Shark Bytes

I always liked the stick figure in the beginning.

John D. MacDonald? He's dead.

The Saint made James Bond happen...we
all borrow. The Saint never jumped the shark......but if you think about it
the Roger Moore series belonged to an era that created Secret Agent , The
Prisoner some truly memorable TV. It is
my hope that TNT create a true series
worthy that era. Redue the theme somewhat....make it the Rome of detect-
ive series. John McDonald could really
do it.

The only bad episodes in this series were the ones about supernaural stuff (the like Loch Ness monster) or science fiction (being attacked by giant ants, and someone mentioned something about a giant spider).

The Saint never jumped the shark. I agree with Burl and I'm so glad he is a consultant for the new show (as long as they listen to him and other Saintly experts).

I don't believe the Ogilvy series jumped either. I think people sometimes see it was just one season and immediately assume it was a stinker because it never lasted very long. However, I think Return of the Saint had some of the best ever Saintly screen adventures.

However, the 1980's Simon Dutton TV movies did jump (or even leap) in the second movie, "The Blue Dulac", which is about as bad as it can get. Having said that, the other five movies are harmlessly enjoyable when one's brain is in neutral...

The Saint Was Awesome says one of the messages above. YES!

He was my teen hero and I collected all the books until the much later ones when I felt the inventiveness had gone - however, Charteris wasn't so far as I know writing those later books.

I agree Roger Moore's presentation wasn't really how Charteris wrote the character, but I've little doubt he could have played the real Saint if only he'd been given the early stories to do. Instead they depicted the Saint as a bland, rather aimless wanderer aka the later stories but even blander, who helped ladies in distress and helped the police arrest a few villains without it seems stealing any villainous booty to actually live in the style we saw.

Ian Ogilvy - yes a relative failure. Better than nothing but much better than Kilmer who neither looked like, sounded like (that Bowery Boy American accent..... unbelievably wrong) or acted like The Saint. Agreed it became a Bond character and an insecure one at that. Well, if Kilmer had been given a proper Saintly script and told to keep to an English accent, and the story hadn't made him a sort of mystery phantom, perhaps it would have been better. Curious that the director declared himself a Saint fan and it was his own story used, yet he seemed to have no idea re what made up the real Saint.

I love the early Saint stories. Rereading them again recently after a long time made me remember just how exciting they are. Nothing I've seen on large or small screen re The Saint has been much at all like these early stories. I wasn't ever really keen on the later Saint - from WW2 on he changed for good into that aimless wanderer and seemed a rather sad character.

Mr. Barer,

It's a treat to see your post here.

For what it's worth, The 1960s iteration of The Saint, especially the Black & White episodes, is still delightful to watch.

Keep us posted on the TNT project...

While I agree that the b/w shows have a certain allure that the color episodes don't quite capture, I don't think the show ever jumped the shark. As for the giant spider episode, that was an adaptation of the original Charteris' short story, The Man Who Liked Ants, and Charteris was thrilled with the color television adaptation.
Now, concerning the new series...
If I have anything to say about it, and supposedly I do, the new SAINT TV project for TNT will retain the flavor of Charteris' original.
The Roger Moore series that began in 1962 used the "glob trotting celebrity" character found in Charteris later short stories, and due to the restrictive TV codes of the time, Charteris lamented that the Saint on TV bore as much similarity to his creation as Winnie the Pooh did to Captain Blood.
Times have changed -- restrictions have relaxed. Soooo...this version of The Saint will be the more dangerous and picaresque adventurer, having way too much fun as he takes on recalcitrant and contumacious oppressors while bedding the requisite bevy of beauties -- including the mercurial and romantic Ms Patricia Holm. As all Saint fans know, Simon Templar parks his shoes in numerous international locales, but Holm is where he hangs his hat -- or halo.
Bill Macdonald asked me to serve as "consultant" to the project, and has honestly taken my suggestions to heart (and page). The show should be really cool, faithful to the character, and won't have Charteris getting what he termed Graveyard Torque from spinning in his metaphoric grave. What I like best about the project, of course, is that I'm supposedly getting paid for my wit and wisdom. As with any TV or film project - or publishing for that matter -- I will be 100% convinced when the check clears the bank. As Bill has never deceived me in the past, I trust it will all come out in the wash, even if the spin cycle makes me crazy.

For me, The Saint gets a qualified "never jumped". What does that mean, exactly? Well, the Roger Moore show was pretty darn good entertainment, but a child of its time, rooted very much in the 60s. Fans of the stories and novels of the great Leslie Charteris will know that The Saint's beginnings were in 30s England, where The Saint and his gang were the nemesis of the criminal masterminds of the London underworld, and the bane of Scotland Yard's existence. During the war years, Simon Templar was "re-invented" as a secret agent, then again during the cold war era as "CIA Saint" (a bit of a proto-Bond), before emerging during the 60s as the engaging but rootless globe-trotter as portrayed by Moore. In my view, the later incarnations of The Saint could never hope to match that glorious pre-war heyday. I hope that one day, someone will have the courage of his convictions (not to mention the money!) to do for The Saint what ITV in Britain did for Christie's Poirot, and take him back to that time of bi-planes, spats, and cars with running boards. Not much chance, but I live in hope! Meantime, Moore will do.

When the series was filmed in color, it lost the gritty film-noir mystery edge of the b/w shows. Also, the writing got into science-fiction one show about a mutation ant, and another about Swinging Sixties London that was dated even from the time it first aired.

Never jumped, always remained an off-beat, cheeky, adventure show with a fantastic leading man. Probably improved as it had a nice ripe target in the James bond series to either parody, or homage.

The episode when the Saint did battle with a giant spider in Scotland

Leslie Charteris, and all those who ghost wrote for him, were creative and descriptive geniuses. The character of the Saint has been reinvented quite a lot in fiction, but whether he was a ruthless loner, a witty playboy, or master of disguises, the same high quality of entertainment value and intrigue has always been his. Moore's tongue-in-cheek portrayal in "The Saint" tv series of the 60s made his acting career. This version, while toned down from the pulp novels, made for exciting, involving television. At no point did the series lag. The character of the Saint became accessible to a new generation through the recent movie, and Val Kilmer's addition to the saga has not in any way diminished the saga, or the legacy of Mr. Charteris. The Saint will return...

A classic. But boy! Did the Return of the Saint stink! Ian Ogillvy - nice boy but no Roger Moore. By the way - not a BBC show fellas, it was made for and shown on British Network commercial TV.

This was one of those English shows that went bad when they went to color. The pace slowed down, everything was too bright, and so on. For a while they seemed to be following some manual somewhere that said color had to be handled differently from black and white. Spoiled this show.