A curious thing, Strange Report. While most ITC series were British-made but aimed at America, the short-lived adventures of Adam Strange and friends were the result of a co-production deal with US network NBC’s film arm Arena, with former Man from UNCLE executive producer Norman Felton stepping into the same role on the new series. Felton must have had a thing about quirky titles – where every UNCLE episode had been styled ‘The …. Affair’, Strange Report’s titles were presented as numbered ‘reports’, with a single word descriptive title followed by a longer sub-title. The numbering makes no sense at all: if Adam Strange numbered his reports sequentially, then he appears to have handled 8,295 cases in the course of the series… or 11.36 cases per day over a two-year period...
Strange Report was intended as series of two halves: the first sixteen episodes followed criminologist Adam Strange and his scientific sidekick Hamlyn Gynt as they pursued mysteries around London. At the mid series point, the characters were intended to relocate to the USA, for reasons unknown (Ham hints at a return to his homeland in one episode), presumably dragging Strange’s neighbour Evelyn along for the ride. But as things panned out, both Anthony Quayle and Anneke Wills demurred on the stateside relocation, and the series stalled at a mere 16 episodes. NBC were evidently unimpressed: although shooting on the London episodes was completed by March 1969, the network kept them on the shelf until January 1971. This can’t have done Strange Report any favours at all. The series clearly set out to capitalise on whole ‘Swinging London’ fad, but came rather too late to the party. 1967 would have been an ideal broadcast year, but the cameras didn’t start rolling until July 1968. Even in Britain, ‘Swinging London’ as a pop cultural concept was beginning to feel decidedly outré by the time Strange Report went to air in September 1969, and an episode like Covergirls, with its Mary Quant style fashions, looked instantly dated.
The series certainly set out to be topical, with storylines influenced by events and ideologies of its time: heart transplant surgery was one of the biggest news stories of 1967, so that went in. 1968 had seen widespread student unrest in Paris and the USA, so that was another certainty, whilst episodes like Racist and Epidemic reflected the racial tensions of the era. The tone of certain storylines was much darker than viewers had come to expect of most ITC output, and the ‘issue’ episodes had more in common with serious drama than the lightweight hokum served up by the likes of The Saint and The Baron. And unlike those examples, whose location work seldom ventured further afield than the car park at Elstree studios, Strange Report made use of extensive location filming around London, with the producers seeking out some interesting and often atypical surroundings – most notably, the shabby villa in Little Venice that was home to Adam Strange (it looks like a building site in several early episodes, on account of development going on across the street). If nothing else, the series always looked good, and has the most realistic milieu of any ITC production bar Gideon’s Way.
Strange Report boasted a major star of film and theatre in the shape of Anthony Quayle, taking on his first starring role in a television series (he had made earlier guest appearances in ITC series Man of the World, The Saint and Espionage). Quayle reportedly grew a beard because he felt it suited the character, and coupled with Strange’s habitual pipe-smoking, it lent him the air of a fatherly figure watching over his two young friends Ham and Evelyn.
Kaz Garas was a relative newcomer, who had been seen in a few bit parts in the likes of Hawaii 5-0 before his casting as Ham Gynt, whilst Anneke Wills had not long finished a stint on Dr. Who, and would have been a familiar face to most British viewers, even without her long blonde wig. On paper, the three stars weren’t given a great deal to work with: Adam Strange was a widowed, retired police commissioner who now operated in a freelance capacity rather like a latterday Sherlock Holmes, with Gynt serving as a kind of forensic Dr. Watson, with a side interest in Egyptology. Evelyn McClaine (Adam/ Eve – geddit?) was Strange’s neighbour, a jobbing girl-about-town who divided her time between modelling assignments and painting. It was entirely down to the individual actors’ charisma that the series worked at all, and their on-screen bonding gave genuine warmth to a portfolio of stories whose scripts were a decidedly mixed bag.
Having contemporatry issue-driven stories filmed on the real streets of 1960s London was all very laudable, but the scripts simply weren’t up to the job and the majority don’t stand up to scrutiny today. Behind the thin veneer of reality lurked some decidedly iffy writing. TV journeyman Arthur Dales’ effort REPORT 1553: RACIST – A Most Dangerous Proposal deals with a white supremacist politician who aims to frame himself for murder and create a media frenzy. This is all well and good as an idea, but it comes to pieces in the execution. Clive Francis stands out for all the wrong reasons as an unhinged expat South African who is co-opted into the murder plot, and in the leading guest roles, Jane Merrow and Guy Doleman are simply wasted. The episode’s most interesting sequence takes place at Lydd Airport in Kent, where Adam Strange and his taxi follow their quarry on board a Bristol 170 Air Freighter of a type that regularly flew cars and their passengers to the near continent during the 50s and 60s. The story also includes a sequence wherein Strange is briefed on his mission by a mysterious civil servant, ‘Sir George Davies’ who takes a ride in his taxi to clue Strange and the viewers in on the plot. This looks as if it had been intended as a recurring plot device (“it’s him”, mutters Ham when Strange is summoned by telephone). If so, then the idea was abandoned immediately. The scenes with Sir George just don’t play well (the back projection doesn’t help), and the idea of Strange reporting to a government official was simply too restricting for the series’ freewheeling format.
