(©The Australian 'TV TIMES' - March 25th 1970)

The Persuaders, starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, was produced in late1970/early '71 and consisted of 24 x 50 minute episodes.

Prolific screen actor, Tony Curtis played the streetwise, self-made millionaire from the Bronx, Daniel (Danny) Wilde;Roger Moore - already familiar to television audiences as, "The Saint",  was the cultured  English aristocrat, Lord Brett Sinclair.

The basis of the series was the adventures of two resourceful yet irresponsible international playboys, recruited by a retired Judge, to bring to justice criminals who had managed to avoid legal prosecution in the past on technicality.

This premise was not consistent throughout the series, however, with subsequent stories being broader in scope. In one episode, the pair could find themselves unwittingly doing the dirty work for various Government agencies while another would see them  involved in more personal predicaments. In fact three of the better episodes actually deal with aspects of Brett Sinclairs private life (Greensleeves, A Death in the Family and Someone Waiting).

The emphasis of the programme lay in the realm of 'fun'.  Both gratuitous violence and politically-correct social engineering in television was still 2 decades away. The humour of the series was the most  important aspect of its appeal and much of it was due solely to the acting style and spontaneity of the two leads. Without the synchronicity between Curtis + Moore, The Persuaders would have been just another television show.

Production on the US$8 million series began around June 1970 with location work throughout Europe & Great Britain and interiors shot at Britains Pinewood studios.

From articles in magazines and journals of the day it is clear that both the producers and the stars intended to make further episodes - for up to five years if the initial run was successful.

But while, The Persuaders was well received by British, Australian and European audiences, it failed to make much of an impact in America and while there has been much speculation concerning difficulties with Tony Curtis on the set it is probable that the programme's U.S. failure alone was enough to stop production of further episodes.

As Leslie Halliwell remarked in his television companion, "...this series conveyed plenty of fun and its American failure was a mystery".  Perhaps the American public had become so used to the repetitious diet of backlot- restricted fare such as Bonanza and Mission Impossible that the fresh look of The Persuaders was as foreign to them as the locations of Europe.

Whatever the reasons for the US failure nothing changes the fact that the world was left with only 24 episodes of The Persuaders - an excellent chapter in the burgeoning catalogue of television which still holds up, groovy dancing notwithstanding, a quarter of a century later.

The Persuaders had everything that could hold an audience - adventure, action, humour and exotic locations. More importantly it featured two stars whose on-screen antics made Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair two of the most persuasive characters ever to appear in the living-rooms of the world.
 
 

Drummond Grieve

April 1998