alexanderdavies-99382 The Saint is still my favourite ITC series out of all of them. The series concerns a man who is described as being the Robin Hood of crime. Roger Moore truly is Simon Templar - no one else comes close. Long may Roger Moore's legacy continue - we lost a true television legend. In future, it won't feel the same every time I see an episode of this classic series. Broadcast from 1962 until 1969, 118 instalments is quite an achievement and they are great. "The Saint" was able to move with the times, just like "The Avengers" could. The black and white episodes have a bit more in the way of intrigue and mystery. Simon Templar would sometimes gather all the suspects in one room and present his findings - shades of Hercule Poirot. The colour ones aimed for being more trendy and rather larger-than- life. Templar usually acted as a one man army in his crime-fighting activities and feared no one. His cool demeanour spoke volumes. There are far too many great episodes to list but on the whole, about 90% or more are of a high standard. The music for the shows theme is very effective. There were 3 different tunes and the first one is the best in my opinion. I know the scale of the series was quite small, with not much location filming. I can easily forgive this as the quality of "The Saint" series is very evident. It was "The Saint" and "Danger Man" that really sealed it for "ITC" and their future successes. Every subsequent series from Lew Grade was compared the above ones in some fashion or other.

vranger Especially in the early years of the show, where the stores more or less followed the plots of novels and novellas of the original author, this was an intelligent, thinking man's show.The show both brought Roger Moore onto the radar to play James Bond, and blocked him from doing so for a number of years. A very similar situation also occurred with Piers Brosnan with Remington Steele.Refreshingly, Simon Templar doesn't out-fight or out-shoot his foes, normally he just out-thinks them in surprising ways.Although I watched these shows as a kid, I didn't remember anything substantial about them at this point in life. I bought the initial early years DVD set and my wife and I have been rediscovering them to our delight.Highly recommended.

P_Cornelius Yes, viewing The Saint on BBC America the other day reawakened some old memories I've carried most of my life. Growing up in a lower middle class American home in the 1960s, I watched Simon Templar and the glamor and intrigue of The Saint fed my vision of the wider world. Later in life, my work enabled me to live in many of the locales pictured in the series. Alas, real life wasn't quite as adventurous as what they depicted on television. Nevertheless, that lost world of the Sixties still reigned in my imagination, where, before air travel resembled travelling in a cattle car, jetting around the globe was a BIG DEAL reserved for the truly rich and adventurous.No, nothing was as fun as The Saint, which gloried in the sort of stereotypes our cultural commissars would never allow on screen today. The Germans are strutting martinets, the French incompetent peacocks, the Italians buffoonish hysterics, the Scots haggis-eating grumps, the Dutch commercial opportunists, the Swiss a bunch of greedy gnomes, the Russians paranoid oafs, the Irish a lot of work shy sots, and the Americans growling chain-smokers.And what a juxtaposition of settings! How many episodes did I watch Simon flee from a brilliantly lit casino or restaurant down the back-streets of London, Hamburg, or Amsterdam to some dank cellar! Or how many times did he escape some luxurious villa or penthouse through the canals of Venice or avenues of Paris or Geneva to some decrepit warehouse! All with a potpourri of travelogue shots of the great cities of Europe and South America! Great TV.And my favorite episode? "The Death Game", where Simon and some British university students, with just a touch of Swingin' London-a-Go-Go, encounter the Assassination Bureau.

carflo During the 1960's, there were two imports that represented everything that is sophisticated and elegant in British TV: The Avengers and The Saint. The Saint is not as well known as The Avengers, but it should be. The Saint, Simon Templar, played to perfection by Roger Moore, is the hero of many mystery novels by Leslie Charteris. Roger Moore's Simon Templar is charming, suave, sexy and smart. Simon is less cynical and more caring than James Bond and relies on his wits rather gadgets to get himself out of trouble. He is a semi-reformed thief who uses his burglar skills to outwit rich and powerful evil doers and rescue the innocent. If you have the chance, please see The Saint. If you liked The Avengers, you will not be disappointed.