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Whilst being engaged to protect Frank Dilling, a vital witness in a corruption case, Harry and Caroline are involved in a car crash. Harry wakes up in hospital, where he visited by a police inspector, who asks him about Dilling's location so that the police may guard him. However the whole situation has been manufactured and the man is a bogus cop, anxious to silence Dilling and Harry must go after him and stop him.

Robert Vaughn, Keith Bell, and Ian Hendry in The Protectors (1972)

We haven't seen the Contessa fence for a while. How do we remedy that?

THIS was fun! For the 2nd time, they had Brian Clemens as writer, and he clearly gets the half-hour format better than most, which is funny, when you consider THE AVENGERS was always an hour show. Clemens&#39; scripts seem to start with a simple story which he can then flesh out, as opposed to a complex story that has to be crammed into half the time it should have. (Nearly every Sylvester McCoy DOCTOR WHO story had that later problem. Trying to cram what should be 6 parts into 4-or 3.) The only guest-actor I knew was Ian Hendry, the original star of THE AVENGERS, in its 1st season. Clemens worked with him back then, and must have liked doing so, as he cast Hendry in this, the film CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER (made the same year as this), and THE NEW AVENGERS episode &quot;To Catch A Rat&quot;. Both times they teamed in 1972, Hendry played a bad guy. Now here&#39;s the funny thing. The moment I saw Harry wake up injured in a hospital, and people were asking him what happened and where is so-and-so, I thought, hey, I&#39;ve seen this before. It was a Tara King episode, &quot;Requiem&quot;. Here&#39;s the IMDB sypnopsis: &quot;Coming home from a costume party Miranda Loxton witnessed a killing by a member of Murder International and Steed is assigned to protect her until she gives evidence at the trial. Only Miss King knows that he has taken her to a boyhood haunt but then she is caught and wakes up in a sinister hospital where she is pumped for information about Miranda&#39;s hideaway.&quot; And get this-that was written by Brian Clemens, too. Now, the last time I watched that series, although I really love some of the Tara episodes, there&#39;s a string of them near the end that I really don&#39;t like, and might not want to watch again anytime soon. That was one of them. And yet, it seems to me, Clemens redid a story of his I didn&#39;t like, and the 2nd time, improved on it. The variation, of course, was that this time, 2 people were kidnapped and pumped for info at once, but one of them figured it out early-on, and set about turning the tables. Had Tara done that in the earlier story, I might have liked it a lot more. I just hated anytime they made her seem like a victim, when in better stories, she could beat any 3 guys at once, like Jim West. This is the first story where the dialogue makes it very explicit that Harry, Caroline &amp; Paul run a private detective agency. Up to now, you kind of had to guess. Harry &amp; Caroline seem closer in this story than before, which was nice to see.

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Thinkback

Harry Rule is protecting a man called Frank Dilling. He has evidence that could cause waves about worldwide corruption. Being such an important target, you would think The Protectors would be even more careful. After a car accident. Harry wakes up in hospital seriously injured. The doctors know nothing about the Contessa Caroline di Contini. Only Harry was found in the car. Inspector Wilson (Ian Hendry) shows up to question Harry and about his latest case. Harry discloses what he was working on, but does not disclose Dilling&#39;s whereabouts. Harry later discovers that he is inside a fake hospital. It is a conspiracy. Inspector Wilson has visited Caroline in another hospital room, she too has been told that there was an accident and she was alone. Wilson gets the information he needs from Caroline. Writer Brian Clemens has recycled the plot from other ITC shows. It has brisk pacing, good action. Hendry might have been a drunk in real life, but he is such a believable actor. You really do think he is a genuine policeman.

