Another Monty Berman produced Action / Adventure series. He was also the co-creator with Robert S. Baker. The show was very much in the same vein as The Saint, and very loosely based on the series of books by John Creasey writing as Anthony Morton. The series featured the exploits of John Mannering an international antiques dealer with stores in London, Paris and Washington. (Though virtually every adventure seemed to start-out with his London store)
Mannering played by Steve Forrest, often reluctantly found himself being used by John Templeton-Green (Colin Gordon) as an agent for the Special Branch Diplomatic Service, and it was he who assigned Cordelia Winfield to Mannering as an assistant. Cordelia was played by Sue Lloyd who also appeared in one of the Harry Palmer movies, as well as the short run of The Avengers stage show produced in 1971.
The series ran for 30 hour long episodes, (50min) and it was the first ITC live action series to be filmed entirely in colour. Several differences appear between the books and the series, initially in the books, Mannering was British and a reformed jewel thief. In the series however Mannering is now a Texan, his nickname having come from the family ranch, and any suggestions of a criminal past have been completely removed. The main script writer on the show was Dalek creator Terry Nation, whilst it writers included Brian Clemens (Writing under the pseudonym of Tony O’Grady.) and Dennis Spooner.
The car used throughout the series by Mannering was a Jensen CV-8 Mk II, with appropriate personalised plates BAR 1. Now being such an exclusive make of car, weather the manufacturers experienced the same sales boost as Volvo had after the production of the Saint seems to be debatable .
One last notable thing is that episode “Something for a rainy day” features the first usage of what was to become a much used piece of stock footage, used in many of the different ITC shows for at least the next ten years. That of a white Daimler Jaguar plummeting over a cliff face.
