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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Thames Thursday - "The Protectors"

After MFU, Robert Vaughn starred in a UK series called, "The Protectors".  We didn't have access to the series on a regular basis.  I think a few episodes were aired on a local station as after midnight programming, and I found it one night on the old television with "rabbit ears".  With lousy reception, I gave up on trying to watch it.

Please enlighten those of us who were "un-protected".  What was the premise of the series, the type of character RV portrayed, and what was your impression of the series?
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5 comments:

Unknown said...

THE PROTECTORS is a series I came easily to love after discovering it on DVD earlier this year.

The premise of the series was a group of European private eyes who worked only the most elite of cases and were all part of a network known as THE PROTECTORS. (Though I do believe the intent was for the group to be fully international, honestly the cases were always European.) All these folks were talented and very rich, and their services never came cheaply.

Vaughn played Harry Rule, the head honcho of the group. He was an American, but lived and worked in London. His usual cohorts and closest colleagues were Caroline the Contessa di Contini, who was British but was the widow of a very wealthy and titled Italian and thus had her home base in Italy, and Paul Buchet, who was French.

Harry Rule had some of Napoleon Solo in his character makeup in that he had a taste for nice clothes, fancy wine, and expensive sportcars. He was more than competent at his job and he had quite a reputation for that competency. He also had a good deal of bravado, open daring and intuitive creativity, and was very much a man of action, like Napoleon of MFU. Unlike Solo, however, he could be very truculent and was often disliked by folks who didn't know him well. He could turn on charm, but it wasn't his usual modus operandi.

Rule had been married, but was separated from his wife (she apparently disliked the peril he put himself in what she felt was unnecessarily and left him because of that). He also had a young son, who he obviously adored but who, it appeared in the one show in which the boy appeared, at that time about 5 years of age, did not really know him as his father. This wasn't clarified much in the series, but it appeared his wife left Harry when the boy was still an infant or toddler and the the wife purposely did not keep in touch other than to send pictures of the boy. Harry was shown dating some women in the series, but mostly what was played on in that regard was his soft spot for Caroline. That relationship was never quite fully developed, however.

Harry had contacts by the score (he would have made Waverly jealous with the number and political placement of the contacts he had). And his home was fitted with a very elaborate communications and computer setup, really quite extraordinary for the early 70s timeframe of the show. The group also often took on tasks for various governments, including the Soviet government in one episode where the KGB asked Rule to aid in finding a scientist who intended to contaminate a water supply with a deadly chemical as a political statement.

The main problem with the show from my viewpoint was that it used a half-hour format and that just didn't allow for much in the way of character development, and left the stories often rushed to conclusion in the action/adventure department as well. That was Vaughn's complaint about the series at the time as well: that the scripts were just too sparse on details of both plot and characterization. Yet Vaughn did a very good job with what he was given in the scripts and made the character of Harry the most interesting one in the series.

I can go into specific episodes where scripting made for some good setups and there were some particularly that purposefully played on Vaughn's background as Napoleon Solo. (There is one that ends in Napoleon's tomb in Paris where the connection to Vaughn's previous role is definitely being pushed forward as an example.)

Hope that helps to start the discussion.

December 24, 2009 at 4:02 AM
Unknown said...

A couple of extra notes here: THE PROTECTORS was filmed on location all over Europe, which was a new thing at the time. No studio sets to suggest exotic locales on the show; all those locales were real.

I also want to note here that the character of Harry Rule lacked the joie d'vive of Napoleon Solo. The impression I always got was that whatever he had gone through in life had burned that out of Harry. He had some moments when lightheartedness would return to him, usually when he was with Caroline, but those were few and far between.

And he didn't have Solo's idealism either. Rule had a very strict sense of right and wrong, but he didn't expect the world to meet those expectations. This is shown to great effect in one particular episode about a Vietnam War vet who has retreated into a world of his own (a world where he is still in a combat zone). The vet has set up his alter world in an abandoned testing range in England and he is definitely dangerous, shooting the police and others who try to bring him out of the area. Harry tries valiantly to save the man's life by going into the area and presenting himself as a man under the vet's command, attempting to "talk him down". Yet when it doesn't work, he is not in the least surprised, though very embittered, that the man is in the end shot down by Scotland Yard. That story is intensely sad and Harry's attitude regarding the situation shows clearly his "burned out" attitude toward the possibility of high ideals winning out in the end.

I should note here that many of the episodes of THE PROTECTORS had a very dark quality.

December 24, 2009 at 4:23 AM
Anonymous said...

My strongest memory of The Protectors (aside from the hurried nature of the stories, cramped into a half hour) was from the title sequence. I've since seen it again on YouTube. Harry is seen cooking (eggs or something, I think) in his kitchen and eating breakfast, wearing a robe and hornrim glasses, poring over a book, and in the company of his dog. Very unlike Solo!

December 24, 2009 at 8:43 AM
Anonymous said...

I never really got into The Protectors. I've seen it, and it has its upsides, but it just didn't have the appeal for me that MFU and other similar shows did. It was probably the half-hour format that ruined it for me, I think. The plots either ended up feeling contrived, or they were way too simple... they just didn't have enough time to work in the sort of details necessary to make a show really engaging for me.

The episode I remember the best is one where Harry and the Contessa are kidnapped by a gang of badguys who try to trick them into thinking they're being held in a hospital after a car accident. Harry figures out they trick when he sees the "nurse"'s impractical shoes. The opening sequence of that episode always reminded me of The Saint novella where Simon forces a tyrannical truck company owner to drive in front of a green screen for days on end without rest, so he could see what his drivers went through.

December 24, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Anonymous said...

I also remember the opening sequence clearly. And the bizarre lounge musak closing theme.

I loved that Harry had a wolfhound. I wonder if he made Suki take care of him while he was off gallivanting around Europe every other day.

December 24, 2009 at 10:11 PM

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