Ideas IV

Anthony Goodman examines the formative years of

CALLAN
(continued)

There were several oddities associated with this episode. This is the only time we see Callan in a steady, albeit brief, relationship with a woman, his nurse, Jenny Lauther. Although Callan would become romantically involved twice more in the later episodes ‘Suddenly - At Home’ and ‘Charlie Says It’s Goodbye’, neither time did a proper relationship develop. It was agreed within the production team that the program suffered when Callan was involved with women, as they would force the character to soften, hence few instances of romance, and these episodes were generally deemed failures. Another interesting aspect to ‘Let’s Kill Everybody’, and one which was never explained on screen, was Lonely’s taxi. The character had very little to do in this episode, spending most of his time ferrying Callan, Jenny or Meres around. This inadvertently pre-empted the fourth series story lines which featured Lonely driving a London taxi (or Mobile Communications Facility) for the Section. While Russell Hunter was seen at the wheel of the cabs, in fact he had never passed a driving test, so long shots were filmed with a stand-in.

Needing to script an episode concerned with replacing Hunter, it was decided that John Kershaw would write the follow up to ‘Let’s Kill Everybody’. However, owing to certain restrictions in commissioning oneself as a scriptwriter, Kershaw had to write under a ‘nom de plume’, and chose the name Hugh D’Allenger. The script required a lot of location filming, indeed the most that the program had been allowed to date, and Peter Duguid was appointed to direct it. With seven days pre-filming, from May 9th 1968 to May 15th, taking place in the Teddington and Farnham areas, the cost of production was high. Adding to the cost was a fair amount of night filming, and the hire of a helicopter which was required to respond to the director on cue. Also needed for location was the exterior of a stone bunker, which designer Peter Le Page provided. The interior, however, was created in the studio. As mentioned earlier, Russell Hunter was only originally contracted for ten of the thirteen episodes, and ‘Heir Apparent’, as the script was called, was the first not to use the character of Lonely. Indeed, no mention is made of him whatsoever. One character which does appear, and which was to become a semi-regular in this series, was that of Sir Michael Harvey, played by John Wentworth. Working at the Foreign Office as Deputy Under Secretary, Harvey was to return in two later episodes, though peculiarly with a changed first name, becoming Sir John Harvey. No explanation is made of this in the program, and it can only be assumed to be a continuity error. Neither Reginald Collin nor John Kershaw have been able to explain this either! One other point of interest concerning the regular characters, ‘Heir Apparent’ is the first story to name Liz, Hunter’s secretary, as ‘Miss March’, though it wasn’t until the third series that we find out that ‘March’ is the name of her adoptive parents.

‘Heir Apparent’ was the fifth Derek Bond episode to be recorded. It was VTR’d on May 23rd 1968, and transmitted on February 12th 1969.

The next episode to be screened, ‘The Land of Light and Peace’ by James Mitchell, saw some settling down in the developing forms of the regular characters. In ‘Heir Apparent’ it became clear that Callan’s relationship with the new Hunter would be far less formal and strained than with the previous two. While Callan now seems to have no trouble calling his boss ‘sir’, even to Ramsay’s initial disapproval, he would also occasionally call him by his actual first name ‘John’. The relationship between Callan and Meres had also become quite chummy, with only mild rivalry between them. However, Mitchell’s script still harks back somewhat to the relationships of the first series, with Callan hounded by the police, Hunter unwilling, initially, to help, and Callan protesting by threatening to take Meres down with him should he be tried for the murder of Geoffrey Gleeson. Broadcast on February 19th 1969, having been recorded on May 9th 1968 by director Piers Haggard, ‘The Land of Light and Peace’ is the second, and last, episode not to feature Lonely. We are offered the explanation, however, that Lonely is in prison.

While Lonely returned to the program in the next episode, albeit in a rather superfluous sub-plot, Meres is absent altogether. Another James Mitchell script, ‘Blackmailers Should Be Discouraged’ brings controversy to Callan. Recorded on June 19th 1968 with James (Big Jim) Goddard directing, and transmitted on February 26th 1969, Mitchell’s script attempts to address the issue of homosexuality in relation to national security.

