Ideas III

Anthony Goodman examines the formative years of

CALLAN
(continued)

Collin and Kershaw were occupying their respective positions by October 1967. By the middle of the following month, they had come up with a plan for the new series, addressing the points they felt unsatisfied with in the first series, and making developments to the style and content of the program, necessary for its continuing into one or more long series. With Ronald Radd out, it was still necessary to have a Head Of Department, but at this stage, it was assumed that the name ‘Hunter’ had left with him, as indicated by the outline for the new series. Published internally at ABC on November 14th, the new planning document covered nine points:

1. More realistic (Scripts/sets/direction/action). More feeling for reality of the Secret Service Section involved. Consistent characterisation and relationships.

2. Where is the series going? How do the relationships develop?

3. Callan should rejoin the Section.

(a) Need nothing doing to indicate same.
(b) At the moment, nothing really indicates he is not in Section.

4. If he rejoins, the H.O.D./Callan relationship need not be impaired.

5. Development of Callan inside personal background, i.e. the double life that an agent leads.

6. HUNTER - Now out of series - should be replaced by a different type of H.O.D. But one with whom Callan can still have an abrasive relationship. Possibly even more so than with Hunter.

7. NEW H.O.D. Possibly C.P.Snow/Philby type. Would find Callan basically unacceptable.

8. MERES Should stop being a foil for Hunter. More credible as an agent. Would deal with ‘other’ types of case - Would dislike Callan and vice-versa - but an expert none-the-less.

9. CALLAN/LONELY Lonely should be known to exist to the department. But he must be essentially a Callan man, and Callan should shield him from department scrutiny, i.e. he is only of use to the department whilst they pretend he does not exist. Once they know each other, he becomes non-effective as a device for Callan, and also a risk to the Section.

Just three days later, a further document was issued; one and three-quarter pages on ‘Hunter’ which started:

HUNTER is the code name of the head of the Section which employs Callan. When one man called Hunter is no longer attached to this service (an official euphemism that covers anything from violent death to promotion) another man called Hunter replaces him.

James Mitchell was paid two hundred pounds to re-write the scripts already commissioned, to accommodate the changes to the series, chiefly, the coming of a new ‘Hunter’, and Callan’s return to the Section. On December 15th, John Kershaw put a more coherent vision of the new series down on paper:

A spy frequently works alone, on a knife edge of fear and caution. Like everyone, he is vulnerable in some human way, through vanity, weakness, over-confidence; a vulnerability which he needs to guard against and which his adversary constantly seeks out.

Callan is such a man. Engaged in the ‘special activities’ section of the Intelligence Department at the M.O.D., his life is a melee of attack and counter; a chess game played with human lives, where pawns like himself are readily available.

The new series of Callan stories will concern themselves, as before, with his involvement in death-dealing situations dealt out by the head of section, Hunter.

The Hunter of this new series is a man in his mid-fifties; well-educated, cultured, intellectual. A formidable, perceptive, clear-thinking, senior civil-servant. His relationship with Callan, abrasive, even uncomfortable, springs from an obvious clash of personalities, and from the tense environment which is necessarily a part of the section’s everyday life.

There will be, if anything, an increased concern with realism. The development and relations of characters (if possible, at all levels within the stories) will be explored as deeply and sensitively as the stories themselves will allow. They will be dramas of human situation - situations the more dramatic for the absence of convenient plot twists of devices. Characters in danger will need to save themselves by effort and skill - rather than call on gimmicks or heroic rescues common to most fantasy spy series.

The stories will be strong and dramatic. But the characters who move through them will not be puppets manipulated by the plot, but people motivated by human needs and reactions.

A former WWII prisoner of war, Michael Goodliffe was cast as the new Hunter. His approach, both to the role and the program, were markedly different from Ronald Radd’s.

Goodliffe, originally a classical Shakespearian actor, was captured at the retreat at Dunkirk, and imprisoned for the duration of World War II (where he managed to continue his acting career, despite the privations of being a POW in wartime Germany!!). A page detailing his fascinating life can be found here. Michael Goodliffe died tragically by suicide, in 1976.

Early shooting of these Callan episodes was not free from acrimony. For example, the opening scene of the first episode to be recorded, "Most Promising Girl of Her Year" featured a virus being tested on a laboratory rat, supposedly killing the rat in five seconds. To make this look genuine, during the recording of the scene, a rat was knocked out with gas, but the ‘stunt’ rat accidentally was killed, instead of being rendered unconscious, as was intended. Naturally, this greatly distressed Goodliffe, who was furious that an animal should die for the sake of making a television program.

Goodliffe left the series after five episodes, and the role of Hunter was played by Derek Bond for the remainder of the series.

