May 16, 2023
The Saint: The Russian Prisoner (5.3, ITC, 1966)
"This is not a joke! I am very angry."
"Well, you could have fooled me."
"I warn you! If any of our diplomatically immune guests press charges..."
"You'll put me in jail?"
"With the greatest of pleasure."
#the saint#the russian prisoner#itc#1966#leslie charteris#john llewellyn moxey#harry w. junkin#roger moore#penelope horner#joseph fürst#guy deghy#yootha joyce#godfrey quigley#anthony booth#robert crewdson#sandor elès#raymond adamson#alexis chesnakov#william buck#perhaps it's a reflection on the longevity of this series or its popularity with actors but (Yootha aside) pretty much everyone#in the cast had made Saint appearances before‚ many of them more than once (and Adamson and Fürst had actually appeared together in#2.11 and Fürst and Deghy in 2.27!). After two original scripts we're back to an actual Charteris adaptation‚ from a short story by the same#name. it's an educated guess‚ but given the wealth of bts photos available and some other small clues i suspect this may have been the#first colour episode to go into production. it's a fun one too! Simon gets to have a lot of fun playing adventurer in a cold war set up#and has some killer lines and moments (including a flippant attempt at passing himself off as a Swiss naval commander). Deghy's inspector#kleinhaus is in fact a returning character (from all the way back in 1.5 The Loaded Tourist‚ making this surely the longest gap in the#series between a character's appearances) altho he's much less trusting of Simon here (what happened in those intervening years..)#still it's a nice bit of continuity. lovely lovely Sandor Elès had played a very similar character in a previous ep as a hotel receptionist#but unless he was transferred from Paris to Geneva they aren't the same character..
