Series development

Adam Adamant Lives! has been called by modern observers "what Doctor Who did next",^[3] because at least three Doctor Who alumni had key positions on the pilot. It reunited producer Verity Lambert with Head of Television Drama Sydney Newman. Together they had been at the core of decision-makers who launched Doctor Who. The series also brought Donald Cotton, who had the same year written two serials for Doctor Who, back into Newman's orbit. Cotton and partner Richard Harris would write the first script, "A Vintage Year for Scoundrels", and would therefore come to be credited as co-creators.^[4][5] However, over the years, Newman has been cited as creator of the show. Even the BBC has at times propagated this idea, calling him the creator on some of their own pages devoted to the programme,^[6] but not on others.^[7]

Adam Adamant Lives! was a quick replacement for the show he had actually intended, an adaptation of the adventures of literary detective Sexton Blake. When the rights to the character suddenly became unavailable, it fell to writers Cotton and Harris, along with script editor Tony Williamson, to come up with an alternative idea.^[8] Newman indicated near the end of his life that he had, indeed, been significantly involved in the rewrites, suggesting that his critic Mary Whitehouse had been partial inspiration for the character.^[6] Many of the indoor scenes were filmed at Studios 3 and 5 at the BBC Television Centre in London.^{[citation needed]}

Filming

Gerald Harper chose to wear false eyebrows when playing the title role, based on those of his make-up artist. He also wore a wig. Harper was shortsighted and wore glasses, which he removed as soon as filming was ready to start. When the series ended, the make-up woman sewed his fake eyebrows onto a sampler, with "Here lie the Eyebrows of Adam Adamant, 1966–1967" underneath, which was framed and given to Harper as a memento. He also kept his chararcter's swordstick, and both remain on his wall at home to this day.^{[citation needed]}

Cancellation

Television critic Paul Stump opines in the BBC Four documentary The Cult of Adam Adamant! that the programme ended because the contemporaneously airing The Avengers was a "sexier, slicker, better-funded" version of the same concept.^[9]

Gerald Harper went on to appear in Yorkshire Television's Gazette and its sequel Hadleigh.

Pilot episode - Adam Adamant

Series 1 (1966)

Series 2: 1966–67

* Approximately four minutes from this episode exist on audio tape in a private collection, and is included as part of the Special Features on the DVD release.^{[citation needed]}
** This episode currently exists only as an off-air audio recording.^{[citation needed]}

Lost episodes

This section does not cite any sources. (February 2023)

There were originally 29 black-and-white episodes composing two series, plus one unbroadcast pilot titled Adam Adamant Lives (without exclamation mark, as here). The 1902 sequence is now all that is known to survive of this unseen debut episode of the series, and only exists because it was later reused in "A Vintage Year for Scoundrels". No script of Adam Adamant Lives is known to exist, and the only documentation that remains is the description given in the Drama Early Warning Synopsis issued on Thursday 10 March 1966; this is included in the booklet Adam Adamant Lives!: Viewing Notes accompanying the DVD boxed set Adam Adamant Lives!: The Complete Collection released by 2entertain Ltd in July 2006.

The first series, with the exception of "Ticket to Terror", was made as a mixture of single camera 16 mm film for the location sequences, and multi-camera studio recording using 625-line electronic cameras. However, instead of being edited on video tape, as was the usual BBC procedure, the series was edited entirely on film, with the output of the studio cameras being telerecorded, for ease of editing. (At that time, videotape editing was difficult.)

"Ticket to Terror" from the first series, and all of the second series, were made with the usual BBC mix of tape and film, but were edited on tape. Wiping by the BBC in the 1970s has resulted in no master videotapes having survived. Film recordings haven't all survived either as, in one case, one episode on 35 mm film is known to have been destroyed.

The result of all this is that only 16 episodes remained in the archives when the BBC realised the value of such material, including the first and last episodes in broadcast order. These were mainly in the form of 35 mm film telerecordings, with a handful of episodes as 16mm film recordings or reduction prints. In the case of some episodes, the 35 mm location footage also exists, and has been used to remaster those surviving episodes. The last episode of Series One, "D For Destruction", thought to be among those lost forever, was recovered in 2003, from a mislabelled film can in the BBC Archives. It has been shown in public at the Missing Believed Wiped event, and is included in the Complete Collection DVD set.

