long coats and a mustache

[sergebroom]

”Something crawled out of the bidet."

Back in the early 1970s, when I was in college, there was a British TV adventure series called Jason King, which I enjoyed greatly. So, late last year, when Sue told me that the complete series was now available in one DVD set, I made it quite clear what I was expecting to find under the Tree come Christmas morning. So why is it only these last few days that I’ve started watching the show? I was afraid, afraid that, as happened the year before with The Champions (another British adventure series of that era), I’d find that the show I remembered was better than the real one. I needed not have worried.

To give you an example of the kind of tales told... Jason King, played by Peter Wyngarde, is a writer of thrillers, and he has a history with the British secret services. Not a happy history, judging from the above quote, uttered and muttered upon finding one of the spooks coming out of his bathroom. They have a problem: all their efforts at successfully getting an important person whisked across the Berlin Wall to our side have come to naught. They hit upon the idea of forcing King to enact the plot of one of his novels which dealt with such a situation. Mind you, King finds the idea ludicrous as he is quite well known all over the world, and so is his novel. The secret service points out to him that this is indeed such a preposterous idea that the Other Side will never think they’d try such a scheme. The whole thing does wind up working, but not the way King expected. It turns out that his purpose was to serve as a distraction while the real plan to get the other man out was happening, an idea that the secret service got from reading someone else’s spy novel. One by Len Deighton. Exclaims King:

“How dare you use one of his novels instead of mine?!”



I have two confessions to make.

I like the 1970s fashions that Jason King wears, especially the long coats. And, in my last year of high-school, I had a mustache like his.

Comments

[sajia.livejournal.com]

Serge, with a mustache like that, no wonder you were single.
(Thinks carefully about that for a moment).
Actually, coming to think of it, no woman in her right mind would have been able to resist a mustache like that.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

no woman in her right mind would have been able to resist a mustache like that.

Hmmm.
I sense a certain lack of sincerity in those words.
Today's kids... No respect for their elders.
Grumblegrumblegrumble...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

How many women in high school are in their right minds?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Probably more than there are high-school boys in their right mind. Or does your life as a teacher say otherwise?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't teach high school...

And I'd be inclined to say that very few people under 25 have minds.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Nah. It seems that most kids become different persons the moment they leave high-school and go to college. Maybe that's because the college isn't in their home town, or the people they now deal with aren't the ones they had dealt with for most of their lives.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's true.

[readinggeek451]

the show I remembered was better than the one in my head.

I know what you mean, but this sentence as written makes no sense. :)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Oops.

The correction has been made. I also fixed the spelling of mustache.

[pedanther]

Every time you mention your love of Jason King, I forget to ask you if you've ever encountered Kim Newman's stories about Richard Jeperson? Richard is a 1970s secret agent with a fashion sense very similar to Jason King's (there's a joke about it in the one where he briefly becomes a television star), but his area of concern is more esoteric than mere spies:

"There are ghosts," said Vanessa. "And other things."
"Vampires?"
"Yes," said Richard and Vanessa.
"Werewolves?"
"More than you'd think," said Richard. "And all manner of shapeshifters. There are were-amoebae, which need to be strictly regulated."

And that's not mentioning zombie Hitler, more mad scientists than you can shake a stick at, and a terrible string of murders committed by a crazed breakfast food manufacturer...

--Paul A.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I've never come across those stories, but I think I read a review last year in Locus, where they were compared to Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius adventures. The review may even have mentionnd Jason King. Why that didn't make me run to the bookstore to purchase one of the books, I know not.

That being said, it'd be accurate to say that, because I grew up in Canada, I got a steady diet of British spy shows and other ITC adventure series, such as Secret Agent (aka Danger Man). There was also The Avengers (the Tara King period), and The Champions, and other little-known series.

[pedanther]

The collected editions are The Man from the Diogenes Club and The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club.

Three of the stories were originally bought by the e-zine Sci Fiction, and are still (for now) available online: "Tomorrow Town", "Soho Golem", and "The Serial Murders". ("The Serial Murders" is the one with the Jason King joke in it.)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I've ordered things from that publisher before - and should soon be getting a Sean Williams novella related to his recent novel Saturn Returns. But I digress. Newman's storis sound like fun. By the way, did you know that a Jason King homage exists in the X-men comic-books? Circa 1980, Jean Grey, who thought that her boyfriend Cyclops was dead, got involved with someone who suspiciously looked like King. The man turned out to be a bad guy with powers of illusion, but the name he went by was Jason Wyngarde.

[pedanther]

I remember that story - although I didn't know enough about British TV to get the joke back when I read it.

The story also has a built-in homage to The Avengers: the group Jason Wyngarde was working for, the Hellfire Club, was named after the bad guys that Steed and Mrs Peel dealt with in the episode "A Touch of Brimstone". And the lead bad guy in that episode was played by... Peter Wyngarde.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Heheheh... You know, I'm going to see if my wife could put The Avengers on her NetFlix queue, the Emma Peel era anyway. By the way, for some reason, most of the episodes I've seen were of the Tara King era.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Of course, any movie adaptation of those stories, whether the ones set in the 1970s, or in the beginnings of the Diogenes Club would have to have Charles Gray in it. He even played Mycroft in The Seven-percent Solution.