Adam Adamant Lives! (partially lost BBC children's TV series; 1966-1967)
Adam Adamant Lives! was a live-action children's television show produced by the BBC, airing from the 3rd of June 1966 to the 25th of March 1967 for 30 episodes (including one unaired pilot) over two seasons.
Premise
The show starred Gerald Harper as the eponymous hero, a swashbuckling Edwardian adventurer who is cryogenically frozen by his nemesis, The Face, and wakes up in 1960s England, where everything has changed for him. He and his companion Georgina Jones (played by Juliet Harmer) go on adventures together, with the series taking a particularly satirical look at the 1960s culture Adam finds himself completely out of his depth in.
Availability and Reception
The series became a cult hit and was massively influential. The show was supposedly an attempt by the BBC to enjoy the same huge success as The Avengers[1] (another British TV show from the 1960s with many missing episodes), and Adam Adamant himself was very much based around the Doctor from another British classic, Doctor Who. (in fact, Adam Adamant's show-runners were Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert, the former having been responsible for getting both Doctor Who and The Avengers off the ground in the first place, and the latter having written for Doctor Who extensively.)
Due to the BBC poorly archiving and cataloging the majority of their television programs from the 1950s and 1960s, thirteen episodes are missing in their entirety. The BBC (through their Archive Treasure Hunt campaign) urges any member of the public to come forward with home video recordings so that the missing episodes can be restored and released to home media.
The 2006 PAL DVD release has all seventeen surviving episodes,[2] spread over five discs. The show is also available ripped on YouTube.[3]
List of Episodes
Season 1
# | Episode Title | Original Air Date | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|
0 | Adam Adamant Lives (Pilot) | Unaired | Partially Found | 1902 sequence reused in A Vintage Year for Scoundrels. |
1 | A Vintage Year for Scoundrels | June 23, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
2 | Death Has a Thousand Faces | June 30, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
3 | More Deadly Than the Sword | July 7, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
4 | The Sweet Smell of Disaster | July 14, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
5 | Allah Is Not Always With You | July 21, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
6 | The Terribly Happy Embalmers | August 4, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
7 | To Set a Deadly Fashion | August 11, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
8 | The Last Sacrifice | August 18, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
9 | Sing a Song of Murder | August 25, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube in lower-quality. |
10 | The Doomsday Plan | September 1, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
11 | Death by Appointment Only | September 8, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
12 | Beauty Is an Ugly World | September 15, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
13 | The League of Uncharitable Ladies | September 22, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
14 | Ticket to Terror | September 29, 1966 | Lost | One photo exists, no surviving footage or audio. |
15 | The Village of Evil | October 6, 1966 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
16 | D for Destruction | October 13, 1966 | Found | Recovered in 2003, On DVD and YouTube. |
Season 2
# | Episode Title | Original Air Date | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | A Slight Case of Reincarnation | December 31, 1966 | Partially Found | 4 minute audio extract available on DVD. |
2 | Black Echo | January 7, 1967 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
3 | Conspiracy of Death | January 14, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
4 | The Basardi Affair | January 21, 1967 | Partially Found | Complete audio recording recovered in 2017. |
5 | The Survivors | January 28, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
6 | Face in a Mirror | February 4, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
7 | Another Little Drink | February 11, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
8 | Death Begins at Seventy | February 18, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
9 | Tunnel of Death | February 25, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
10 | The Deadly Bullet | March 4, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
11 | The Resurrectionists | March 11, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
12 | Wish You Were Here | March 18, 1967 | Lost | No surviving footage or audio. |
13 | A Sinister Sort of Service | March 25, 1967 | Found | On DVD and YouTube. |
All information correct at time of writing[4]
Legacy
Adam Adamant Lives! has remained a beloved cult classic over the years, and has gone on to inspire many. Two such examples include New Wave band Adam and The Ants (eventually shortened to just Adam Ant) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the Austin Powers film franchise was said to have been influenced by AAL!'s plot and Gerald Harper's unique look while playing the titular character.[5]
BBC 4 ran a six-part documentary series on the show in 2008,[6] and Diamanda Hagan of Channel Awesome/TGWTG ran a retrospective series covering all of the surviving episodes.[7]
External Links
- The IMDb page on Adam Adamant Lives!
- The Wikipedia page on Adam Adamant Lives!
- A playlist of the 17 surviving AAL Episodes
References
- ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/adamant/intro.shtml
- ↑ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Adamant-Lives-Complete-Collection/dp/B0006GVKB6
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafDjhpj4ajaK76bR2L9WEQ
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Adamant_Lives!#Episode_list
- ↑ http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/517661/index.html
- ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074t1p
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOt8i0lTzwazb3bj-dDS42LvzoXQUXGIV