360 Return of the Saint

First  viewed : September  1978

We  switch  back  to  ITV  for  the  revival  of  The  Saint  franchise. With  Roger  Moore  now  unavailable  the  producers  turned  to  Ian  Ogilvy  , star  of  late  sixties   films  such  as  Witchfinder  General   and  Upstairs  Downstairs  where  he  played  the  impotent  aesthete  Lawrence  Kirkbride. At  first  he  was  going  to  be  Templar's  son  with the  idea  of   Moore   perhaps  being  tempted  to  make  guest  appearances   but  this  was  ditched  in  favour  of  just  transferring  the  character  to  a  seventies  setting. The  suave  and  handsome  Ogilvy  was  a  natural  fit  to  replace  Moore  though  a  rather  better  actor.

The  series  had  24  episodes  in  which  Templar  roamed  all  over  Europe  righting  wrongs, chatting  up  beautiful  women   and  defeating  madmen   in  his  own  gentlemanly  way  and  though  it  sold  to  Europe and  the  US  a  second  series  was  never made.

It  made  Ogilvy   one  of  the  front  runners  for  Bond  when  Roger  Moore  jacked  it  in - a  prospect  that  appalled  the  Bond  fanatic  in  my  Hall  of  Residence  who  hated  him.  To  his  no  doubt  relief   Ogilvy  didn't  get  the  role   but  has  had  a  steady  career  in  theatre, children's  books  and  TV  ever  since.  In  fact  looking  at  his  long  list  of  credits  on  imdb  I  find  it  quite  remarkable  that  I've  not  seen  him  in  anything  since  this  series. You'd  have  thought  on  law  of  averages  that  he'd  have  picked  something  that  floated my  boat  in  38 years  but  apparently  not.