Callan (TV series)

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Television series
Original title Callan
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Year (s) 1967-1972
length 60 minutes
Episodes 44 in 4 seasons
genre Crime series
idea James Mitchell
production Reginald Collin
music Jack Trombey
First broadcast February 4, 1967 (UK) on ITV
occupation

Callan is a British crime series starring Edward Woodward and produced between 1967 and 1972 and broadcast in the UK on ITV .

action

David Callan is a former employee of the Section , a division of the British foreign intelligence service SIS . After falling out of favor with his superiors, he is employed as an accountant. Until his "transfer" he was one of Her Majesty's best agents, usually assigned with duties that were both strictly secret and dirty. In the pilot episode A Magnum for Schneider , Callan is hired by his former boss, Colonel Hunter, to eliminate a businessman named Schneider. In the event of success, Hunter waves with a possible return to active service. At first he defends himself against this order; but then he finds out that Schneider is an unscrupulous former Nazi and arms dealer . However, Hunter plays a double game: he assigns his agent Toby Meres to ensure that Callan is arrested in the act as a murderer by the police after a successful mission. Callan manages to make the acquaintance of Schneider and is invited to his house. Meres enters the house and Hunter calls the police. In the ensuing confrontation Callan succeeds in killing Schneider and incapacitating Meres. Then he calls Hunter and quits his job with the secret service. From then on, Callan is on the run.

Following the successful pilot episode, ABC Weekend Television commissioned a first season with six episodes. In this Callan returns to the Section as an unofficial employee . Callan, who collects historical military figures and reenacts these battles, has only one ally, the petty criminal "Lonely", who acts as his contact to the underworld and is a highly gifted safe cracker. Its nickname "Lonely" is based on the fact that it sweats a lot under stress and therefore has a penetrating body odor. The second season ran on Thames Television , it was produced in black and white like the first season and ended with a cliffhanger . The last two seasons were produced in color. In the fourth season Callan is temporarily promoted to head of the section . The series ends with Callan's voluntary retirement from the secret service.

background

The pilot was in 1974 filmed . The role of Callan was again taken over by Edward Woodward, Schneider was played by the Austrian Carl Möhner . In addition to Woodward, Russell Hunter as Lonely and Clifford Rose as Dr. Snell only featured two cast members from the original series in the film adaptation.

In 1981 another episode was produced as a television film. Callan, who is now the owner of a devotional shop, is looked after by the new head of the section with a secret mission. He finds no support in this from his old friend "Lonely", who is now no longer alone, but engaged.

In the 1980s, Woodward appeared in the US series The Equalizer . In this thematically similar series, he played a former employee of the secret service who jumps to the side of people in need but is repeatedly assigned secret missions by his former superiors.

In 2001, Woodward played Nikita's boss in the series of the same name . Similar to Callan at the time, she reluctantly works for the secret service and in the pilot episode she is accused of murder. It later emerges that Mr. Jones, played by Woodward, is Nikita's father.

Awards

BAFTA TV Award ceremony

Web links