The issue of homosexuality was brought to the fore once more in Ray Jenkins’ second script for Callan. Reginald Collin directed the episode, titled ‘Gangrene’ on the camera script. When asked about the working title of the script, Jenkins recalled:

"There was a publication, at that time, of atrocities by the O.A.S. against the F.L.N. and there was a famous book called ‘Gangrene’ which contained most of this kind of savage stuff."

The final title was not decided upon at the time of recording - April 11th 1968 - so the title sequence was recorded and dubbed on at a later date. The episode was transmitted on May 5th 1969 as ‘Death of a Friend’.

‘Jack-On-Top’ followed, the first of three Callan scripts from the pen of Trevor Preston. Preston had been writing children’s drama, but was invited to write for Callan by Reginald Collin for whom he had worked on the arts series Tempo. However, he came from a "hard" background, having grown up in south London, so his style, at least in the adult drama he wrote, tended towards stories with plenty of "fist fights and swearing", but for Callan he had to temper this to some extent. Later Preston would write more in this manner for many episodes of The Sweeney, as well his own series Out and Fox. Another of his own creations which is worth mentioning is the children’s fantasy series Ace of Wands, which featured the well remembered villain Mr. Stabs, played by Russell Hunter. The script for ‘Jack-On-Top’ still had its share of action and violence, with a long chase scene set in a public swimming pool, in which the villain of the piece gets his comeuppance. Directed by Mike Vardy, this chase warranted over three minutes of screen time, all shot on film. The episode was recorded on April 26th 1968, and transmitted on March 12th 1969.

Set in Devon, ‘Once a Big Man, Always a Big Man’ was written by Lee Dunne, and directed by Bill Bain. It was recorded on June 6th 1968, and finally screened on March 19th 1969.

Having already tackled the controversial subject of homosexuality, Callan now turned to the subject of racism, once again in relation to national security. In William Emms’ script, ‘The Running Dog’, the subject of the organised anti-Semitic activities were the Chinese. Director Jim Goddard chose Burt Kwouk to play the obstinate Chinese ambassador Tao Tsung, making his second, and last, appearance in Callan, and the excellent Terence Rigby to play his persecutor, Ronald Holder. ‘The Running Dog’ was remarkable for its lavish and distinct visual style, beautifully designed by Peter Le Page. The Chinese embassy was decorated with dark, heavy shades, with flock wallpaper, marbled columns, friezes featuring historic battles, ornately carved wooden desks and chairs, ancient Chinese cabinets, chandeliers and richly patterned flooring. By contrast, Holder’s office was very modern, almost futuristic, with plain white walls and floors, brightly lit by modern wall lamps, and furnished sparsely with plain furniture, and wall-mounted Nazi emblems and photographs of fascist dictators. With angled walls, the place looked almost like the interior of a bunker. Even the café set was a very unusual design with large clusters of cylindrical low hanging lights. The episode was recorded on March 28th 1968, the first of Derek Bond’s episodes to be made, and screened on March 26th 1969.

One of the problems of screening this series of Callan nearly a year after production was that any hints at current issues became rather outdated. On March 27th 1969, the Daily Mail printed this short review of ‘The Running Dog’:

And talking of things dated, how about Callan (Thames), which centered around the Mao-book-waving incident at the Chinese legation, which took place over a year ago? Admittedly it was made some time back, but someone ought to have pointed out that, as the cultural revolution has dwindled in China and the Red Guards have been sent back to school, this episode was meaningless. Why show it now? Talk about Thames being out of its tiny Chinese mind.....

