"Danger Man" steps behind the Iron Curtain as M9 agent John Drake travels to Prague to search for missing M9 agent Desmond Pearson (Jerry Stovin) in "The Professionals," which maintains limited suspense within a shaky narrative.
Writers Wilfred Greatorex, also the series' script editor, and Louis Marks inject their characters with distinctive traits, and their script puts them into suitably compromising positions, but their overall premise lacks conviction, relying too much on personal color at the expense of compelling reasons to produce that color, while the corresponding action seems stretched to fill the story's running time.
Masquerading as tippling embassy functionary Terrence Stewart, Drake is quickly assigned the task of finding Pearson, his own cover that of a businessman, after his frantic wife Joan (Helen Cherry) finally convinces the embassy that his disappearance, hardly his first unexplained absence, isn't simply another of his indiscretions.
At an embassy party, Drake soon attracts the attention of local Milos Kaldor (Alex Scott), who runs a honeytrap that includes vivacious, voluptuous Ira (Nadja Regin), who had a relationship with Desmond and, at Kaldor's insistence, dallies with Drake. When Drake is drugged at one of Kaldor's parties, he finds himself arrested and charged with vehicular assault, a contrived plot point that ultimately comes to nothing as Drake is soon urging Joan Desmond to flee the country with her children as he closes in on Desmond's whereabouts.
His Drake needing to maintain his alias, McGoohan displays versatility to carry "The Professionals" to the border, with Scott generally resisting the temptation to overplay his unsavory Czech character as Cherry does what she can in a catalyst role.
The wasted opportunity is Stovin's character Desmond, who only appears in the last half and is essentially passive ballast for Drake's resourcefulness. Left unspoken is any hint that his previous disappearances might have been his actual espionage work, and what that work had entailed, under the guise of doing business. This would have justified Drake's having to sneak behind the Iron Curtain to exfiltrate him and his family.
Director Michael Truman draws out the closing escape sequence to fill the running time, and although it avoids cliché chases and shootouts it dilutes the danger and excitement. Ironically, the thin narrative of "The Professionals" seems more suited to "Danger Man"'s previous half-hour format instead.
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