Danger Man (1965) Secret Agent ‘Say It With Flowers’ | Moving Image : Clips

Danger Man (1965 Secret Agent) | Say It With Flowers

First Broadcast: 23/12/1965

Plot

Written by new writer John Gillies who wrote under the name Jacques Gillies, ‘Say it with Flowers’ was the 36th fifty-minute episode and the tenth to be made at Shepperton Studios.

Drake poses as an insurance investigator when Hagen, an enemy agent dies in Switzerland. Drake’s mission is to ensure that Hagen is really dead going to great lengths to find out whose body was in the coffin, but in doing so endangers the life of undertaker ‘Buchler’.

‘Say it with Flowers’ touches upon the topical issue of plastic surgery, as Drake learns that Hagen isn’t dead but has had extensive plastic surgery. At the beginning of the episode we see Wallace leaving for Switzerland for exciting new work prospects, but soon he and his only remaining relative sister Rosemary, are both murdered clearing the way for Hagen to take on Wallace’s identity, but can Hagen pull it off?

The episode had the working title ‘The Goat’ when it was filmed between Thursday 30th September and Wednesday 13th October 1965. By the time the captions had been made, the episodes title had changed to ‘Say it with Flowers’ the slogan on the flower delivery van which kills Miss Wallace. An alternative title was considered; ‘Sometimes a goat strays among us’ from Kasser’s comments in act one.

Featured in this episode are three actors that later went on to appear in the prisoner; Basil Dignam, Rachel Herbert and Kevin Stoney.

Extract From: http://www.danger-man.co.uk/episodeDetails.asp?episodeID=74&seriesNo=3

Cast:

John Drake ………… Patrick McGoohan
Wallace / Hagen ………… Ian Hendry
Dr Brajanska ………… John Phillips
Caroline ………… Jemma Hyde
Krummenacher ………… Harold Kasket
Kasser ………… Martin Wyldeck
Meyer ………… William Dexter
Verena ………… Rachel Herbert
Man in Taxi ………… Basil Dignam
Buchler ………… Kevin Stoney
Miss Wallace ………… Gretchen Franklin
Carl ………… Frank Maher
Wilhelm ………… Les White

Written By: Jacques Gillies, Ralph Smart
DIrected By: Peter Yates

Background to Danger Man
Danger Man (titled Secret Agent, Destination Danger and John Drake in non-UK markets) is a British television series that was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the programme and wrote many of the scripts. Danger Man was financed by Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment.

Unlike the later James Bond films, Danger Man strove for realism, dramatising credible Cold War tensions. In the second series, Drake is an undercover agent of the British external intelligence agency (called “M9” instead of the actual MI6). As in the earlier series, Drake finds himself in danger with not always happy outcomes; sometimes duty forces him to decisions which lead to good people suffering unfair consequences. Drake doesn’t always do what his masters tell him.

Developing a rule established in the first series, Drake is rarely armed, though he engaged in fist fights, and the gadgets he uses are credible. In fact, most were off the shelf, and their appearance in the series spurred sales of such commercial items as the folding binoculars (Battle of the Cameras) featured in the American title sequence and the sub-miniature Minox camera. Unlike James Bond, Drake is often shown re-using gadgets from previous episodes. Among the more frequently seen are a miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder hidden inside the head of an electric shaver or a pack of cigarettes, and a microphone that could be embedded in a wall near the target via a shotgun-like apparatus, that used soda siphon cartridges containing CO2 as the propellant, allowing Drake to eavesdrop on conversations from a safe distance.

Agent Drake uses his intelligence, charm and quick thinking rather than force. He usually plays a role to infiltrate a situation, for example to scout for a travel agency, naive soldier, embittered ex-convict, brainless playboy, imperious physician, opportunistic journalist, bumbling tourist, cold-blooded mercenary, bland diplomat, smarmy pop disk jockey, precise clerk, compulsive gambler, or impeccable butler.