The many lifes of ST on TV - BK - 09/12/2011 12:38:53
The Saint is one of those characters whose subsequent incarnations upstaged it's literary original (Charteris aficionados will be happy to find an original screenplay by the author at the end of the book). Was it because Leslie Charteris' magnificent output belonged specifically to the the stormy era between the wars? Not necessarily. The books are still a good read and are reprinted occasionally. The real reason lies behind the boom of television for it is in fact through the small screen that most of current fans of the Saint got acquaintted with the character. It's already been the case back in eighties when many of the production team of the short-lived Simon Dutton series admitted they had been spending Sunday evenings watching Roger Moore who had succesfully taken up the Saintly halo for almost a whole decade. Like it or not, the sixties marked a golden era for Simon Templar although paradoxically often not much was left off the original literary concept of the character and the stories. Yet, that's why the Saint is here with us today and that's why there have been numerous attempts over the years to re-establish Templar on TV again. Ian Dickerson's book takes us back to the origins of the Saint to show where in fact it comes from and how it evolved as a literary character. The crucial part of the book is, however, where he focuses with detail on each and every episode of the Saint ever made for television. After an in-depth introduction to each of the series, in wh