Originality is not really considered too important in television. All that matters is getting shows on air. Back in the &#39;60&#39;s, there was a notorious case of script recycling when an episode of &#39;The Saint&#39; called &#39;Lida&#39; later turned up - word for word - as &#39;Portrait Of Louisa&#39;, an episode of &#39;The Baron&#39;. Terry Nation was stuck for ideas and, with a deadline approaching, decided to borrow from himself and hoped no-one would notice. He might have gotten away with it had not both been shown in America in the same week! In 1966, Brian Clemens penned the storyline ( the actual script was by Tony Williamson ) for &#39;A Slight Case Of Reincarnation&#39;, the opening episode of Season 2 of &#39;Adam Adamant Lives!&#39;. A gang of villains are out to extract a secret from Adam by means of a &#39;Mission: Impossible&#39;-type scam, namely making him think he is back in 1908 and that his adventures in 1966 have been nothing but a dream. Three years later, Clemens rewrote it as &#39;Requiem&#39; for the final series of &#39;The Avengers&#39;. Tara King ( Linda Thorson ) knows the whereabouts of Miranda Loxton ( Angela Douglas ), shortly to give evidence in a Murder International trial. The bad guys firstly involve her in a fake murder attempt ( a bomb goes off in Steed&#39;s flat ), and then gently pump her for information. Four years later, Clemens used the plot a third time, as an episode of I.T.C.&#39;s &#39;The Protectors&#39;, starring Robert Vaughn as &#39;Harry Rule&#39; and the late Nyree Dawn Porter as &#39;The Contessa de Contini&#39;. After a pre-credits sequence in which they are seemingly involved in a car crash, Harry wakes up in a fake hospital where Inspector Wilson ( Ian Hendry ) asks him about his latest case. Harry and the Contessa know the location of one Frank Dilling ( Geoffrey Morris ), who is soon to give evidence that will blow apart a ring of corruption that encircles most of Europe. Escaping, he and the Contessa make their way to where Frank is hiding out ( it looks like the movie studio seen in &#39;U.F.O.&#39; ) and, after a gun battle, come out on top. I have not seen the &#39;Adam Adamant Lives&#39; version ( it was wiped years ago ), but have read the script and it looks like being one of that show&#39;s best offerings. &#39;The Avengers&#39; remake made for one of the best Thorson shows, and &#39;Thinkback&#39;, while not quite as good, benefits from snappy direction by Cyril Frankel and a solid performance by guest star Hendry. Like most of &#39;The Protectors&#39; series, it manages to entertain without necessarily being particularly outstanding. I feel the show was wrong for the half-hour format. Hour-long episodes akin to &#39;The Saint&#39; and &#39;The Danger Man&#39; would have improved it no end.

If you&#39;ve watched enough TV from this period then you quickly realise the general direction that this story is taking. Unfortunately the time restrictions definitely don&#39;t work to the advantage of an otherwise clever little premise. It&#39;s a shame, but there is just too much general silliness for any of this to make good TV viewing. Even making allowances for its 25 minute runtime, the programme is just plain clumsy. Harry is able to explore and conceal himself within a small building full of armed criminals, yet Dilling couldn&#39;t keep himself hidden for five minutes in a Movie studio. The whole elaborate ruse for one snippet of information when all they needed to do was ask the housemaid. The convenient appearance of a collection of fencing foils, the Contessa&#39;s weapon of choice, just when the action required them. The pointless subplot of Paul and Suki which eventually came to nothing as Paul ended up only just turning up in time for the credits. In the briefest of searches, Dilling is inexplicably found in an open yard, apparently checking out a series of old pallets. Are they implying that there were no toilets in the studio? The entertainment value of this series definitely stems from its weaknesses rather than its strengths. It&#39;s a large dose of nostalgic nonsense that would have little to nothing to offer the younger generation. For my generation it&#39;s an opportunity to cringe at how simplistic the TV of our youth really was. It&#39;s now incredible to believe that the target audience for this programme was adults and not young children.

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The Protectors

Two heads are better than one

Thinkback

A slight case of recycling

We haven't seen the Contessa fence for a while. How do we remedy that?

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