Racist was the second episode to go before the cameras, following on from REPORT 4407: HEART – No Choice for the Donor, which presented the morbid idea of a heart transplant donor being selected and murdered for the operation. In order for such a preposterous idea to appear even remotely plausible, the protagonists had to be members of a foreign power from a made-up country, and the results, whilst entertaining, never succeeed in convincing us to suspend our disbelief.
The series did rather better when it ventured into the realm of criminal psychology, with REPORT 2475: REVENGE – When a Man Hates proving to be one of the more memorable and successful entries, thanks to strong support from Julian Glover and Rosemary Leach, who do their best to inject some realism and humanity into their cardoard cut-out characters.
My first experience of the series, in 1969, was the episode chosen to open the run, REPORT 5055: CULT – Murder Shrieks Out (actually the fourth episode as filmed). The characters and format are all well settled by this time, and the story is one of the series’ more original examples, with its tale of corruption and fraud hiding behind the facade of a charitable organisation. It also includes a climactic helicopter crash (off screen, naturally), which is always a favourite with TV and film moguls, and probably accounts for its elevation to first-night status. It’s not all good, though: the murder device of electrically altering the wiring in a guitar is impossible – electrocution by completing a circuit between a guitar and microphone was certainly a reality, (ironically, there were a couple of well publicised examples a few years later), but such real-life accidents were caused by badly-earthed microphones, and no amount of tinkering with a guitar’s wiring could induce the same effect.
Watching the series aged 15, on its repeat run in 1976, I was fairly well satisfied with the handful of episodes I got to see. Clear contenders for best in series were REPORT 2641: Hostage – If You Won’t Learn, Die! (featuring a rare guest appearance by the always watchable Kenneth Haigh) and REPORT 0649: SKELETON – Let Sleeping Heroes Lie: I was fortunate in being able to catch both of these before ATV began tinkering with timeslots (as covered in part one of this article). I wasn’t so enamoured of the fashion-conscious REPORT 3906: COVERGIRLS – Last Year’s Model, but some of its location work in Hampstead helped to elevate what was otherwise a relatively trivial storyline.
It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that I was finally able to assess Strange Report in its entirity, courtesy of a full screening on retro satellite channel Bravo. Of the episodes I’d missed to date, only REPORT 8319: GRENADE – What Price Change stood out, even if it included the risible device of molotov cocktail light bulbs and a stodgy performance from Bernard Lee.
Unfortunately, far too many of the scripts depended on unbelievable occurrences, such as the fraudulent printing of banknotes in REPORT 4977: SWINDLE – Square Root of Evil. The writers try with varying degrees of success to persuade the viewer to believe in some of their far-fetched plot ideas, but ultimately old school hokum wins the day. REPORT 8944: HAND – A Matter of Witchcraft plays out promisingly enough – and throws the spotlight onto Evelyn for once – but it all turns to palpable tosh in the final five minutes.
For me, there’s a tie for worst in series between REPORT 4821: X-RAY – Who Weeps for the Doctor and REPORT 1021: SHRAPNEL – The Wish in the Dream. This is Strange Report at its closet fo full-on daytime soap opera, and none of the guest cast does anything to enliven the very downbeat proceedings. X-Ray came from scriptwriter Roger Parkes, who also provided medical and forensic storylines for BBC’s The Expert and Doomwatch, as well as The Prisoner’s ‘frontal lobotomy’ episode, A Change of Mind. It’s hard to imagine how he saw X-Ray as fit for purpose, unless the script was substantially altered before filming. The audience is asked to accept that a medical professional, confronted with an X-ray showing he has an inoperable brain tumour would take his own life a) without obtaining a second opinion and b) without experiencing any of the ‘red flag’ symptoms that one would expect in such a case. This basic flaw renders the whole story unbelievable, and is typical of the series’ occasional forays into the realms of implausibility. It doesn't help having Dad's Army’s John Laurie along for the ride: one expects him at any minute to roll his eyes and cry out: ‘rubbish!’
It was a shame that these two episodes became some of the more readily available examples for fans wishing to revisit the series in the pre-DVD era: Italian 8mm imprint Techno Film chose Shrapnel to release on the Super-8 format, and in the 1990s, ITC Video included X-Ray on one of its two VHS releases.
The Techno Film is notable for being one of only three items of spin-off merchandising generated by the series, the others being a Hodder paperback adapted by the perennial John Burke from the episodes Cult and Skeleton, and Roger Webb’s theme music which was released as a 7” single on Columbia records in certain territories (a cover version by Geoff Love's orchestra was also available on the 1972 album Your Top TV Themes).
For all its flaws, Strange Report is still an enjoyable series to revisit, if only to spend some time in the company of its three very engaging characters, and its heavy use of real streets locations adds a nostalgic quality that was already apparent during the 1976 repeat run. Just eight years had elapsed since the filming took place, but so much appeared different – cars, fashions, interior décor. I doubt one would notice the same thing today watching a series filmed in 2015!
With its bright colours and often sunny location work, it still feels like the perfect series for a summer afternoon – and that’s exactly what I’m going to do right now!
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