Mission: Monte Carlo

I love The Pursaders but only gave this "movie" a 3, strange? Not at all.

When I purchased this movie on DVD I was expecting a movie, but it's not. Instead you'll find two separate tv-episodes where the first episode has its end after texts removed, and the second episode has its titles (including the marvelous theme song) removed. Basicly, this is what I call a hoax.

The first episode is even a cheap shot episode, all scenes take place indoors. The second one is a little better and here you'll find the highlight of this "movie", a car chase with Danny Wilde's Ferrari Dino 246GT.

Mission Monte Carlo, like three other Persuaders "movies" - Sporting Chance, London Conspiracy and The Switch - is, sadly, just a compilation/re-release of episodes from the original 1971 series of 24. Lew Grade's ITC did some topping and tailing/cutting and pasting to release them theatrically in Europe and for cable channels in the States several years after the original broadcast hence the mid 70's release dates.(ITC did this with a number of series including Space: 1999 after their first run) to squeeze a little more cash from the project. They were the first Persuaders releases on rental and sell thru video in the UK in the early - mid 80s and as such very welcome at the time, as the series itself had long since stopped being repeated by ITV. They are disappointing without that wonderful theme tune and proper credits, but not so much a rip off just a stop gap.