With the Ronald Radd episode ‘Nice People Die at Home’ being placed fourteenth in the series running order, the thirteenth episode had to explain the Colonel’s temporary return to the Section. With minimal re-writing, James Mitchell was able to incorporate him into the script of ‘The Worst Soldier I Ever Saw’ in just the first and last scenes, with a brief mention in scene three. Of course it was well established by now that ‘Hunter’ was just a code name, so the Colonel was given his ‘real’ name, Leslie. Another character to return, again for a brief appearance, was Sir John Harvey (previously called Sir Michael Harvey, as already mentioned), with John Wentworth reprising the role. Mitchell’s script is one of several to feature Callan’s ex-army colleagues and officers, which resulted in some continuity conflicts. We learn in this episode that Callan’s C.O. in Malaya was Brigadier Pringle, and it was he who made Callan up to Corporal - twice - and demoted him - twice - and subsequently had him thrown out of the army. In the first episode of the third series, Callan contacts (another) ex-commanding officer, Henshaw, who fails to recognise him by name, learning that since he was in the army, he has changed his name to ‘Callan’! This episode, ‘Where Else Could I Go’ was another James Mitchell script, making the apparent discontinuity all the more bizarre. One other item of trivia worth mentioning is the inclusion of a ‘real’ name for Lonely. While it is generally accepted by all who worked on Callan that Lonely was never supposed to be given a true name, Sarah Pringle, played by Tessa Wyatt, does call him ‘Mr. Bellamy’. Of course this could just be an alias, but there is no reason given to suggest that it needed to be. Mitchell’s intention was not to name Lonely, but within the strict context of the episode, and the series, it is entirely plausible that his surname is, in fact, Bellamy! ‘The Worst Soldier I Ever Saw’ was recorded on July 2nd 1968, and transmitted on April 2nd 1969.

The most remarkable thing about ‘The Worst Soldier I Ever Saw’ is the legacy left in the hands of the National Film and Television Archive: an unedited 405-line 2-inch videotape of the whole studio recording from July 2nd 1968! While it was policy at ABC, and most television production companies, to wipe and re-use most 2-inch videotapes following transmission of the recorded program, hence the pitiful catalogue of surviving programs from the 1950s, ‘60s and early-’70s, some programs deemed to be of interest were saved from destruction by the British Film Institute, which acquired copies (or the original films or tapes) from such program producers. The BFI kept many episodes of the nationally renowned series Armchair Theatre, including a 16mm copy of the telerecording of ‘A Magnum for Schneider’. Fortunately, they also took possession of the 405-line transmission tapes of the Callan episodes ‘The Good Ones Are All Dead’, ‘You Should Have Got Here Sooner’, ‘The Little Bits and Pieces of Love’ and ‘Nice People Die At Home’, all of which survive to this day. The only other episode saved was ‘The Worst Soldier I Ever Saw’, but in the form of the unedited studio session. With material running approximately one hour and ten minutes, the tape includes many re-takes which were necessitated by technical faults such as boom mikes dropping into shot, or actors forgetting or confusing their lines. During the recording of the episode, several scenes were too complicated to shoot continuously, and so were recorded shot-by-shot, either with the videotape stopped, or allowed to run while cameras and actors were repositioned, and edited later. Most episodes for this series of Callan were recorded with no opening titles owing to the lack of a Thames Television ident, and the lack of availability of the opening title film sequence, which would be edited on later. ‘The Worst Soldier I Ever Saw’ is no exception, so no opening title sequence exists for this episode, and if ever an edit is made for a repeat transmission, one would have to be created specially. Although all five 2-inch videotapes held in the NFTVA have been transferred to the more modern 1-inch tape, the conversion was made by the optical process of pointing a 625-line camera at a 405-line monitor, and the result was rather poor, with large amounts of picture ‘lag’ due to the camera tube, and somewhat distorted picture geometry due to the curvature of the old 405-line monitor used during conversion. Consequently, the picture quality of these conversions is rather inferior to what was seen on original transmission, and what is still on the 2-inch masters. At time of writing, there are no plans to convert the original tapes by the more accurate electronic method, which could be a terrible pity as tapes of that age can deteriorate beyond use rather rapidly. It seems probable that all Callan episodes survived on their original 405-line tapes until well into the 1970’s, but Thames no longer has any of them, and to date are lost without trace. Fortunately, six episodes from the second series were repeated in 1971 on ITV as part of a season under the umbrella title ‘The Callan Saga’. This run of fifteen episodes included all of the colour third series, preceded by ‘Red Knight, White Knight’, ‘The Most Promising Girl of Her Year’, ‘Let’s Kill Everybody’, ‘Heir Apparent’, ‘Death of a Friend’ and ‘Death of a Hunter’. All these were converted electronically to 625-lines prior to repeat transmission, and all six 625-line 2-inch tapes survive to this day. It was recently revealed that some of these tapes are deteriorating to the point of needing many hours of careful copying and re-editing, but fortunately, they have all been transferred to the current digital format D3, and so are preserved for the foreseeable future, in a condition very close to how they would have looked on original transmission.