60s tv

One of the most memorable characters ever to grace television screens was David Callan, brought to life by the recently deceased acting legend Edward Woodward. The 1960s was a good decade for espionage drama, perhaps because the Cold War was still very much alive and well and occupying much of the news at the time.

In the early 1960s Patrick McGoohan became the best-paid actor on British screens, thanks to his blistering performance as John Drake in the hit espionage series Danger Man (which was bizarrely broadcast as Secret Agent in the US). John Drake is very much a prototype James Bond: a British secret service agent who is assigned to only the trickiest, messiest cases where ordinary spies aren’t up to the job.

A Choice of Coward brings together four of the most popular plays by the renowned English comedy writer Noel Coward, split over two discs. The series, which was composed of televised plays, was originally broadcast in 1964 as part of the ITV Play of the Week series. These productions were made a few decades after the plays were written, but are specially introduced by Coward himself.

Having dazzled television audiences as the suave Edwardian adventurer in Adam Adamant Lives!, Gerald Harper’s next big series was Hadleigh, which ran for four series made between 1969 and 1976. Harper played the titular James Hadleigh, an extremely eligible bachelor and landowner, who has wealth, property and authority in a small Yorkshire town.