Another lost episode, "The Basardi Affair", was recovered as a complete off-air audio recording in 2017, and remains to date the only missing Adam Adamant Lives! episode known to exist in this format.

A public appeal campaign, the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt, continues to search for missing episodes.

VHS

Adam Adamant Lives!

• Label: BBC Video
• Release Date: 6 May 1991
• Catalogue Nº: BBCV 4613
• Availability: Deleted

Contains the first two episodes of Series One, "A Vintage Year for Scoundrels" and "Death Has a Thousand Faces", the latter replacing the previously considered "The Village of Evil". Although there were rumours of two further releases towards the end of 1991, these did not appear owing to poor sales. Re-issued on DVD by Revelation in 2001.

DVD

Adam Adamant Lives!: The Complete Collection

• Label: 2entertain Ltd.
• Release Date: 26 July 2006
• Catalogue Nº: BBCDVD 1479
• Availability: Deleted (unconfirmed)

Five-disc Region 2 DVD box set containing all 17 surviving episodes in digitally re-mastered form. Includes 64-page collector's booklet Adam Adamant Lives!: Viewing Notes, written by Andrew Pixley.

The Avengers

With its pairing of an upper-class adventurer with a "trendy" woman of the 1960s, parallels have been drawn with competitor ITV's The Avengers. There was also a similarity with Granada's Mr. Rose (1967) in which William Mervyn as a retired police inspector was assisted by a youngish confidential secretary (Gillian Lewis) and a manservant (Donald Webster). However, because Adam Adamant was a last-minute replacement for another concept, the degree to which the BBC intended such similarities with The Avengers is unclear. Lambert directly addressed the issue: "In Adam Adamant Lives, we were trying to create something original. Even though it may have been aimed at a similar audience to The Avengers – any production decisions we made were not influenced by trying to imitate".^[10]

However, a reviewer of the 2006 BBC Four retrospective The Cult of ... Adam Adamant Lives! detected something more to the issue when Lambert and other principals were interviewed on camera:

The genial and personable Harmer, Clemens, Harper and producer Verity Lambert all owned up to the clunking obviousness of the series' hamfisted and, in retrospect, laughable attempt to trump ABC's masterpiece. Even an otherwise impartial and unironic script compared the two shows thus: "Edwardian gent teamed with beautiful girl ... and Edwardian gent teamed with beautiful girl". The unspoken tag, of course, was that The Avengers had queered this pitch three years previously.Stump, Paul. "The Cult of Adam Adamant Lives!" offthetelly.co.uk. 14 November 2006.

— Paul Stump, Off the Telly review of The Cult of ... Adam Adamant Lives!, 2006^[11]

Anthony Clark at the British Film Institute|(BFI) noted that while the show "owes a stylistic debt to The Avengers", it was "the BBC's reply to the success of ITV's spy and action series like The Saint (1962–69) and Danger Man (1960–69)". He goes on to call the character of Adamant "more age-of-empire adventurer than spoof spy". A Television Haven review said that while the programme has been "long cited as the BBC's answer to The Avengers", it in fact "owes more to the slick style, tone and format of Lew Grade's phenomenally successful ITC stable of action series rather than the sleek and sophisticated antics of Steed and Mrs Peel".^[12]

Doctor Who

Harper's portrayal of Adamant has been cited as formative to Jon Pertwee's interpretation of the Doctor. The BBC's episode guide to Doctor Who claims parallels between the Third Doctor's inaugural scenes in a hospital with those of Adamant in his pilot, "A Vintage Year for Scoundrels".^[13]

Austin Powers

"Adamant" is frequently viewed as partial inspiration for Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.^[14][15][16] In particular, allusions are seen between the way in which Austin Powers, like Adamant, is revived from cryogenic sleep and befriended by an attractive woman who had known of his exploits before being frozen. The formula is exactly reversed in Powers, however, in that his partner, Vanessa Kensington, is not impressed with his previous record of service, whereas Georgina Jones is a positive fan of Adamant.

Volume 1: A Vintage Year for Scoundrels

Volume 2: Face Off