The Secret Service
The Secret Service is a 1969 British science fiction television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company, Century 21, for ITC Entertainment. It follows the exploits of Father Stanley Unwin, a puppet character voiced by, and modelled on, the comedian of the same name. Outwardly an eccentric vicar, Unwin is secretly an agent of BISHOP, a division of British Intelligence that counters criminal and terrorist threats. Assisted by fellow agent Matthew Harding, Unwin's missions involve frequent use of the Minimiser, a device capable of shrinking people and objects to facilitate covert operations. In hostile situations, Unwin spouts a form of gibberish to distract the enemy.
The Secret Service was the last Anderson series to be made using a form of electronic marionette puppetry called "Supermarionation". This technique was combined with scale model effects sequences and – uniquely for an Anderson puppet series – extensive footage of live actors in long shot. The move towards non-puppet live action was influenced by Gerry Anderson, who wanted to increase the realism of Supermarionation. Filming began in August 1968 and ended with the completion of the thirteenth episode in January 1969 after Lew Grade, Century 21's owner and financial backer, responded negatively to a test screening and cancelled the production. Grade believed that the inclusion of Unwinese had made it impossible to sell the series to the American market.
The series was transmitted on three of the ITV network's regional franchises and has not been repeated since 1975. Critical response has been mixed, with verdicts ranging from the Andersons' "forgotten gem" to their "one flop". Commentators have questioned the wisdom of hiring Unwin, arguing that his gibberish had too little comic value to sustain viewer interest. However, the series has been praised for the writing of its supporting characters. The Secret Service was Gerry Anderson's final puppet series until Terrahawks in the 1980s.
Premise
The Secret Service follows the exploits of Father Stanley Unwin, the parish priest of an English village. Outwardly an eccentric middle-aged vicar, Unwin moonlights as an operative of the intelligence agency BISHOP. He is stationed at his vicarage with fellow BISHOP agent Matthew Harding, who when not assisting Unwin on missions affects a country accent and serves as the Father's verger and gardener. Supporting characters include The Bishop, head of BISHOP and Unwin's superior, Blake, a junior BISHOP operative, and Mrs Appleby, Unwin's housekeeper, who is unaware of Unwin and Matthew's double life as spies.Prior to the series, Professor Humbert invented the Minimiser, a device capable of shrinking people or objects to one third of their normal size. When Humbert died it was inherited by Unwin, who conceals it inside a large book. The device is regularly used on Matthew, who is reduced to a height of to enable him to carry out covert reconnaissance where any normal-sized person would be noticed. Occasionally it is also used to shrink enemies, literally bringing them down to Matthew's size.
Unwin carries the miniaturised Matthew around in a specially adapted briefcase, which can open from the inside and contains field equipment such as a periscope. During missions, the agents communicate via earpiece transceivers, with Unwin's disguised as his hearing aid. Their primary mode of transport is a revamped 1917 Ford Model T called Gabriel, which can reach speeds over. If challenged by law enforcement or enemy agents, Unwin spouts a form of gibberish to confuse the opposition and cover for Matthew.
While most of the Supermarionation series are set in the future, the events of The Secret Service take place in the then-present day. The episodes "Errand of Mercy" and "The Deadly Whisper" are respectively set on 3 February 1969 and 24 May 1969. Gerry Anderson biographers Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn argue that the setting is ambiguous: they believe it to be "sometime in the near future" but note that the world of The Secret Service sees "Morris Minors negotiate leafy country roads while space-age helijets patrol the skies", ultimately concluding that the series is so fantastic that it "isn't set in the real world at all."
Episodes
Voice cast
With the exception of Unwin, all voice actors on The Secret Service had supplied voices for earlier Supermarionation series. The Secret Service featured the voices of:- Stanley Unwin as Father Stanley Unwin, a parish priest in rural England who carries out top-secret missions for BISHOP. Due to the realistic vicar costume that he wore on location, passing members of the public often mistook Unwin for a real vicar.
- Gary Files as Matthew Harding, Unwin's partner in BISHOP as well as gardener of his vicarage. Files fondly remembered his time on The Secret Service, stating that he enjoyed voicing Harding more than Captain Magenta in Captain Scarlet. He made significant contributions to Harding's characterisation, devising the character's rural accent himself: "It just seemed so right for the character. Then once I had the voice, the rest of Matthew followed."
- Sylvia Anderson as Mrs Appleby, Unwin's housekeeper, who is kept ignorant of Unwin and Harding's double life.
- Jeremy Wilkin as The Bishop, a high-ranking British Intelligence official and head of BISHOP, based in Whitehall.
- Keith Alexander as Agent Blake, a cautious junior agent of BISHOP, who has speaking roles in three episodes.
