The Man from X s1e16 November 5 1969: Weirdest of all, a man in astronaut suit is found wandering the streets of London before dropping dead. (This one is solid all the way through and might be the single best episode.)
Others I gotta say just aren't that weird, like they came up with the hook to make the show unique but quickly ran out of ideas to justify that hook. And once those opening credits are over, it usually turns out to be a pretty conventional detective type plot, with the notable exception of the character of Jason King to make it all worth watching.
Usually in these ITV shows, there are familiar faces from a stock repertory of actors, including many from the early Bond films.
So, any of ours?
So that's three of ours, but otherwise I didn't recognise any of the usual repertory cast of ITV regulars. I guess they were giving jobs to a new generation of aspiring actors by 1969?
Two episodes written by Terry (Daleks) Nation. A Cellar Full of Silence s1e03 March 23 1969 (four men in rubber halloween masks are found dead in a basement), and The Man in the Elegant Room s1e06 April 13 1969 (there is an elegant room hidden in a warehouse, and a dead woman and a crazy man locked inside it). These are both interesting stories, but I'm not sure either weird opening is actually relevant to the story that ultimately unfolds.
Most of these are not spy stories, but crime/mystery type plots. Exceptions:
The Perfect Operation (s1e18 November 26 1969) in which brain surgery is being performed on a highranking civil servant, when suddenly the surgeon is forcibly replaced with an imposter who completes the surgery perfectly. This one has an ending straight out of early70s paranoid conspiracy thrillers, and for once the weird opening is actually integral to the plot.
The Duplicated Man (s1e19 December 3 1969) in which an MI5 agent fakes his death and reappears as an antique dealer. Not so weird, but another paranoid conspiracy type ending. (perhaps keeping track with the contemporary evolution of the spythriller, which has moved beyond the fantasy world of SpyMania)
The Bones Of Byrom Blain (s1e24 January 28 1970) Seretse and another intelligence chief go missing and are replaced by skeletons, en route to a top secret international conference: both a spy-ish plot and one where the weird mystery angle continues to be developed til the end.
one other key episode we absolutely must discuss. I had said I did not recognize many guest stars, but there is one who most definitely went on to better things:
A Small War of Nerves (s1e23 January 21 1970) Anthony Hopkins plays a chemical weapons specialist on the loose in London with enough experimental nerve gas to kill a million people. Don't think I've ever seen Hopkins so young before. He and Wyngarde have a scenery chewing showdown at the end.
Let's talk about Jason King, the main reason to watch this show and the topic of this resurrected thread.
Outrageously dressed, decadent and continuously drinking, smug condescending and arrogant, yet charming witty and likable. And inevitably correct whenever he suggests a solution to Stewart and Annabelle, even though he almost always has his mind on other things. He picks up chicks effortlessly, yet I don't have to read Wyngarde's wikipedia entry to guess this is a gay man. I am pretty sure he is wearing eyeliner. Almost every episode he gets knocked unconscious, suggesting his talk is better than his walk, yet we also see him engaging in daredevil recreation such as bobsledding, rockclimbing and parachuting, presumably as research for his books. There are several episodes where he does not appear until halfway through, and these drag notably and turn round instantly as soon's he is onscreen.
Stewart refers to him once as the poor man's Ian Fleming, so his imaginary series of books may be spy novels. Some titles do mimic Fleming's. Though after enough references, I get the idea Mark Caine is a detective rather than a secret agent, there's not enough clues to say for certain. Throughout all episodes we learn the titles of the books he writes (and frequently see the covers) as well as various plot details revealed: there is a fictional world within Department S's fictional world and we can almost see it from the clues we are given. And since his motivation for doing this job is research, we can guess several of the show's plots will be recycled for more as-yet-unwritten imaginary books.
Here are Sullivan and Seretse meeting next to a spinner rack full of Mark Caine novels, showing several titles in the imaginary series.
Very good to see Wyngarde with his own series, he played excellent scenery chewing villains in two episodes each of The Avengers, The Saint, and one of The Prisoner. His performance is so entertaining he is virtually the only real reason to watch the show. But his character benefits from being contrasted to the rather more conventional Stewart and Annabelle, and I'm not surprised the consensus is his solo series is considered not so good.
