The Secret Service

The Secret Service follows the exploits of Father Stanley Unwin, the parish priest of an English village. Outwardly an eccentric middle-aged vicar, Unwin moonlights as an operative of the intelligence agency BISHOP ("British Intelligence Service Headquarters, Operation Priest"). He is stationed at his vicarage with fellow BISHOP agent Matthew Harding, who when not assisting Unwin on missions affects a country accent and serves as the Father's verger and gardener. Supporting characters include The Bishop, head of BISHOP and Unwin's superior, Blake, a junior BISHOP operative, and Mrs Appleby, Unwin's housekeeper, who is unaware of Unwin and Matthew's double life as spies.

Prior to the events of the series, the scientist Professor Humbert invented the Minimiser, a device capable of shrinking people or objects to one third of normal size. When Humbert died it was inherited by Unwin, who conceals it inside a large book. The device is regularly used on Matthew, who is reduced to a height of two feet (0.61 m) to enable him to carry out covert reconnaissance where any normal-sized person would be noticed. (In this manner, the puppet is shown to interact with life-sized sets and live actors whose faces are kept out of shot.) On occasion it is also used to shrink enemy agents, literally bringing them down to Matthew's size. Unwin carries the miniaturised Matthew around in a specially-adapted briefcase that can open from the inside and contains field equipment such as a periscope. During missions, the agents communicate via earpiece transceivers (with Unwin's disguised as his hearing aid). Their primary mode of transport is a revamped 1917-issue Ford Model T called Gabriel, which is capable of speeds exceeding 50 miles per hour (80 km/h). If challenged by law enforcement or enemy agents, Unwin spouts a form of gibberish to confuse the opposition and cover for Matthew.

While most of the Supermarionation series are set in the future, the events of The Secret Service take place in the then-present day.[1][2][3][4] The episodes "Errand of Mercy" and "The Deadly Whisper" are respectively set on 3 February 1969 and 24 May 1969.[5] Gerry Anderson biographers Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn argue that the setting is ambiguous: they believe it to be "sometime in the near future" but note that the world of The Secret Service sees "Morris Minors negotiate leafy country roads while space-age helijets patrol the skies", ultimately concluding that the series is so fantastic that it "isn't set in the real world at all."[6]

After the completion of Joe 90, producer Gerry Anderson decided to create another espionage series.[8] This would feature an English village as the home of its spy protagonist, an eccentric parish priest.[8] Anderson hired Stanley Unwin to voice the character (which was ultimately also sculpted on and named after him) after unexpectedly meeting Unwin at Pinewood Studios while the comedian was completing dubbing work on the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.[9]

Unwin was the creator of "Unwinese", a form of gibberish that was outwardly unintelligible but retained some aspects of meaning.[10] Anderson remembered Unwin's radio and TV performances using the language and thought that it would suit the character of a secret agent, also reasoning that it would have comic value if shown to confuse the enemy.[8] In his biography, he explained: "As far as I was concerned, Stanley came first and then the idea had to accommodate him. It wasn't that the story called for someone who could speak gobbledygook, it was a question of how we could fit him into the storyline."[8]

Due to the esoteric nature of Unwinese, the writers briefed Unwin on the storylines and left space in their scripts for him to draft all the gibberish dialogue himself.[1][11] Shane Rimmer, who wrote the episode "Hole in One", recalled that "A lot of [the dialogue] you had to leave to [Unwin]. You gave him a line of patter that's going to work with what he does. Because he was such a bizarre character, you felt you could really go all the way with him: you could practically do anything."[11]

The premise of The Secret Service was inspired partly by the Joe 90 episode "The Unorthodox Shepherd", which features an elderly and seemingly half-deaf vicar who is covering up a money forging operation on the grounds of his church.[8] Anderson's biographers Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn believe that Joe 90 also had a broader influence on its successor, writing that The Secret Service "continues the espionage theme of Joe 90 in a range of adventures that depict a Britain under siege from despicable foreign agents intent on stealing its secrets."[6]

Filming

Shooting locations included (left to right) Horse Guards Parade, Centre Point and Burnham Beeches.

After a summer of pre-production, filming began on 20 August 1968.[1][8] According to director Ken Turner, The Secret Service was difficult to film as it comprised three elements: puppet and effects filming (both conducted in the studio) and location filming.[14] The Secret Service also differed from earlier Supermarionation series in that episodes were structured around their location work, which had to be completed before the studio filming could commence.[14] Turner explained: "We felt that somebody had to take the location stuff by the balls, get it shot and then hand it over to the director to fit his puppet stuff in. I suppose that seemed a bit back to front but with that programme it was what worked out best."[14] Producer David Lane remembered that making the series was "an absolute nightmare" due to the wide range of design scales used: "You can imagine the problems. You're shrinking [the Matthew Harding puppet] to puppet size on a puppet set and then you're having to build it in live-action size for the puppet because he's supposed to be a small man in a full-sized environment. And then you're using the 'shrunken' puppet in a full set."[17]