Production
Development
After the completion of Joe 90, producer Gerry Anderson decided to create another espionage series. This would feature an English village as the home of its spy protagonist, an eccentric parish priest. Anderson hired Stanley Unwin to voice the character after unexpectedly meeting Unwin at Pinewood Studios while the comedian was completing dubbing work on the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Unwin's fee was set at £250 per episode.Unwin was the creator of "Unwinese", a form of gibberish that was outwardly unintelligible but retained some aspects of meaning. Anderson remembered Unwin's radio and TV performances using the language and thought that it would suit the character of a secret agent, also reasoning that it would have comic value if shown to confuse the enemy. In his biography, he explained: "As far as I was concerned, Stanley came first and then the idea had to accommodate him. It wasn't that the story called for someone who could speak gobbledygook, it was a question of how we could fit him into the storyline." Due to the esoteric nature of Unwinese, the writers briefed Unwin on the storylines and left space in their scripts for him to draft all the gibberish dialogue himself. Shane Rimmer, who wrote the episode "Hole in One", recalled that "A lot of you had to leave to . You gave him a line of patter that's going to work with what he does. Because he was such a bizarre character, you felt you could really go all the way with him: you could practically do anything."
The premise of The Secret Service was inspired partly by the Joe 90 episode "The Unorthodox Shepherd", which features an elderly and seemingly half-deaf vicar who is covering up a money forging operation on the grounds of his church. Archer and Marcus Hearn believe that Joe 90 also had a broader influence on its successor, writing that The Secret Service "continues the espionage theme of Joe 90 in a range of adventures that depict a Britain under siege from despicable foreign agents intent on stealing its secrets."
Puppets
After Joe 90, Anderson had originally intended to abandon Supermarionation puppets altogether in favour of using live actors. For reasons of economy, he eventually opted for a hybrid format that blended scale puppet sequences with footage of live actors filmed in full-sized surroundings. On the style of the puppets – which, after Thunderbirds, had been re-designed with realistic body proportions – Anderson said that Century 21's ever-improving sculpting techniques had produced "imitations of human beings" that made the company's puppet series "like live-action shows but with unconvincing actors". To avoid the long-running problem of making the puppets walk convincingly, the series often used footage of live actors in long shot for scenes that required characters to move.Century 21 had first experimented with extensive live-action location shooting during the production of Thunderbird 6. "The Unorthodox Shepherd" had also been filmed partly on location. Stephen La Rivière notes the contrast between the format of The Secret Service and those of earlier Supermarionation series, whose live-action elements were usually limited to occasional shots of human hands performing actions too complex for the puppets, such as operating machinery.
The only new puppets created for The Secret Service were those of Unwin, his housekeeper Mrs Appleby and The Bishop. Supporting characters were played by puppets recycled from Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet; the Matthew Harding puppet was originally made for the Captain Scarlet episode "Treble Cross" while Blake was played by the Captain Scarlet puppet himself. La Rivière describes the puppet Unwin as "one of the most impressive artistic feats" to be produced by the Century 21 puppet workshop, calling the likeness "uncanny". It is possible to directly compare the puppet with the real-life Unwin in every episode as the opening credits show the real Unwin's face, rather than the puppet's.
Filming
The series was intended to run for 26 episodes. After pre-production in the summer, filming began on 20 August 1968. According to director Ken Turner, the series was difficult to film as it comprised three elements: puppet and effects filming, both carried out at Century 21's studios on the Slough Trading Estate, as well as location filming. The Secret Service also differed from earlier Supermarionation series in that episodes were structured around their location work, which had to be completed before the studio filming could commence. Turner explained: "We felt that somebody had to take the location stuff by the balls, get it shot and then hand it over to the director to fit his puppet stuff in. I suppose that seemed a bit back to front but with that programme it was what worked out best."Producer David Lane remembered that making the series was "an absolute nightmare" due to the wide range of design scales used: "You can imagine the problems. You're shrinking to puppet size on a puppet set and then you're having to build it in live-action size for the puppet because he's supposed to be a small man in a full-sized environment. And then you're using the 'shrunken' puppet in a full set."
Filming locations included a house in Burnham, Buckinghamshire as Father Unwin's vicarage, Centre Point as the British Intelligence building in London and Horse Guards as the headquarters of BISHOP. Wexham Park Hospital appears in the episode "School for Spies", while the Century 21 Studios themselves are featured in the opening of the first episode, "A Case for the Bishop".
As the series is set in the present day, the special effects team, headed by Derek Meddings, were not required to design many futuristic-looking vehicles. Their main tasks were to build the Ford Model T, Gabriel, create miniature replicas of vehicles and settings common to the 1960s, and produce the optical effects for Matthew Harding's "minimisation". Three versions of Gabriel were built: one full-sized car and two models in differing scales. The car was fitted with belt-driven electric motors, an upholstered interior, a folding roof and a radio control mechanism so that it could be driven remotely. The location work using the car was conducted in and around Burnham Beeches during the autumn of 1968 and proved challenging as filming was often disrupted by low light levels. On some days only two minutes of footage were recorded. Technician "Wag" Evans, who was responsible for operating the car's radio control, remembered "standing out of shot and having to 'drive' down the road while it was out of view. Often I didn't know where it was, or where and when it had stopped." A crew member with a large cushion would be on hand to bring the car to a halt whenever it went out of control.