Saturday, June 27, 2020

Callan: The Monochrome Years

The original pilot was a one hour "Armchair Theater" presentation called "A Magnum For Schneider".
It was remade very faithfully in 1974 as " Callan: The Movie".
Very similar to the series, very little changed, even the music from the pilot remained.
It also introduced Callan as a wargamer.
Later in the series, Callan is shown painting 54mm figures, but no wargaming.


5 comments:

  1. Last year on one of the tv channels I watched about a dozen episodes,really enjoyed them. Excellent acting and good story lines.
    Must get around to buying some more from flea-bay.
    Good blog always a fine read.

    Willz Harley.

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    Replies
    1. You might enjoy the US show "The Equalizer" which is Callan in the USA.
      The shows producer admits this in the complete series DVDs released in 2012.
      Callan is Robert McCall and ex CIA. He's fabulously wealthy and is spending his money to help people in need of an equalizer.
      Pretty good show.

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  2. The writing was always very good in this series. In an interview on the "Callan: The Movie" DVD, Edward Woodward reveals that Lawrence Olivier used to watch and as a result he asked Edward Woodward to join his stage productions at The National Theater. That's why there is an 18 month gap between the monochrome and colour series.

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  3. Sharp eyes will note that the hand drawn maps they wargame on are labelled "Gettysburg" and "Talavera". The Gettysburg figures are mostly Britain's. The Talavera board has two mounted 54mm commanders, but the figures look like (?) Willies/Tradition/Holger Erikson/Spencer Smith (?).

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  4. I used to watch Callan on TV religiously during 1971 and subsequent years, but somehow missed every episode that involved war gaming. I saw his painting soldiers and even setting up what looked to me like a diorama (though it might have been a solo war game).

    It was only a couple of years later that I discovered that war gaming was a thing.

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