Century 21 built two scale models of the Ford Model T Gabriel.[6]

Filming locations included a house in Burnham, Buckinghamshire as Father Unwin's vicarage, Centre Point as the British Intelligence building in London and Horse Guards Parade as the headquarters of BISHOP. Wexham Park Hospital appears in the episode "School for Spies", while the Century 21 Studios themselves, located on the Slough Trading Estate, are featured in the opening of the first episode, "A Case for the Bishop".[18]

As the series is set in the then-present day, the special effects team, headed by Derek Meddings, were not required to design many futuristic-looking vehicles.[13] Their main tasks were to build the Ford Model T, Gabriel, create miniature replicas of vehicles and settings common to the 1960s, and produce the optical effects for Matthew Harding's "minimisation".[13] Three versions of Gabriel were built: one full-sized car and two models in differing scales.[6] The car was fitted with belt-driven electric motors, an upholstered interior, a folding roof and a radio control mechanism so that it could be driven remotely.[6] The location work using the car was conducted in and around Burnham Beeches during the autumn of 1968 and proved challenging as filming was often disrupted by low light levels.[2][6] On some days only two minutes of footage were recorded.[2] Technician "Wag" Evans, who was responsible for operating the car's radio control, remembered "standing out of shot and having to 'drive' [the car] down the road while it was out of view. Often I didn't know where it was, or where and when it had stopped."[2] A crew member with a large cushion would be on hand to bring the car to a halt whenever it went out of control.[6]

Music

St Michael and All Angels Church, Hughenden is featured in the opening and closing titles.

Barry Gray's theme music – a chant with church organ and percussion accompaniment – was his first Century 21 composition since Stingray to include vocals.[19][20] He developed the initial concept into a three-part fugue in the style of Bach.[21] Originally the vocals were to have been supplied by The Swingle Singers, but their prospective fee was too high for the music budget.[20] Gray therefore hired the Mike Sammes Singers (who had sung the Supercar theme several years earlier) to perform the vocals in an imitation of the Swingles' style.[20] The theme music was recorded in a four-hour studio session on 16 October 1968 and is described by Archer and Hearn as a "glorious piece of choral lunacy".[19][22]

Both the opening and closing title sequences feature shots of St Michael and All Angels Church in Hughenden Valley, Buckinghamshire, which doubles as the church of Father Unwin.[21] The opening title sequence begins with a zoom-in shot of the church against a backdrop of fields. This features the title graphic sliding down into view and gradually filling the screen – an effect was inspired by traditional imagery of angels descending from Heaven.[19]

As well as the theme, Gray recorded incidental music for four episodes in three additional four-hour sessions. The first of these was held at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London on 12 November 1968, when an orchestra of 29 instrumentalists performed the music for the first episode, "A Case for the Bishop". Recording for "A Question of Miracles" took place on 11 December at Gray's private studios with an ensemble of eight. The other two episodes to include original scores are "The Feathered Spies" and "Last Train To Bufflers Halt"; the remaining episodes use music recycled from the other four as well as from Century 21's earlier series (particularly Captain Scarlet and Joe 90). The final recording session was held on 10 January 1969.[22][23]

Due to the series' cancellation, its soundtrack has never been released commercially for the general public.[20] In 2007, Fanderson released it on CD exclusively for its members.[24]

The Secret Service had a very limited distribution compared to earlier Anderson productions. It was originally transmitted on the ITV regional franchises ATV, Granada and Southern, airing on Sundays at the regular time of 5.30 p.m.[28] ATV and Southern showed re-runs until 1972 and Granada until 1975.[1] Since then, the series has never been repeated in the UK.[1]

Critical reception of The Secret Service has been predominantly negative. Gerry Anderson, however, said that it was his favourite of all the series that he had produced.[29] Leo Eaton, who directed four episodes, described The Secret Service as "just a bit weird" and questioned the effectiveness of Unwin's humour.[30] Production supervisor Desmond Saunders called it "strange", elaborating: "I suppose it was the gobbledygook and the mixture of live action with puppets. It never seemed to me to be a very good idea."[30] Simon Wickes of the website TVCentury21.com suggests that the series was made primarily to bridge the gap between the Andersons' puppet productions and their later efforts in live action.[31] Kif Bowden-Smith of the Transdiffusion website describes the mixing of puppetry and live action as "an experimental format for the following live-action series".[32]

Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, authors of What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson (2002), write that The Secret Service differs from earlier Anderson series by being less "American-orientated" and featuring fewer action sequences. They regard it as the "most eccentric" of all the Supermarionation productions up to 1969, and the hybrid format as the "natural conclusion" of the filming technique.[8] They especially commend the characterisation of Mrs Appleby, whose ignorance of Unwin and Harding's true occupations adds to the humour: for example, when Unwin speaks into his hearing aid, she deduces that he is simply muttering to himself, not knowing that the device is actually a transceiver for communicating with Harding.[14] Archer and Hearn also praise the episodes "A Question of Miracles", which sees the miniaturised Harding dwarfed by the contents of a picnic basket, and "Last Train to Bufflers Halt", whose plot concerns a runaway freight train.[6]

Stephen La Rivière, author of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, favours the episode "More Haste Less Speed": describing the series finale as "wonderfully quirky", he considers the plot about a money-forging scheme to be reminiscent of the "gentler, earlier days of Supercar" and lauds voice actor Keith Alexander for his impression of the elderly Lady Hazlewell. Nevertheless, in his overall assessment of the series, La Rivière asserts that a spy posing as a vicar and driving an antique car would not have appealed to children and that adults would have been disappointed by the series' "traditional espionage format".[26] Ian Fryer of FAB magazine expresses similar views, writing that "very little about The Secret Service has obvious appeal to the traditionally young Supermarionation audience." He notes that the title sequence marked a departure from Supermarionation's "tradition of having a thrilling or suspenseful promise of what was to come", instead "[making] the series look suspiciously like it might be about the life and work of an elderly vicar." Fryer also suggests that prospective foreign buyers were put off by the espionage theme, noting that by the time The Secret Service debuted on British TV, other spy series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Avengers had already aired their last episodes.[34]

Writers Chris Drake and Graeme Bassett state that "On paper, at least, the premise seemed irresistible" but view the blending of puppetry and live action as "uneasy".[36] La Rivière is critical of the format, stating that it "requires more than the audience can give in terms of acceptance." He points out that the live-action shots of Lady Hazlewell in "More Haste Less Speed" used a stuntman in drag – an "unintentionally hilarious moment that illustrates beautifully why the live-action inserts didn't work."[12] La Rivière also argues that another factor contributing to the failure of The Secret Service was the frequent re-runs of earlier Anderson series: "... as with anything that is phenomenally popular, the time must come when the audience is satiated and drifts away to something else."[26] Archer and Hearn echo these concerns, writing that Century 21 had become "a bit too successful" in producing a winning format.[25]

Science-fiction author John Peel calls The Secret Service a "dismal" effort that "marked the death knell of Supermarionation." He judges the combination of puppetry and live action "completely pointless" and the casting of Unwin not only "bizarre in the extreme" but also ill-considered given that Unwinese "was hardly funny to most people (let alone children)." He adds that despite Lew Grade's fears, the actor's gobbledygook would have been incomprehensible to British and American audiences alike.[37] John Walsh of The Guardian challenges the view that the series was weakened by the gobbledygook, arguing that British audiences "quite like not understanding things."[38] Unwin himself praised the series' off-beat tone, defending the inclusion of Unwinese as "an attempt to add a new dimension to the puppet field ... It was a bit bizarre, but then aren't many new ideas a little odd at first?" He also said that the series was perhaps "a little bit before its time".[15]

Media historian Nicholas J. Cull, who views The Secret Service as the Andersons' "one flop", calls it an "idiosyncratically British product", adding that through BISHOP the series reflected "the 1960s vogue for stories set in secret organisations with extravagant acronyms". He considers The Secret Service to be one of several Anderson series that "unashamedly capitalised on the Cold War cult of the secret agent whose skills defend the home from enemies unknown", noting that Sakov in "The Cure" is a hostile Russian agent.[40]

Reviewing the episode "Recall to Service" for the fanzine Andersonic, Paul O'Brien describes the plot about the AquaTank – a military robot gone rogue – as "an obvious allegory about the hazards of complete automation". He adds that the pivotal moment comes when Harding returns the AquaTank to manual control: "in other words, the machinery is now subordinate to its creator once again, as it should stay." On the series generally, O'Brien is critical of the puppet cast, noting the persistent absence of female characters and commenting that only female regular, Mrs Appleby, "contributes precisely nil to the plot."[35]

Two novels based on the series – The Destroyer and The VIP – were written by John William Jennison (using the pseudonym "John Theydon") and published in 1969.[41]

The Secret Service was released on Region 1 DVD in December 2003 by A&E Home Video. This featured digitally-remastered picture and sound as well as bonus materials including an audio commentary by producer David Lane on the first episode, "A Case for the Bishop". The AllMovie website gives the release a feature rating of three-and-a-half stars out of five.[42]

Network DVD followed with a Region 2 DVD in June 2005. Special features on this release included audio commentaries by Gerry Anderson and PDF transfers of original production documents.[43]

• The Secret Service at IMDb
• The Secret Service at TV.com
• "A Case for the Bishop" – still photograph gallery with production information
• The Gerry Anderson Title Sequences – includes The Secret Service title sequence
• The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History – includes The Secret Service comic strips