When the series started recording, no transmission dates had been set. According to Reginald Collin, this was in no way out of the ordinary. Recording of studio based shows onto videotape had started ten years earlier, and by now, while not common, programs would occasionally be put ‘in the can’ before a definite slot had been made in the network or regional schedules. Indeed, Lloyd Shirley was trying to keep such productions to a minimum, as suggested in a memo he sent to production designer turned director, Voytek Roman. The memo, dated February 28th 1968, apologises to Voytek for having discharged his directors’ contract for the series as "We have had to drop a number of drama dates that had originally been scheduled because we have found that we would be making products that would not be needed by Thames TV for a long period of time." Although the company was still ABC TV, it was known by late-1967 that ABC would merge with Associated Rediffusion and start transmitting as Thames Television from July 30th 1968, with a new franchise for London weekdays. So while Callan’s second series episodes were recorded as ABC productions, with ABC VT clocks and VT numbers, it is obvious that it was not expected for them to be broadcast until some time after the franchise renewal since some episodes did have Thames idents put on at time of recording. (Prior to their eventual transmission, all episodes had Thames VT clocks edited onto the fronts). Six episodes had already been recorded when Reginald Collin suggested a couple of possible transmission formats to Lloyd Shirley. In a memo date April 1st 1968, Collin suggests:

"Either one long run of fifteen, or the following:-

"An initial run of eight, which will be five Goodliffes and three Bonds, followed by a run of seven, which would be six Bonds and one Radd. The idea is that in the second [half of the] series, Bond will take some leave and Radd will return from unknown places to stand in. This would mean that we could use the existing Radd program [‘Nice People Die At Home’] as show six (second [half of the] series). To achieve this we would reintroduce Radd in show five, which could produce a powerful scene between him and Callan. It will, however, be necessary to re-shoot the office scenes in the recorded program for continuity. In show seven, Bond will return from leave and somewhat depending on how the series goes, will die. End of series.

"If you approve the above, I will make overtures for the re-booking of Radd, subject to availability. Also, it will be necessary to extend the studio booking by two weeks to record the extra program."

Lloyd Shirley approved all the above, with the exception of splitting the series into two halves. Eventually, the second series was transmitted as a single run of fifteen, with ‘Nice People Die At Home’ as the penultimate episode. The actual transmission dates were not confirmed until December 12th 1968, and within eight weeks, Callan was at last back on-air.

The new series started with the James Mitchell episode ‘Red Knight, White Knight’, which was screened on Wednesday, January 8th 1969. Directed by Peter Duguid, it had been recorded the year before on February 29th.

A week later, on January 15th 1969, the first episode to have been recorded, ‘The Most Promising Girl of Her Year’ was shown. Again written by James Mitchell and directed by Peter Duguid, this episode was screened almost a year to the day after the recording, which had taken place on January 17th 1968.

Making his debut appearance in Callan was Clifford Rose, playing the Harley Street psychiatrist Dr. Snell. Snell was to become a semi-regular, making one appearance in the third series, and several in the fourth, as well as reprising the role for the 1974 Callan film. Rose recalls:

"When I came to do it, I thought it was a one off part. He was just a character in a play as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t really envisage him having any further life in it. I did suggest that he should be a kind of rather smooth, establishment character and that he should have an old Etonian tie, and also the glasses. It seemed to me that it was nice to make him in some sense a boffin as well. He was a man who was involved in a, kind of, cerebral sense. He was not a heavy in the ordinary sense of the word. And I thought the idea of having slightly tinted glasses was quite a nice one. So we did that."

Mitchell’s script describes the character of Joan Mather as being quite unattractive. When it came to casting the role, Peter Duguid wanted Elizabeth Bell for her acting abilities, but found himself with the embarrassing task of having to tell her that the casting bore no reflection on her own looks! Incidentally, the part of Sonia Prescott was to have been played by actress Christine Rogers, who, due to illness, had to be replaced at short notice by Joan Crane.

Third to be shown was Robert Banks Stewart’s third and final Callan episode ‘You’re Under Starters Orders’. (‘Nice People Die At Home’ of course had yet to be shown). Recorded on February 14th 1968, and the first of several to be directed by Mike Vardy, this episode went out on January 22nd 1969. It is interesting to note that despite the brevity of his appearance, Michael Hall was re-booked by Mike Vardy for the third series episode ‘A Village Called G’ to reprise the role of the file clerk.

The first script to be looked at by Collin and Kershaw when they adopted their roles as Producer and Associate Producer was James Mitchell’s ‘The Little Bits and Pieces of Love’, originally titled, ‘He Only Spoke My Name’. In a memo dated October 31st 1967, Lloyd Shirley says this about the script.

"Ouch! I’m afraid this contains a great many of James Mitchell’s faults as an author, and precious few of his virtues. The Cold War element’s very nasty, and the situation between Lonely and Callan is repetitive to the point of tedium. We will have to grasp the nettle on this one."

‘Grasp the nettle’ they did, but despite re-writes, the episode still comes over with all these faults. It is also obvious that the script was written as a first series episode, in as much Callan is initially duped by Hunter into carrying out a burglary on the house of Dr. and Mrs. Rule, kept in the dark as to why, and then tailed for no apparent reason by another Section operative Callan doesn’t appear to know. While Peter Sasdy’s direction is excellent, it fails to hide the flaws in the script, not least of which is that the storyline is somewhat dull. The episode was recorded on February 1st 1968, and transmitted on January 29th 1969.

The following episode, ‘Let’s Kill Everybody’ came from the pen of a writer new to Callan, Ray Jenkins, who would go on to write another script for this series, as well as several more for the latter two series. Despite its rather puerile title, Jenkins provided a memorable episode, chiefly due to the killing of Hunter, though the earliest drafts of the script had Hunter survive. Director Robert Tronson recorded the episode on March 13th 1968, with transmission the following year on February 5th.