Hunter's Section

Espionage is about people. Essentially, it is about one man, and the effect he has on others. He is a man alone: the nature of his trade isolates him from his kind. He can never hope for lasting human contacts: abiding love, enduring friendship. His weapons are treachery, corruption, betrayal, and yet he himself must be immune from these. In the world of the spy, it is not only necessary, it is good, to corrupt and to betray. So much is at stake that the spy can never hesitate. His enemy must be destroyed.

By any means.

Inevitably then the innocent are involved, manipulated. Inevitably they are hurt: sometimes they are destroyed. They confront one man, and he defeats them, because there is no weapon he will not use for their defeat, and yet he himself is a good man. He destroys one to save thousands, perhaps millions. He plays God because he must. There is no other way.

This attitude of mind is true of every spy: and yet all spies are different, each an expert in his own field. The decoder, the chemist, the gambler, the soldier, the economist, the whore. Behind them all, is the most terrible, the most dangerous: the ultimate spy.

His weapons are theft, blackmail, murder. The tools of his trade are the knife, the gun, and an icy courage no other kind of man possesses. He is the destroyer.

Callan is such a man.

He has never been seen on television before.

In this series we aim to create the acid authenticity of the gritty world of espionage: the feeling of fear for example, its sour smell, its taste of rusty steel. Often enough this is, unavoidably, a world of glamour: it has to be. The spy is concerned with power, and power, when it relaxes, looks for elegance, charm, comfort. Power insists that its wine be chateau-bottled and its women beautiful. But it is no part of the series to pretend that because a woman is beautiful she is less real than a plain one.

Danger brings a reality all its own, for this is the world of escapes, assassinations, stolen secrets: a world half-nightmare, half fantasy to the ordinary man: but to the spy it is normal, commonplace. Above all, it is real.

The reality doesn't come from atomic fountain pens or poisoned wall-paper: it comes from people. And some of them are very ordinary people, caught up in extraordinary situations.