Danger Man

Danger Man was created by Ralph Smart, an associate of ITC boss Lew Grade who was searching for TV formats that could be exported internationally; Ian Fleming was initially brought in to help develop the series but left before development was complete.

Star Patrick McGoohan personally shaped John Drake's character, insisting the family-oriented spy carry no firearms (with rare exceptions) and never seduce his female co-stars, unlike James Bond.

The pilot episode, 'View from the Villa', was written by Brian Clemens (later co-producer of The Avengers) and was meant to be set in Italy, but the production manager instead filmed it at Portmeirion in Wales because it was cheaper and looked similar.

Patrick McGoohan later chose Portmeirion, the pilot's filming location, as the primary shooting location for his own series The Prisoner.

On the pilot's second unit shoot, producer Ralph Smart hated the dailies and fired the second unit director, telling him 'you'll never be a film director' — that director was John Schlesinger.

The first series' Washington, D.C. title sequence was actually a composite of the US Capitol combined with London's Castrol Building (now Marathon House) on Marylebone Road, complete with a London bus stop, since a building of that height would not have been legally allowed in Washington under the Height of Buildings Act of 1910.

For the American release as Secret Agent, singer Johnny Rivers worked with P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri to create the theme 'Secret Agent Man', with Rivers admitting he 'stole' the opening guitar riff from the James Bond Theme; the song became a hit in its own right after radio stations demanded its release.

The fourth series consisted of only two colour episodes, 'Koroshi' and 'Shinda Shima', the only Danger Man episodes filmed in colour; they were recut into a feature film for European cinemas and later aired in the UK in black and white due to scheduling conflicts with The Prisoner.

After completing the two colour episodes, McGoohan resigned from Danger Man to create, produce and star in The Prisoner with David Tomblin and George Markstein, both of whom had worked on Danger Man; several other Danger Man crew members were also subsequently hired for The Prisoner.

The Danger Man episode 'Colony Three', about a fake English town used to train spies where instructors are virtual prisoners, is often considered a precursor to The Prisoner, and several actors from Danger Man later appeared in The Prisoner, including Derren Nesbitt, Peter Swanwick and Richard Wattis.

According to The Prisoner: The Official Companion, the Prisoner episode 'The Girl Who Was Death' was based on a two-part Danger Man script originally planned for the fourth series, and featured Christopher Benjamin reprising his Danger Man character 'Potter' as John Drake's contact.

Despite Danger Man's deliberate avoidance of gun violence — Drake shoots someone dead only once across the entire series — The Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Television inexplicably described it as one of the most violent series ever produced.

The episode 'Not So Jolly Roger' was filmed at an abandoned Maunsell Fort while it was actually being occupied by the real pirate radio station Radio 390, and featured singer Patsy Ann Noble performing as a disc jockey both in the plot and on the soundtrack.