For further info, there exists this rather good Department S fanpage
anybody else have any thoughts or memories of this show?
I saw a few episodes of Jason King when they first aired, I’d like to see them all. Im hoping they turn up on BritBox at some point.
Jonesing for more Wyngarde content, I decided to also rewatch some of the earlier ITV adventure show episodes in which Wyngarde guested as the villain.
The Avengers: A Touch of Brimstone s4e21 February 9, 1966
Perhaps the most famous of all Avengers episodes, in which Steed and Peel infiltrate the Hellfire Club, a secret society modeled on its 18th Century namesake and engaging in orgies and violent revolution. This is the one where Peel wears the spiked dog collar. Wyngarde is leader of the gang. Carol Cleveland's in this one too! Department S looks rather average after watching this. What's notable is how visibly Wyngarde had aged in three years.
The Avengers: Epic s5e11 March 25 , 1967
From the fifth season, typically stylized to the point of abstraction. In this one, Peel is kidnapped and finds herself on a movie set, moving from scenario to scenario in a dreamlike haze. Wyngarde plays the Man of 1000 Faces type actor who torments her, giving him an opportunity to demonstrate his range by appearing in a dozen different costumes. His dissipated persona here is generally similar to Peter O'Toole, their faces are even the same shape.
The Saint: The Man Who Liked Lions s5e08 November 18 1966
In which Moore and Wyngarde dress up in Roman centurion costumes and engage in gladiatorial combat. Wyngarde is nostalgic for the early days of Rome when there was discipline and real men, not like these decadent longhaired effeminates we have today (he should see himself in three years!). And as in A Touch of Brimstone, he is last seen falling through a hole in the floor, this time with a man-eating lion below.
The Saint: The Gadic Collection s5e27 June 22, 1967
Wyngarde in unconvincing brownface, as a Turkish art collector who imprisons and tortures Templar in the false belief Templar has the collection of stolen antiquities. (in yet another Octopussy foreshadowing, Templar sells him forgeries at the end) This is his least charming character from these five villain appearances, an intimidating thug living the life of a cultured man.
The Prisoner: Checkmate s1e09 November 24, 1967
"If you get another attack of egotism, don't wait, go back to the hospital immediately. Enjoy yourself." This is the episode with the life size chessboard with human pieces, to say more would demand an essay, it is essential viewing. Wyngarde plays a lowkey, almost likable Number 2, delegating his villainy to the psychiatrist character who performs invasive mindcontrol experiments on the Villagers. In one scene we learn he is a martial arts practitioner, perhaps explaining he appears so calm because his energy is so focused. Because of his mellow demeanour we do not get the expected McGoohan vs Wyngarde scenery chewing showdown I was hoping for.
Wyngarde was also in a few other ITV adventure shows, The Baron, The Champions and such, and even crossed the pond for I Spy: Let's Kill Karlovassi s3e01 Sep 11, 1967. I've never seen any of these shows, not even I Spy, and don't want to leap into the middle "just" to catch Wyngarde, so did not watch these.
I must say, this is the first time I've watched The Prisoner since working my way through Danger Man, and the first time I've watched Rigg-era Avengers since working my way through the Honor Blackman episodes. The more straightforward predecessor series have made me forget: The Prisoner and the Rigg-era Avengers are surely two of the most brilliant and original teevee series ever. The Saint is less impressive alongside these two shows, we watch it more because it is early Roger Moore.
Which makes me think, I was rather hard on Department S, saying it was a conventional detective show that failed to live up to its gimmick, made memorable solely due to Wyngarde. If it's worth is entirely down to one actor, that places it on the same level as The Saint. But get this: we think of Moore as the funny Bond, and he played it rather straight as Simon Templar. Whereas Wyngarde made for a genuinely creepy villain, with great range, a very different character in each of these five appearances listed above. And as a hero in his own show he is absolutely hilarious, much funnier than I've ever seen Roger Moore. A talented and fascinating actor.