The Persuaders! - starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis - was the last of the big-budget action adventure series from Lew Grade's ITC/ATV stable. And what a brilliant theme tune it had - from none other than the legendary James Bond composer John Barry. This is the full version of the original John Barry recording of The Persuaders theme tune.
I remember seeing The Persuaders for the first time in 1971. I was 11 at the time and my grandparents said 'this is a show we think you'll enjoy'. They were so right! I couldn't wait for Friday nights when it was shown. Colour TV was still a novelty back then and the programme seemed to glow with the brilliant colours of the south of France where so much of the location shooting was done - a huge departure from the normal practice of only using studio sets at the time.
Lew Grade persuaded Tony Curtis to cross the pond and play Danny Wilde, a working class boy from The Bronx who had made his millions by speculating on oil. Wilde was the comedic foil for the debonair Lord Brett Sinclair played by a pre-Bond Roger Moore. Naturally Grade was keen to sell the show to the US and so an American star was essential. Curtis and Moore were wonderfully supported by the veteran British actor Laurence Naismith as The Judge in many episodes.
The on-screen chemistry between Wilde and Sinclair was cheekily adversarial but each had an unspoken respect for the other. The off-screen chemistry between Curtis and Moore was a little more problematic. Curtis, frequently stoned during shooting, couldn't remember his lines and often ad-libbed. This was sometimes apparent even to the viewer, but caused consternation to those playing opposite him.
Nevertheless the result was an exciting show that was enthusiastically received by the audience.
There were continuity errors a-plenty in The Persuaders! not least because the location shoots were often done in France whilst the studio shots were filmed in the UK. Perhaps the most famous error is that Lord Brett Sinclair's Aston Martin appears in one scene with its genuine number plate PPP 6H because somebody forgot to attach the personalised BS 1 plate. Not that we cared at the time!!
One episode of The Persuaders featured a pre-production Range Rover - the first appearance on TV of what we now call an SUV. It was driven so hard across a bumpy field that the rear window broke, causing a long delay in filming whilst another window was located and fitted.
Roger Moore looked much more modern as Brett Sinclair with his flowing hair and with his 1970s outfits than he did just a couple of years earlier as the tweedy, Brylcreemed Simon Templar in The Saint. The Persuaders positioned him perfectly for his subsequent role as James Bond the Second. In fact other Bond regulars Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell made guest appearances in individual episodes of The Persuaders!
The show was known under different names around the world including Amicalement Votre in France, Die Zwei in Germany, Attenti a Quei Due in Italy, Los Persuasores in Spain, and Dos Tipos Audaces in several South American countries. However my favourites have to be the Swedish title Snobbar som Jobbar (Snobs on the Job), Hungarian Minden Lében Két Kanál (Two Spoons in Every Juice) and Japanese ダンディ2 華麗な冒険 (Two Dandies' Brilliant Adventures) ... utterly bizarre!!
The German version - Die Zwei - adopted a completely radical dubbing approach, to the extent that the script was radically different from the original. Rainer Brandt the German actor who provided Curtis's voice and who coordinated the German dubbing decided to increase the comedic content of the banter between Sinclair and Wilde. Rainer even lampooned the whole idea of dubbing by adding the line 'Du musst jetzt etwas schneller werden, sonst bist du nicht synchron' (You'd better speed up or you won't be in sync) in one episode. Rainer's approach was credited for the enormous success of Die Zwei in Germany and Austria.
The French version, Amicalement Votre followed the concept of the German dubbed version more closely than the original English one.