Surplice to requirements?

Intro

A bit of a chat

Stanley on TSS

Episode guide

Back to TV page

Not so long ago (I'm talking 2003 here), there was an excellent documentary on the UK's Channel Five (or 'Five' as they're called now). It was all about the great, great Gerry Anderson and I sat there expectantly with my little pinkie firmly welded to the video record button.

What I was after was some insight from the great man himself into The Secret Service - at the time ('68/'69), arguably the most quirky, original and technologically advanced show that he and the Supermarionation team had done so far.

Now I know my Gerry Anderson and I know that in television terms, TSS comes after Joe 90 and before his first live action series UFO. But, as if with a slight whiff of embarrassment, the documentary took us straight from the BIG RAT boy to Commander Straker's peroxide haircut without so much as a by-your-leave.

I'm sure this 'oversight' was just down to the whim of the programme's producers and certainly not the considered opinion of Mr Anderson himself, but it's kind of typical of the way that The Secret Service seems to be constantly shuffled away into the corners of Andersonian history like Luca Brasi at a Godfather wedding.

And on the face of it, not without reason you'd think: it only ran for a single series of 13 episodes; when it was first broadcast in the UK, only three ITV regions (ATV Midlands, Granada and Southern) took it up; the Americans allegedly wouldn't get it so it it didn't sell there and Lew Grade, then head of all things ITC (the production company that made most of Anderson's shows), famously told Gerry the series was cancelled half way through a preview screening of the very first episode .

Shame, because it's great.